Hacker News Reader

Comment by markessien | Hacker News Reader

OpenID died last year. Anyone still hoping that OpenID will gain any traction is hopelessly shortsighted.

Facebook will make money, that is the least problem. Facebook connect is going to evolve to merge with MySpace, WindowsLive, StudiVZ, Xiaonei identities. People no longer identify themselves by their email addresses, they do so by their social networking account, and he's right there.

And people don't like changing their social network, they are too entrenched. Americans like to think that Facebook is so dominant, but lots of people like Hi5 and cannot imagine using anything else, because their friends are all there.

There will come a system where people can sign-in anywhere using their personal page. But such systems come slowly because of all the competing interests each pulling another way.

View on HN

"People no longer identify themselves by their email addresses, they do so by their social networking account, and he's right there."

I don't find that to be true at all. Social networking sites have a long way to go before get anywhere near the ubiquity of email with the general adult population.

I could take a trip around my office and everyone has email, maybe 5 of the 30 use myspace or facebook. Grown ups still prefer email and see facebook/myspace as nothing more than a silly website kids like.

You really don't see what's happening then? You know how people get to a certain age and then they stop wanting to change the technology they use? That's what the adults in your office are doing. Email is like having a fixed-line phone - it's going slowly out of use.

The young ones are the ones that change technology, not the ones who have already adopted a technology. It's difficult to shake off the inertia of an existing method, but when you see someone young compare two technologies (email vs social-networking mail), and in almost all cases choose one option, then that option has won.

People who have to choose for the first time are overwhelmingly choosing one side. So it does not matter what the grown ups in your office are using because those grown ups are being replaced.

Email is not going anywhere soon, it has its place, but for sending messages to friends, social networking has already won.

One can certainly make that argument, but it assumes people don't outgrow those sites, and they are just web sites by the way, not some new protocol or revolutionary thing. Social network has been around for ages, myspace and facebook are just recent reincarnations of the fad.

Perhaps the kids just haven't been around long enough to see that walled gardens are always fads and never last while true open systems like email, IRC, and the web as a whole cannot be displaced by any such private system.

Sure, kids like facebook, but then they grow up, get jobs, and discover the rest of the internet and actually start using it. The older folks aren't stuck on using old technology, they're wisely using the better technology rather than following teenage fads which won't last.

Usenet was open, why did forums take over? Why do people prefer MSN and co to IRC? Sometimes the technology you think is right does not win. Keep your mind open.

Usenet was harder to use, forums work from any web browser. IRC, also hard to use for non computer people while IM's were easy, obvious reasons why those became popular.

The same is not true of twitter/facebook/myspace, email is just as simple to use and works in browsers as well. I'm not oblivious to the social aspects and the hooking up factor going on but that stuff only appeals to very young single folks.

Social networking has not won anything yet, it's too young to even be over the fad phase, it has it's place but it won't be replacing email anytime soon. I'm also a programmer in my early 30's so I'm hardly an old foggie that just doesn't get it. My mind's open but my eyes aren't shut.

Facebook can't keep burning VC money forever and it's not yet figured out a profitable way to monetize its eyeballs. In this economy, which still hasn't hit bottom, it's not looking very good for them.

Email is not going anywhere soon, it has its place, but for sending messages to friends, social networking has already won.

i think you meant to say text messaging, not social networking. go to any middle school or high school, it's all about the phone platform. the parents of these kids would rather pay $15 for unlimited text plan than $30 for an unlimited data plan.

"People no longer identify themselves by their email addresses, they do so by their social networking account, and he's right there."

That's an argument FOR OpenID, not against it! If every social network has to invent their own sign in protocol, they have two choices: roll their own, or use OpenID. The smart ones will use OpenID. They're welcome to disguise it under a "log in with MySpace" button, but under the hood it makes sense to use the existing protocol with the pre-written libraries rather than invent something new from scratch.

OpenID is not that complex that the technology is important. And seriously, OpenID has already gone the linux way - if a technology is pushed so heavily and utterly fails to make a mark, then LET IT DIE.

OpenID was not intended as a method for sites to perform communicating between themselves, and even if you can use it for that, why not create a protocol that faces the reality of auth methods right now.

> OpenID died last year

Do you have evidence for that assertion? I use OpenID every day. If OpenID doesn't succeed, I'm sure something like it will.

> Americans like to think that Facebook is so dominant, but lots of people like Hi5 and cannot imagine using anything else, because their friends are all there.

That's a good point.

If the least problem Facebook has is to make money, then why haven't they done it now? Don't you think it might be smart to get that little item checked off their list sooner rather than later?

Because to make money, people need to pay, and when people need to pay, growth slows. Their focus is on growth for the moment, and for that they need to spend.

It's like playing monopoly - at the beginning of the game you concentrate on buying as many properties as you can, because you know later they will bring you profits. If you immediately start building when you have just 3 cards, then you will earn money right at the start, but you will suffer later.

Facebook can sell itself at any time it wants to. Money is not the issue.

If you wanted any indication to show how desperate FB are to monetize, consider their aggressive introduction of invasive (and I suspect redundant) ads over the last two months. There's no master plan there - the redundancy of "users first, monetize later philosophy" has seriously screwed up any plan they may once have had. My advice to them: subscriptions, by the end of the year, before they start falting on their datacentre bills. People can't flock to a new free version of fb because nobody would fund it now.

How will they make money? They need to make a LOT just to repay investors. The path to profitability is far from clear from my pov.

A business does not choose to run at a loss. They are currently running at a loss because they have failed to monetize. Investors keep giving them money because they assume (have faith) there will be some way of turning a profit in the future.

The investors don't get repaid, they earn when the company earns.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com