Facebook Is Dead
Don’t call it a comeback!
It depends on who you talk to and, which day of the week and, even the constellations get involved in the mix — new moon, full moon, Mercury into Jupiter…blah blah blah.
We’ve all heard it. The first shots were fired across the bow a few years ago when Instagram started making waves with the teen something crowd. 16–25 years olds were dropping the antiquated model called Facebook and running in droves to an amazing new app that lets you share nothing but visual content with umpteen hashtags to punctuate every picture of every important moment in your life.
We only have to go back a few years before that when the “industry experts” were calling Twitter the final blow for Facebook…
Since 2007, there have been a few dozen social media apps that were going to be the David of the industry, ready to fell the most loved to hate social media platform in the so short history of — social media.
It’s 2015 and Snapchat, another anticipated gladiator thrown into the ring seems to be fizzling out almost as quickly as it came in. The shelf life for new and improved social media apps seems to be as long as the average pop song. Don’t blink. Hey, anyone remember the name of the Facebook clone that you can only join by invite…I can’t. And I got my invite.
So here we are in a new era of increased online saturation with everyone and their dog in possession of some kind of smart phone and a big enough data package to insure hours and hours of immersive interaction with their favorite social media app.
Goliath is still standing. All the naysayers, with the exception of a few million, the equivalent of a grain of sand in the ocean, have kept their accounts in tact. And while they may not be active (at least that they’re sharing with others) those accounts are sitting there in wait, just looking for the perfect opportunity to kill a few precious hours looking in on the lives of other people.
The reason Facebook continues to be successful and the primary reason it’s not only here to stay but is primed for a massive comeback in 2015 is that we need it. It’s like that car wreck on the side of the highway; no matter how much you tell yourself there’s nothing to see — you’re going to look. It’s like Satellite radio — sure, you love the commercial free, 24/7 music in your vehicle on the way to work yet, you’re bouncing back and forth between that and our local radio station with excessive commercials and obnoxious jocks buzzing in our ears. Television anyone? Ya, that’s supposed to die as well as many of us are streaming content online to avoid commercials and to have the freedom to watch when and as we see fit. Yet, we’re all still watching television — commercials and all.
We need the noise. It’s part of who we are, with a voyeur in just about every one of us. Facebook, while we may hate its metrics and the way it decides what we should see and has some bizarre, keen sense of what products we love with their advertisements down the right hand side of the page, has all the muss and none of the fuss.
It’s a window into the lives of others — 24/7, 352 days a year of constant content. Sure, we all take time off of the book (I usually make it about a week) before we come back but, we always come back. There’s just too much to see and we all have a innate fear of MOOS (missing out on something)
There’s always going to be a hate relationship with Facebook. There’s simply too many personalities and annoying factors built in for us not to loathe the platform. But, if you’re an average user (in 2012, they claimed average use was 7 hours a month. Today, it’s 3+ hours per day)the upside is plenty of inspirational memes, touching moments, tragedies and silliness to keep us logging on and plugging in.
Gil Scott-Heron stated in the 70's “The revolution will not be televised...” It was doubtful he saw this far into the future and, I’m not so sure that social media is an actual revolution but, the exciting premise is that it can bring on revolution and change.
We’re already there. People sharing ideas, injustices and proclamations where others can join in and echo. The growth of small business through a platform that allows consumers to reach out and engage in real time. The ability to bring us closer to friends with an openess and transparency that we don’t always achieve in real life.
Sure, there are the downfalls. Some would suggest that dialogue has been replaced with keystrokes… I would suggest that keystrokes are slowly opening up the doors to real and meaningful dialogue. We’re on the precipice.
One thing is absolutely certain: Hate Facebook all you want, it’s here to stay and there will always be safety in numbers as our now seemingly small, global village gets that much smaller.
