Prediction: Facebook will be the largest social network in the world | Hacker News Reader

Prediction: Facebook will be the largest social network in the world

paulallen.net

7 pointsfarmer8 comments

At first I was like "Paul Allen loves facebook this much? Damn" Then I realized it wasn't Paul Allen from MS and classified this as more hype.

Social Networks are still very young, Facebook is promising but the game isn't won yet.

He had some interesting things to say, but he could do with a few less quotes like this: "This announcement was at least an 8.0 on the Richter scale."

"Facebook has 24 million active users (meaning theyve used the site in the last 30 daysI like how they arent overstating numbers like SecondLife) and 50% of them login each day. Mark says the next most active social network is not more than 15%."

However, the internet has several billion users, and 90% of them log on every day (I made those numbers up, but you get the idea). So where is the difference to Facebook? Just because somebody is using Facebook doesn't guarantee that they are using your Facebook plugin. And once there are as many plugins as there are services on the internet as a whole, I don't see an additional advantage for Facebook...

Just playing devils advocate, it just seems to me some people are being blinded by the dollar signs in their eyes. Sure, it would be nice to write a plugin that every facebook users uses, but in general it won't be so easy.

There is probably a bonus for being an early starter now, though.

If you look at it just in terms of # of users, of course facebook's offering suffers. But that isn't a great comparison - it's like comparing the # of viewers for The Office (awesome show btw) to the total viewers of all TV channels in existence.

I think the real win is that their api allows your app to take advantage of the connections between facebook's users.

Social Networks are like nightclubs, the flavor of the day seems like it will rule forever UNTIL the next hot one comes along 2 years later. Social Networks are not new (geocities, tripod anyone?) . Facebook is going to be hot until this crop of college students graduate, get real jobs and move on to other things.

Could you explain how free webhosts (geocities, tripod) are social networks? They seem totally different to me.

I believe that Mark mentioned (during his keynote speech) that over half of their user base is over 25 yrs old now.

Facebook will probably be hot until something an order of magnitude better comes along, and even then many people will not want to switch (inertia). Add to this the open approach (API + site integration), and it isn't too far a stretch to see them becoming the standard social operating system.

Well it's a little late for this prediction to very visionary..

Reply on news.ycombinator.com