# Facebook - an Internet dustbunny by 2020? **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [June 8, 2012, 11:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/facebook-an-internet-dustbunny-by-2020/624487 "2012-06-08T11:59:15Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 17\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Enkel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/df705f/32.png) [@Enkel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Enkel)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2012, 11:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/facebook-an-internet-dustbunny-by-2020/624487/1 "2012-06-08T11:59:15Z")
> **[Y! Big Story: Facebook slap](https://www.yahoo.com/news/blogs/trending-now/y-big-story-facebook-slap-205527500.html)** > > Is this making you yawn? As if the IPO fumble and lawsuit pile-on weren't a couple black eyes for Facebook, now comes an insult even more wounding: People are just bored with the social network. A Reuters/Ipsos poll counted 34% of its users slacking... > [@](#): > > Facebook 2020 funeral? After all these slaps to Facebook, the only thing left would be spit on the corpse… and sure enough, a Forbes columnist obliges with predictions of its death in five to eight years. I have faith that the NSA will do everything in its power to keep Facebook alive. Where else do you have nearly 10% of the global population self reporting their every move and every contact. I’m sure there is a wing in the Utah data center dedicated to saving off a copy of everything on Facebook in the hopes that some day they’ll have an algorithm to decode all those connections. ---
**Author:** ![UncleRojelio](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/unclerojelio/32/3160_2.png) [@UncleRojelio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UncleRojelio)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2012, 12:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/facebook-an-internet-dustbunny-by-2020/624487/2 "2012-06-08T12:46:14Z")
Probably sooner than that. Dead man walking. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2012, 1:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/facebook-an-internet-dustbunny-by-2020/624487/3 "2012-06-08T13:08:58Z")
IMO, facebook’s success in integrating everything is contributory to a general feeling of apathy toward it. I’m interested to read things that my friends have actually written, but I couldn’t give a flying toss what music they’re listening to right now, or how high a pointless score they achieved on some inane online game, or that they liked some like-harvesting content-free page called ‘_OMG, that moment when a guy says “we have to talk”_’, or even if they _just read some article on a newspaper’s ‘social reader’ app_. I like socialising with my friends, but all this app-related, automated bollocks _isn’t socialising_. ---
**Author:** ![GuanoLad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guanolad/32/42_2.png) [@GuanoLad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GuanoLad)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2012, 1:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/facebook-an-internet-dustbunny-by-2020/624487/4 "2012-06-08T13:33:48Z")
Facebook is faltering, but I’m not convinced it will die anytime soon. It’s had such a messy beginning and yet became even more popular. It’s assumed that it’s used as ubiquitously as mobile phones. If it does die it will only be replaced by something almost exactly like it, maybe Google+ or maybe something new. ---
**Author:** ![Baron\_Greenback](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/baron_greenback/32/48_2.png) [@Baron\_Greenback](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baron_Greenback)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2012, 1:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/facebook-an-internet-dustbunny-by-2020/624487/5 "2012-06-08T13:51:14Z")
Facebook seems to me to have hit a critical mass of users. It’ll be inertia that keeps them going - it’s going to be enormously difficult for a rival to persuade enough people to migrate to another platform. If Google can’t do it, then who? Having said that, I’m not keen on the way that they seem to want to become the portal to the rest of the web. ---
**Author:** ![Icarus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/icarus/32/72_2.png) [@Icarus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Icarus)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2012, 5:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/facebook-an-internet-dustbunny-by-2020/624487/6 "2012-06-08T17:24:05Z")
Interesting possibility - Will they be like AOL - used to rule the world, they did? Maybe like Yahoo! - still around, but not really a player? What they have working in their favor is demographics, there will always be more young people jumping in. And as they age they may likely keep Facebook as part of their daily routine. I think the dropoff in adoption we’ve witnessed is adults who joined within the last few years who realized they just didn’t get hooked. For the kids, however, they’re more likely to stick around into adulthood. ---
**Author:** ![AClockworkMelon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aclockworkmelon/32/10803_2.png) [@AClockworkMelon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AClockworkMelon)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2012, 6:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/facebook-an-internet-dustbunny-by-2020/624487/7 "2012-06-08T18:05:25Z")
They’re the WoW of Social Networking sites. I think they might be too big to fail at this point. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2012, 6:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/facebook-an-internet-dustbunny-by-2020/624487/8 "2012-06-08T18:15:32Z")
By 2020? Sure. But even Google could be gone by then. Remember, the web is only 21 years old. ---
**Author:** ![billfish678](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7bcc69/32.png) [@billfish678](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/billfish678)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2012, 6:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/facebook-an-internet-dustbunny-by-2020/624487/9 "2012-06-08T18:16:15Z")
I’d tap that (the web that is). ---
