Thread: Will people get sick of social media?

Someone I was talking with brought up an interesting point. A lot of what we see today is heavily involved with online social sites like Twitter and Facebook. It would seem like the younger generation is already past Facebook being a thing. A lot of teens don't even care to be on the site and it is mostly made up of people to the East now. Twitter still seems to be doing okay with younger audiences and users as well as Instagram and Youtube, but will people eventually get bored with it or sick of it?

A lot of people said Facebook will be here forever but I really don't see it lasting another 5 years as a top site. I mostly hear of middle aged to much older people using the site anymore. I could be wrong and maybe that is just based on who I talk to.

What are your thoughts?

It is highly unlikely that Facebook will one day be forgotten. Sure, most of the youth have outlived the usefulness for FB, but it is not that Facebook is the one with the problem. When they started out, communication was the main product they were selling, but over the past couple years, many people have started using the platform as a way to advertise products and post their affiliate links. What was once a social platform full of pictures and posts is almost becoming an online marketplace. However, it is still in the top tier when it comes to social networks. Facebook has features that will not be replicated by any other social media giant for the next 5 decades or so.

I certainly did six years ago when I deleted my personal Facebook account. Then I used a different account for business and for managing things like the OSN Facebook page, but after a while I wanted out of that too and I haven't used Facebook in ages. I see Twitter as less toxic, even though I rarely use it. MySpace was pretty much the same as this. Everyone was crazy about MySpace in the mid-2000s, but when Facebook gained traction many people jumped ship and MySpace just... died. Perhaps some other social network will come along and we'll see a repeat of that, but who knows? I guess there's Instagram, but I don't actually hear about it that much. Social media as a whole certainly doesn't seem as exciting to many people anymore.

I think Twitter will be popular for longer than Facebook, as like you said it still maintains a younger audience. It's also more convenient, with the character limit (though that was extended a year or two ago) forcing people to write quick updates. Facebook on the other hand isn't restrained, which means you'll have to scroll through a huge news feed of people's long sob stories and others' posts about how amazing life is going and their new cars. On Facebook, certainly with the younger generations posts seem to be more black or white. Nobody wants to hear about people's mundane affairs, so you typically either see very angry/sad/unpleasant posts or the total opposite. Eventually I found it mentally draining and depressing, and I wonder if others are starting to see it the same way.

Originally Posted by Kieranlewix

Facebook has features that will not be replicated by any other social media giant for the next 5 decades or so.

Lol, come on. Five decades? Want to know what technology was like five decades ago?



And you don't think another platform will surpass Facebook by the end of the next five decades?

Originally Posted by Mantis

Lol, come on. Five decades? Want to know what technology was like five decades ago?



And you don't think another platform will surpass Facebook by the end of the next five decades?

It's really not about surpassing Facebook per se... It's more like creating a platform more unique and convenient than Facebook. At the moment, Twitter and Instagram are trying to give FB a run for their money, but they can't. IG came after Facebook and since their features were the ability to post pictures and links and also a messaging system, which FB already had, they had to call their messagebox a DM.. lol.. Or else FB would sue them for stealing their idea. Twitter had to make their posts unique by setting a character limit unlike in FB where you cam write an entire book and post..haha!

My point is, creating a social network that is completely unique from Facebook is very difficult, almost impossible.

In five decades, what we call "social media" will be so antiquated as to not even be comparable to whatever reality exists FIFTY years from now. I highly doubt we'll be punching away on a keyboard, as we do nowadays, there'll probably be visual implants that give us updates in our peripheral vision, or something even more far fetched. Will FB as a company still be around, on top of all these advances? Maybe. Or, maybe someone else will come along as new approaches to technology are conceived, invented, patented, and promulgated by various cultures.

As some of you remember, there was this thing called Myspace before Twitter and Facebook. It's still around, but it's not the popular game in town anymore. That's the part of this equation that's so hard to predict: popularity, consumer fickleness. Whatever the company/platform, however, I think there's no going back, so to speak. People are becoming more accustomed to being constantly connected to friends, family, exes, world events, and even casual acquaintances ethereally. We humans are social by nature, so whatever form technology may take, it'll be in that direction: more connectivity, more openness, more sharing of information without giving it a second thought--all readily taken advantage of, as it is already, by companies looking to hone in on consumers' tastes and interests.

I have another question for you guys based on the responses... Could Facebook become a legit corporation in the future? One that goes beyond social media? Will they start having physical building popping up, selling their own brands of goods, hiring more people, and having an offline impact?

Originally Posted by KorinKitty

I have another question for you guys based on the responses... Could Facebook become a legit corporation in the future? One that goes beyond social media? Will they start having physical building popping up, selling their own brands of goods, hiring more people, and having an offline impact?

Hmm. "Legit"? I mean, they're a quote/unquote legitimate company, and a huge corporate presence at that. A physical building: What for? Nowadays, in a lot of industries brick and mortar buildings are going out of style as more and more people purchase things online and have them delivered to their home. Selling their brand of "goods" eh? What do you have in mind? I think them selling people's information to the highest bidder already suits them just fine.

"Offline impact" eh? I wonder what you mean by that (no offense intended): they impacted a U.S. presidential election (not intentionally, but as a huge platform of misinformation because older people can't distinguish between bot-fed b.s. and actual, verified news). How do you get more of an impact than that? Plus, more and more these days, "online" is the "real world." If you're a company that cut its teeth on the internet--which conveniently doesn't have brick-and-mortar stores where people could show up and complain, and especially in earlier days was an ethereal free zone when it came to paying state sales taxes, ask Amazon all about that one--why bother with the offline one?

It would be funny if we went the route of Shitter from South Park for the future.

http://southpark.cc.com/clips/m31v1z/its-called-shitter

I'm sick of Facebook and getting annoyed with twitter... YouTube is getting buggered with their 'improvements'