What Happened When Facebook Became Boomerbook

theatlantic.com

10 points·zwieback··5 comments

Facebook faces this problem

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAatPPEaZDA

That is, a platform will start out young and cool, then the users get older, their parents join, their grandparents move in. Soon it's not.

Facebook beat one or two cycles of this by buying instagram and whatsapp. It's not a sustainable answer, and a near-death experience is always a few years away.

I question, however, the idea that the young demographic is desirable for advertisers. It's true that older people like to think they are young, but it seems the real ad bonanza is for medicare advantage plans, political advertising, expensive cars, and other things old people can afford.

Yeah, the trick for a platform is to make itself look like a nice place for young people while selling stuff to older people. True platforms dominated by young people -- e.g. 4chan, reddit -- have real problems making money and are not necessarily pleasant places to be for the majority of those that advertisers want to reach.

Yep, and it's happening to TikTok as we speak, lots of old people on there now.

As to your comment about the young demographic - I wonder about that too. The rationale I heard is that you want to target that demographic because parents and grandparents are spending money on the young generation today and then that generation will become the consumer of tomorrow. I don't know if I believe this theory though.

> “Facebook is for old people—old as in 40.”

I knew this had to happen. Kids can't be using the same social network as their parents and g-parents.

https://archive.is/Qrdfn

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