DISQUS

Ross McKillop · 2 years ago

Yeah I honestly don't get it. Do people really not see that everything is temporary? HotBot dominated search for a while, then Yahoo, now it's Google. In a few years - maybe as many as 5 or 6, it'll be someone else. LiveJournal grew at a huge rate, then MySpace, now Facebook. In a few years, it'll be something else. Blogs used to be called "homepages". In a few years, they'll be called something else (my guess: "digital homes" or something equally stupid). Pirating was BBS's, then usenet, then FTP and IRC, then Napster/gnutella, now it's bittorrent. WinPlay3, Winamp, iTunes. In a few years it'll be something else. Lynx, Netscape, IE, Firefox - in a few years.. They're all just fads - some last longer than others. If anyone wants to make a long term bet, I'd be happy to put down money on this one - 10 years from now, Facebook won't have as many users as it does now - if it even exists at all.

webomatica · 2 years ago

I do think it's funny how cyclical it is - just last year it was all podcasts and Digg - now I dare say Digg has plateaued. I wonder what it will be next year.

As far as a bet - thinking back to what was in vogue back in 1997 - I think you have some evidence behind you there.

Still, there is still a ton of money to be made from these temporary rises and falls, and some of these bigger companies trying to figure out if purchasing smaller Web 2.0 ones is a smart move, if only for defensive purposes. Part of the Facebook frenzy is driven by how MySpace seems to be making some good money for News Corp. And so the speculation expands...

Ed Kohler · 2 years ago

Great point that this is still speculation. I don't understand how much control this, as a consumer, will really give me over my data from one social networking type site to the next.