Gather a group of people who all want the same product, and bulk order it to receive discounts

Facebook timeline, a huge step in innovation, will either be the one feature that saves Facebook, or the thing that destroys it. Not to be Debbie Downer but my guess? it will destroy it, why? because because don’t have the past 20 years of their lives digitized, it might be great for the generation born in the 2000’s but not the rest of us, either we will have massive holes in our timeline or we will be spending hours collecting digital data to fill the holes

New chat.

New HTML5 profiles and homepages.

New messaging system.

Tracking of social habits.

These are all new features, features that are technologically innovative and to Mark Zuckerburg, seem like milestones for his little project we call Facebook. To the technologically-savvy these features seem incredible after all we can always use PHP scripts to find the old features (Old version of chat https://www.facebook.com/presence/popout.php); however, to the everyday user, Facebook has become a hassle.

People can no longer use chat to see who is online like they used to, it now only shows select people, friend tracking apps such as peoplehateme have all been banned (the the damn app Farmville still lives because it generates money for Facebook). Just the other day my mom called me complaining she couldn’t figure out how to log out of the new layout.

Three years ago when Facebook was booming and was the hot new thing, it was loved, you would have never seen posts like this:

Users are figureing out alternative solutions, such as changing the language to English (UK) or trying out Google + or my favorite, Diaspora https://joindiaspora.com/.

It’s that time again, Facebook reached its peak, after about 4 years of being the top, its a bout to fall off the ma just like Myspace did, sure its still going to take awhile, but I give it another two years tops, by 2013, Facebook will be history. 

Social Networks are a digitization of one’s life. They represent all that is exist within our social lives. Therefore, as the life of an individual progresses, so does their digital life. Facebook is majorly dominated by teens, high school and college level students. After high school most people want to meet new people and form all new friends, they abandon their previous social interactions and make new ones. The same thing happens after college. So every four years, people will be ready to move on, out with the old, in with the new. Due to this cycle, every four years people will be done with old social networks, they will want to purge, to start clean, a fresh slate. Therefore, every four to six years, there will be a purge of social networks, the big one will die and a new improved network will take over.

Okay I would like to start off this post by stating that I believe Mark Zuckerburg is one of the most technologically brilliant minds of the 21st century. I love Facebook, or the idea of Facebook. Zuckerburg could be an idol figure, if it wasn’t for one tiny minute detail; Zuckerburg has a superiority complex about him and his work and it is this complex that pushes him to pursue advancements in technology, simply for the purpose of innovation rather than the practicality of its application.  

Facebook was brilliant, Myspace was strong but it had a downfall and Zuckerburg filled the social network vacuum with Facebook. Here’s why people loved it

1. It was cool. Its a fad, and at one point it had no ads.

2. It was purely centered around user satisfaction. 

The reason it became so popular so fast was because it was exclusive, only certain people could have it, so everyone wanted it. It became a statement about one’s social class. Not to mention it provided for hours of entertainment through social interaction, yet so did Myspace. So why did Myspace become so overwhelmed by Facebook? 

1. It wasn’t exclusive, people were worried about cyber stalkers.

2. People were overwhelmed, they wanted simplicity. There were so many fake profiles, so many old profiles and so much html crap on peoples pages.

3. Myspace stopped caring about the wants of the users and more about money, this occurred when the founder of Myspace sold the company to News Corp, after which it went from the #1 most visited website (yes it even surpassed the great Google) to #101.

All of these contribute to what I call the Bloat Theory. 

Social Networks are a digitization of one’s life. They represent all that is exist within our social lives. Therefore, as the life of an individual progresses, so does their digital life. Facebook is majorly dominated by teens, high school and college level students. After high school most people want to meet new people and form all new friends, they abandon their previous social interactions and make new ones. The same thing happens after college. So every approximately ever four years, people will be ready to move on, out with the old, in with the new. Due to this cycle, every four years people will be done with old social networks, they will want to purge, to start clean, a fresh slate. Therefore, every four to six years, there will be a purge of social networks, the big one will die and a new improved network will take over.

This is the Bloat Theory

Myspace (2003/2004 - 2007/2008)

• It started in 2002 but wasn’t big until 2003 or 2004It was big, then too big. People were fed up with all the old crap on Myspace and then It was bought out by a large corporation in 2005 who change the focus of the company to maximizing profits. It started dying that year, however it wasn’t truly dead till 2007 or 2008.

Facebook (2007 - 2011/2012)

• Everyone loved it, then in 2009 and 2010 Facebook started changing its layout almost every two months, it started becoming more complex and users just wanted the old interface back, but Facebook wouldn’t allow you to choose what version. Then privacy issues arose in 2010 and the Internet monster stopped caring about user satisfaction. I’ll give it about 2 more years to live.