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Comment by adam-_- | Hacker News Reader

That network effect can't be underestimated.

In the olden days of a new social network every other week the percentage of my friends and family on each social network (including Myspace, the most dominant) was relatively low, so the pain of switching was low.

Now the percentage on Facebook is extremely high and I don't even know what an alternative would be.

Lots of friends and family are on Whatsapp, quite a lot of people use Instagram but beyond that... there's very little uptake in any other heavily used social network. And of course, they're both owned by Facebook anyway.

So, for me at least, to say Facebook is on the way out, is something I cannot agree with.

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Do the people you know actually engage with Facebook a lot, though?

I'm still on it and log in a few times a week but I engage far less. I recently used a Chrome extension to delete my old comments and I'm surprised at how much more I posted on it (and publicly, too). Although changing the newsfeed to be mostly memes and adverts was one cause of my disengagement, I think it's also just changing use. I haven't really noticed the recent changes Facebook touted because my friend network simply seems to engage with it less. Maybe a few people still insist on posting dozens of photographs of every trip they take, but I see so much less public discussion and so on.

What happens to a social network when the 'social' bit tails off?

anecdotal, but on my daily commute i see people "engaging" with facebook (and instagram) all the time.

Due to the network effect, you may end up with lots of people using Facebook, but actually disliking the service.

What you can see happening is that people treat Facebook more as a news feed then as a platform to communicate with friends.

Once personal communication moves away from Facebook, other communication is likely to move as well. It may take as while though. When that happens, Facebook will be more like a twitter feed.

I'm really curious what will happen to WhatsApp. Will it stay the way it currently is. Or will it become some sort of Facebook?

I wish people would stop taking their anecdata so seriously . . .

> What you can see happening is that people treat Facebook more as a news feed then as a platform to communicate with friends.

I see the opposite trend. People ignore worse-than-useless feed more and more, moving to messenger and especially group chats.

Until serious competitor appears (and I mean real one, not HN-ideal decentralized-blockchain-powered one), FB stays. Tons of people using it in spite of their dislike of the platform has not stopped FB's growth, and who knows if it brings any actual change any time soon.

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