Are social networking sites a fad?

[TiG]

After hearing that Microsoft had purchased a stake of 1.6% of facebook for $240million I really started to ask myself two things, firstly, are we in dot com boom number 2, people with more money than sense just buying up what they feel like for insane cash when there are poor or limited fundementals to the companies and secondly and the most important point of this thread Are facebook/myspace/bebo etc all doomed to fail because there will always be some new site coming thats better than the previous one.

Why do I say this, well I don't know about you but over the course of my life people who I don't see regularly get less and less regular phone calls, people who are too far away or you have no time to see just drift away, Is facebook designed to address this?. Personally no i don't think so. I think the underlying setup for facebook is for two primary sets of people. First the people that have to tell the world about everything they are doing, think of them as the producers, these are the people that start the whole process off. Telling their "friends" about facebook so they can join up and read about what mood they are in etc.

The second group are the people that get dragged in because of this and become addicted as people watching, reading other peoples profiles. But from more and more i've seen facebook is becoming closed loop, less and less people are making their profiles public. Too many wierdo's trying to add them as friends when they don't even know them.

Lastly peer pressure plays a part getting people up onto the site, they generate their profile and do nothing more with it. Personally I thats where I fit in, after several invitations to join facebook I did, now I can't stand fakebook at all. As thats all i see it as, a completely lie. I'm not true friends with a lot of the older school friends on there, god damn they were the people who bullied me.

About time i delete the profile (for the second time)....

Anyone else addicted or agree with me?.

[Brucelles]

You missed out other options on the poll, such as :

Don't know
Don't care
They'll probably mutate into something useful.

I am not a Facebooker, but I am on Linked In, which is like facebook for adults. This morning I got a lead on a job in Geneva (Pays CHF 220K pa, plus bonus and executive flat. Need Treasury experience) from a Linked In friend. I don't need the job, but it was nice to hear about it. I immediately looked up linked in to see if anyone I know might be interested.

Linked in is a useful tool. Probably facebook will become so.

[Fatboy40]

Didn't vote as the options were a bit gay

They're not a fad though, but they'll evolve and still be the focus of many peoples lives. It is sad though when certain people have them as the main focus of their social lives as that's what pubs and clubs are for

[Brucelles]

In their favour, my daughter finally succumbed to peer pressure and got on facebook and within a few days was emailing me with news of old friends she had lost touch with.

I think that, if you aren't obsessive, they are probably a good thing, in general.

[Stewart]

Didn't vote as the options were a bit gay

Can a poll option be homosexual? How does that work? They haven't got bums or anything.

[Sinizter]

Useless passing current "in" thing.

Its still relatively new and a lot of people have just got on it. After the short while, they will be around, but nothing like they are now. They wont be worth as much either. Might be used to keep in touch with the odd person who moved away or was in an old school or something - but they will not continue in the current vein for very long.

If I was buying facebook shares, they would be a relatively short term thing, looking to sell them in about 3-6 months.

[iranu]

What's facebook?

[chicken]

I wouldn't say they'll disappear, but they will fade out to become a less important part of people's lives.

My group of friends (except 99Flake) use FB a lot to organise things, post photos of them and to stay in touch across long distances. I don't see that changing.

What I do see changing is all this "zOMG!! You were bitten by a zOmbie!", and "poke poke poke poke poke". It'll become more of a tool than the crazed playground it is now if it's going to stick around.

I've already seen it dumb down once. When most of my friends got on it, it was nuts, something would happen every 5 minutes. Despite having more people on it now, very little happens in a day unless there's an event on.

So I picked "No, I love them" as it was the only answer that meant they'd stick around, but I too question the sexuality of this poll. I would have liked to have said "No, but people will calm down about them eventually and they'll just become a tool like e-mail"

[UltraMagnus]

Didn't vote as the options were a bit gay

I guess they must be very happy indeed

anyway, personally i think they are a good way of keeping in touch with people you would otherwise forget about. the classifieds can be quite useful too for things that are too big for ebay.

[Fraz]

In their favour, my daughter finally succumbed to peer pressure and got on facebook and within a few days was emailing me with news of old friends she had lost touch with.

That's exactly why I don't sign up. I don't want a whole bunch of lame friends that I lost contact with for a reason. E.g. 99.9% of the people at my school.

I already keep in contact with people I care about. Why do I need Facebook to help me keep in contact with people I (mainly) don't give two craps about?

[shadowmaster]

Heres a good article on facebook-

TrustedReviews - Face The Facts...

[ACiD303]

Is facebook designed to address this?

Not if the CIA Conspiracies are to be believed

I personally do think FB is useful, I have less and less time to socialise these days due to increasing commitments, and I like to know which of my friends are planning to go to what and where so I know what options I have for the little time I have - and also to stay up to date with whats going on. It's also very useful for private groups (just amongst friends) to organise parties, or planning any future dates together etc.

Of course, email can accomplish the same results . . . but when more people seem to using their facebook than their email, it leaves little option.

As for the old friends who you lost touch with for a reason, or whatever, who says you have to add them, or accept them as your friends? :s You even have a very handy view limited profile only option, and a block function . . . if I decline someone, I will also block them as well.

I have actually been seeing, as regularly as I can, some people who I've not seen in a long while that I have found via Facebook. I've always known how rubbish I am at keeping in touch with people, so maybe social networking sites are targeted at people like me.

People seem to concentrate on the negatives of social networking sites, but it's the same with ANY site - if you focus on the negative aspects, you will never enjoy or perhaps benefit from them. I don't deny there are negative aspects to social networking, a few of which have been mentioned above, but it's down to the individual to how they use these tools of the internet.

I don't agree with any of those options, but if I were to stick one up it would be "I wish I had thought of it earlier".

[Saracen]

None of the poll options reflect my view.

I can see that sites like facebook could have an appeal, but that appeal won't be to everybody.

It'll appeal to many kids and teenagers. It'll appeal to many people older than that but still fairly young. It'll appeal to many looking to expand their circle of friends or their social life, even if it's often a virtual social life.

But I think most people will grow out of it. Or to put that another way, their social life will calm down and, though I hesitate o use the word since it could be misinterpreted, will "mature".

But .... as some people grow out of it, so others grow up and into it. The userbase will, in my view, constantly evolve but what appealed to people when it was new will appeal to others as they grow into it. In that sense, it's not a fad. It is just, in my view, a facility that appeals to a certain group but the membership of that group changes.

Oh, and yes, they'll be an element outside those broad criteria that will enjoy it, too. I've no doubt there's some grannies on there, loving it. But by and large, as you grow older, so your lives complicate, your social situation changes and the demands on your time evolve.

Facebook etc are, in my view, examples of the emergence of a kind of socialising that simply wasn't available a few years ago. I suspect they're here to stay, until and unless something new emerges to replace them, but I question how long any given member will retain an active interest. They will, or perhaps already have, grow to a certain natural size, but that size is limited to the extent that their appeal is limited.

Personally, that appeal is zero.