**Author:** ![Simplicio](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c37758/32.png) [@Simplicio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Simplicio)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2012, 7:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/facebook-an-internet-dustbunny-by-2020/624487/10 "2012-06-08T19:13:51Z")
> [@Baron\_Greenback](#): > > Facebook seems to me to have hit a critical mass of users. It’ll be inertia that keeps them going - it’s going to be enormously difficult for a rival to persuade enough people to migrate to another platform. If Google can’t do it, then who? Having said that, I’m not keen on the way that they seem to want to become the portal to the rest of the web. Yea, the main perk of Facebook is that everyone is already on Facebook. Compared to that, various missteps with interface design and privacy concerns and the like are very minor problems. I suspect they’ll still be a going concern in 2020. The only thing that will kill Facebook is a service that offers a replacement service _and_ has some second application that people can’t get from Facebook but that everyone “needs”. They’ll sign up for the second application, and then once everyone is on the new service for that purpose, they’ll realize they can also use it as a Facebook replacement. ---
**Author:** ![Death\_of\_Rats](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a6a055/32.png) [@Death\_of\_Rats](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Death_of_Rats)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2012, 8:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/facebook-an-internet-dustbunny-by-2020/624487/11 "2012-06-08T20:51:09Z")
What will kill facebook is the aging demographic. It already is losing the HS/Collage aged users who are migrating towards more Twitter and Flicker. Very soon Facebook is going to been seen as the “old person” site and the main user group will have migrated away to newer and better. I already know a number of people in that demographic who only maintain a Facebook page so that they can post some benign things to keep thier parent’s attention and ‘friend’ Gramma, while all the good stuff gets post elsewhere. ---
**Author:** ![moejoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9de053/32.png) [@moejoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/moejoe)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2012, 9:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/facebook-an-internet-dustbunny-by-2020/624487/12 "2012-06-08T21:20:19Z")
> [@Death\_of\_Rats](#): > > I already know a number of people in that demographic who only maintain a Facebook page so that they can post some benign things to keep thier parent’s attention and ‘friend’ Gramma, while all the good stuff gets post elsewhere. Exactly this. Facebook will become the place to “keep in touch” with people you’d never actually want to spend any time with. Old co-workers, second cousins, that great sandwich place downtown. I’m sure it will be around and in use for a long time to come, it will probably just be used differently. ---
**Author:** ![UncleRojelio](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/unclerojelio/32/3160_2.png) [@UncleRojelio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UncleRojelio)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2012, 9:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/facebook-an-internet-dustbunny-by-2020/624487/13 "2012-06-08T21:43:55Z")
Topical article: > **[More Seniors Are Cruising Facebook Than Ever Before](https://finance.yahoo.com/news/more-seniors-cruising-facebook-ever-211500279.html)** > > According to Pew Research, our silver-haired elders have been ramping up their web activity. Everybody play it cool. ---
**Author:** ![Pai325](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/c68b51/32.png) [@Pai325](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pai325)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2012, 9:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/facebook-an-internet-dustbunny-by-2020/624487/14 "2012-06-08T21:47:57Z")
> [@Death\_of\_Rats](#): > > What will kill facebook is the aging demographic. I agree with this. Once it is perceived as a place for old people, they will lose the advertisers. Once they lose them, who will pay for the storage of baby pictures, cat pictures, and pictures with random platitudes scrawled on them? ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2012, 6:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/facebook-an-internet-dustbunny-by-2020/624487/15 "2012-06-09T06:25:26Z")
> [@Pai325](#): > > I agree with this. Once it is perceived as a place for old people, they will lose the advertisers. Once they lose them, who will pay for the storage of baby pictures, cat pictures, and pictures with random platitudes scrawled on them? Thing is, there’s already some sentiment of this, but it seems most people are dealing with this by moving to Tumblr. Problem is–Tumblr is doing the MySpace personalization thing, which means it likely will never become the main social networking site. The way I see it shaking out in the near future is that kids stay on Facebook to be connected with their real life friends, and **Tumblr** for online only friends. The way Tumblr becomes more popular is if people just stop having so many real life friends. ---
**Author:** ![Enkel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/df705f/32.png) [@Enkel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Enkel)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2012, 10:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/facebook-an-internet-dustbunny-by-2020/624487/16 "2012-06-09T10:52:15Z")
> [@moejoe](#): > > Exactly this. Facebook will become the place to “keep in touch” with people you’d never actually want to spend any time with. OMG! This! This is exactly how I use it now. By popping something up there every so often, I’ve managed to get rid of those annoying droning telephone calls and pop-overs. > [@Pai325](#): > > I agree with this. Once it is perceived as a place for old people, they will lose the advertisers. Many want to market the more affluent demographics, so I don’t think it’s an age thing, so much as most of the Facebook freaks that I know, who live on that thing, aren’t exactly genius and they have low-paying non-genius jobs. But, if the demographic does swing older, there could be lots more Depends and Denture ads showing up. ---
**Author:** ![Dave\_Hartwick](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/7feea3/32.png) [@Dave\_Hartwick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dave_Hartwick)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2012, 12:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/facebook-an-internet-dustbunny-by-2020/624487/17 "2012-06-09T12:50:59Z")
Facebook has a few things it needs to do, in my opinion. First and foremost, they need to prove that the ads work, like a promotion that can be linked to increased sales or brand recognition. It seems like a lot of the ads are bought on wishful thinking and are often clumsy and down market. They’re also easy to evade with AdBlock. I don’t think an aging user base is going to be a problem so long as advertisers believe that FB helps them. The entire US consumer market is getting creaky. As the article linked by UncleRojelio points out, seniors are also using iPads and cell phones-- I don’t think anybody thinks those items will suddenly be uncool because granny owns one. There could be problems if FB fails to accommodate older users, so maybe they need to cool it on the interface changes.