The Princeton Study: A Few Extrapolations

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Thinking of websites as parasitic pathogens is good exercise! An effective pathogen infects a large percent of the population before becoming offensive to its hosts. Eventually, the pathogen mutates and becomes deadlier. We can transfer this behavior to websites by saying that eventually, once a website reaches a certain number of users, it will attempt to monetize.

Facebook, with its billions of users, is at the top of the hill. As such, it's susceptible to the "next big thing" syndrome. Research out of Princeton predicts that it will be supplanted by 2017.

Basically, the idea is that Facebook is a meme--in the social-science sense, not the funny photo sense--that was passed around from person to person like a virus, and that people will eventually become immune to it. This is what happened to MySpace.

Geocities came under the influence of another entity (Yahoo!), but then they failed to adapt to the environment--cheap shared hosting with more features. People became immune.

Facebook mutates all the time. The only question is: do these changes benefit users? If not, the user's subconscious will create a mental "anti-body" to fight it. Facebook recently went public, and I think it's fair to conclude that their number one priority now is to make money for investors. This is not likely to generate changes that benefit users.

Using this model, we can say that Twitter has high adaptability to immunity, precisely because it doesn't change all that much and because it's not overly offensive to users. Similarly, Pinterest is in good shape because it is highly contagious and non-offensive.

We can further conclude that Google+ isn't likely the next big thing. People associate it with Facebook, and not in a good way. Besides, Google has its own tarnished reputation. The immune system is aware of it.

We can also conclude that all effective social media sites are somewhat offensive, because they have the potential to prove habit-forming.

The next big thing will utilize cutting-edge algorithms that allow people to find one another in new, and useful ways. It won't have an obvious monetization scheme early on, and it will be extremely easy to adopt. It will also incorporate mobile in some way, or may even be heavily dependent on the user's physical location. It will likely depend on the concept of the geo-fence to help people find things in their local environment that are of use to them--including other people.

The age of useless social media is probably drawing to a close. People realize now that social media is a time-suck.

So keep an eye out, and get in early.

Thoughts? Agree? disagree?
#facebook #meme
  • Profile picture of the author jgant
    I wish I knew for many reasons the future of social media. I like your point about a social platform with better search. I'm amazed facebook hasn't developed a better search function.

    It is interesting how such websites with billions in revenue are susceptible to losing it all. Google is one better search engine away from collapse too.

    I'm sure these companies know they're vulnerable and do everything they can think of to keep users happy. For instance they address privacy concerns... Maybe not to everyone's liking, but they do respond to these issues.
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  • Profile picture of the author Ghoster
    Indeed, they do try—out of a sense of self-preservation, I think. Then again, they also buddy up with the NSA and conduct experiments on users.

    OSNs will do anything to bring value to users, so long as those changes don't impact the bottom line or lessen their chances of long-term survival.
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    On the whole, you get what you pay for.

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