The press have been using the term “Facebook killer” since the site hit the mainstream. In the past few years social networks have come and gone, with Myspace being the most famous networks to lose its crown in recent years. The idea of a social site being the most popular for a long period of time seemed implausible. People would surely get tired of seeing the same website each day, wouldn’t they? Facebook has gone against this law and through a mixture of clever management and luck the site has amassed over 750 million users.
Each week we hear about a new social media network that will become our top destination on the web. Google’s new network; Google Plus and past sites such as Google Buzz and Wave have all been stated as rivals to the Facebook crown. Other websites such as Meetup, Bebo and hi5 have also tried to become the top social site but haven’t attracted enough fans. I believe that toppling Facebook is possible but no site has yet been good enough and it will take several years to achieve the task. Twitter and Linkedin are probably the closet to the goal but both provide separate services. I happily use all three networks and find each fits a different purpose. Therefore I believe for anything to beat Facebook it will have to offer something completely different.
Comparing Facebook’s current position in social networking and Google’s in search we can see a similar story. Facebook was created at a time when Myspace had managed to achieve approximately 80 million users. Most people thought that the site was undefeatable and that 80 million was too many users for sites to compete against. The search market has a similar story, Yahoo was the king and nobody thought it would be challenged in 1995. The problem was that both of these sites were used by a relatively small amount of users. As the internet grew, new users chose Google and Facebook instead of Yahoo and Myspace. The people that were using the original leaders in their field weren’t tied to them either. On Myspace you may have had 50 friends and you may have saved Yahoo as your home page but you had the option to change. On Facebook users now have an average of 130 friends each and many younger members have around 300 friends. Is it likely that you would change when nearly everybody you know is on the site?
Facebook has 175 million users worldwide and half of them log in to the site each day. The network has become part of most internet users’ lives with 71.2% of the US web audience on the social site. Facebook is the most searched term on the internet and nearly half of the 18 – 34 year olds on the site check it as soon as they wake up. We believe Facebook is here to stay.
5 Responses
Interesting that hacking group ‘Anonymous’ has said that they will ‘kill Facebook’ on on 5th this year – so Facebook must be doing something right.
it is hard to imagine something bigger and better each time you have such a dominant brand. however, google with google+ does have that advantage that it is just as well known or better known than facebook in the internet world. With people already having various types of google accounts it will make a lot of people think of integrating onto one platform. Will it take over facebook? …it will probably be another decade before we know
After seeing this promoted around various blogs and sites in recent weeks, it looks like a great idea and one that may ultimately really help brands on Facebook pages also.
Facebook is the king of social networking like this article says.. however,
Nothing Lasts For Ever
It’s the perfect time to make some plans for the long run. I’ve read this blog and found some great and interesting infomation.
Perhaps you can write subsequent articles relating to this article.