Why Facebook will fall
I’ve heard two main reasons recently why Facebook will never fall.
First, like the banks on Wall Street, it’s too big to fail. Second, people have too much invested personally and socially in Facebook to ever leave.
A quick stroll through history however suggests neither reason is particularly persuasive.
Nothing lasts forever
Our first example from history is a classic. Ancient Rome. At the height of the Empire no one thought it could ever crumble. In fact, this same confidence in the longevity of its own supremacy no doubt lingered right up until it ultimately fell.
Nothing lasts forever. Nothing has yet. Not Ancient Rome. Nor will the dominance more lately of the USA. Facebook is no exception.
This isn’t an Earth shattering observation, yet it’s one that most people are almost wilfully avoiding when considering the future of Facebook.
Like the Colosseum, one day, likely in our lifetime, tourists will visit Menlo Park to take a picture in front of the Facebook thumb as a symbol of past power lost.
People will walk away from past investments
A powerful space, where people of the same belief, and often people of the same ethnicity and race, can find each other to reinforce and reaffirm their common identity.
A space designed for the sharing and celebrating of momentous life occasions, like birth, marriage, and yes, death.
A space to collaborate, to organise, and also gossip.
Sound familiar? No, not a description of Facebook, though it could be.
A look around any town or city, here in Australia or anywhere around the World, and you’ll discover an enormous investment social infrastructure in the recent past. Churches. Everywhere. Of every different shade and colour. All lovingly erected with hard work by people who often had very little to spare.
Despite this investment, the many cherished memories created within each churchyard, and the strong sense of identity derived from belonging to a community of faith, many are now empty, unused, and for sale.
Building them was not a wasted effort. They served a purpose for a time. But as social needs evolved, as our communities have morphed, as we’ve derived identity from other places, increasingly online, they’re gradually being rendered redundant.
It’s important to note that while church affiliation and attendance has declined across the board, it’s been amongst the more traditional denominations that declines have been the steepest.
And that, arguably, is because these denominations haven’t kept up with and made accommodation for changes in community values and expectations.
It’s this similarity with traditional religion, an inability or unwillingness to respond to shifting community values and expectations, that should be worrying Mark Zuckerberg right now.
How well Facebook right now accommodates the late but powerful correction from its own community on the limits of privacy loss could then be the tipping point we look back on as start of its own long, inevitable decline.
