This story has been carried in numerous news outlets over the past few days, most with more hype than this one.
The hype is a little premature: Facebook is not dead yet, though it is very interesting that it is no longer the network of choice amongst younger people, not only in the UK, and has not been for most of the past year. Though a billion or more users will take a while to leave, the ugliest company in social media will need to do something amazing really soon if it is to survive. If it does go under then it might happen surprisingly rapidly, thanks to the inverse of Metcalfe’s Law, especially as Facebook is already suffocating under its own flab. It is the biggest we have ever seen but it is certainly not too big to die and, once the exodus gains momentum, could happen in months rather than years. Like MySpace, Hi5 and others that have fallen out of favour, it will likely collapse in a big way but won’t totally vanish, especially given some sensible investments in things like Instagram that do make a lot of sense. Is this a bad thing? While mostly evil in its business practices, it has made some significant contributions to open source projects, but not enough to compensate for the harm it has done to the Internet in general: I won’t be sorry to see it go. It doesn’t need to be replaced. That’s not how things work any more.
Address of the bookmark: http://www.businessinsider.com/teens-in-the-uk-say-facebook-is-dead-2013-12
