Unfortunately, in my opinion, Facebook is here to stay.
Reasons:
- Local/OSS/decentralized social networks will not work for the common population because their friends and updates will not be there.
- Video based is already a success, see Twitch, but people sometimes prefer text and likes.
- Messenger only is also a success, see Whatsapp/FB messenger, but some people have the need to expose themselves to people outside their groups.
- Pinterest, Instagram and Google+ have their own public which mostly likely are also in FB. They use it for difference purposes.
- Twitter, well this one it's difficult. First of all most of the communication is public and some users are not interested in that. Also there's a lot of self promotion messages which does not mean it will engage users to communicate. Finally Twitter tries to reinvent itself and the features are not consistent. i.e. For several weeks they enabled translations and after it was disabled. Twitter might have a chance to engage more people with Tvshows, movies, music and personalities.
Facebook after all is the social network which is easier to get started, makes a balance between public and private/groups, lot's of features available (games, messenger, groups etc...) and families and friends in the same feed. I guess it's pretty hard to beat that currently for other social networks.
FB is here to stay until there's a new round of technology and FB doesn't move quickly enough to capitalise on it. I'm guessing that won't happen for at least another five years.
FB is basically AOL, which was basically CompuServe, which was a combination of DEC networking and BBS culture. (Kind of, if you squint hard and wave your hands around in the right way.)
There is always niche for this kind of all-in-one social/messaging/groups/etc. It's a very big and profitable niche, and someone always owns it. But the incumbents change over time, and there are disruptions whenever the underlying technology changes.
FB is likely a safe bet until something new appears. The obvious near-term move is 3D social/gaming, which is why FB bought Oculus. Longer terms that may not be enough, because it's not obvious head-mounted 3D VR is going to be pleasant and friction-free enough for everyday casual use.
My guess is the something new will have strong elements of AI and social and perhaps VR too - but I could be wrong about that.
I agree with you that probably FB will stay longer than everyone thinks. At least the messaging part.
What I think it's the biggest factor that will give it inertia, it's the userbase.
It has slowly become the centralized place for connecting with people, especially when not considering the minority of very tech-savy people.
I am at a party and I met somebody I want to hang out with? He/she's probably on facebook then we'll communicate on that.
Wanna look up for my old class-mates? Let's search for them on facebook.
The timeline will be empty/boring/spam, but the messaging app will be full.
That's the point, FB is people personal ID in the Internet (I guess Google+ was suppose to have this task), and this is the reason why we have so many apps working with FB which is the central point for everything - login, pictures, address, tlf number etc...
Right... at this point Facebook is where the people are that other people want to communicate with. Facebook has the massive "directory" of users.
Social networks are only useful to people if the other people with whom they want to communicate are ON those networks.
Right now, Facebook has that massive directory. This can change, of course. The Internet does not have permanent favorites. But today, Facebook is where you can easily find and interact with people.
Reasons: - Local/OSS/decentralized social networks will not work for the common population because their friends and updates will not be there.
- Video based is already a success, see Twitch, but people sometimes prefer text and likes.
- Messenger only is also a success, see Whatsapp/FB messenger, but some people have the need to expose themselves to people outside their groups.
- Pinterest, Instagram and Google+ have their own public which mostly likely are also in FB. They use it for difference purposes.
- Twitter, well this one it's difficult. First of all most of the communication is public and some users are not interested in that. Also there's a lot of self promotion messages which does not mean it will engage users to communicate. Finally Twitter tries to reinvent itself and the features are not consistent. i.e. For several weeks they enabled translations and after it was disabled. Twitter might have a chance to engage more people with Tvshows, movies, music and personalities.
Facebook after all is the social network which is easier to get started, makes a balance between public and private/groups, lot's of features available (games, messenger, groups etc...) and families and friends in the same feed. I guess it's pretty hard to beat that currently for other social networks.