Quoting Alias1024 (Reply 11): Facebook is easily the biggest photo sharing site on the internet. What would happen to it if Google had bought Instagram and it's intellectual property? Suddenly Instagram might be a feature of Google+ and would be used to drive users away from facebook toward Google+. |
I'm really wondering about Google's strategies. From what we've all been reading lately, Google has become internally obsessed with competing with Facebook, but it really is not getting much traction. All of its "properties" such as Google itself, YouTube, Picasa, etc are not seamlessly integrated. Perhaps Google+ does that, but like most of us, I don't use Google+!
Quoting Alias1024 (Reply 11): The purchase of Instagram is about facebook protecting its userbase from poaching by other social networking sites. |
Yes, and it's interesting how most people are saying they hope Instagram doesn't change, but
FB will be leaving lots on the table if they don't leverage its technology and do even tighter integration with
FB.
Quoting QFA380 (Reply 13): It has become sort of like eBay, where it is really the only dominant player, people don't bother with other auction sites because they know eBay will have the most options, they have spent years building a bank of feedback and the website hasn't changed dramatically that alters the user experience too much, just like Facebook, people have 5 years of their lives recorded in dramatic detail. People don't just throw away their history for the new flavour of the month. |
That highlights a problem - users don't want the product to change, but if the product doesn't change, it stagnates. In particular, by going public you become beholden to investors, and those folks aren't happy with you just being the best auction site, or search engine, or social network, they want more, more more, and that means changing the product.
Quoting QFA380 (Reply 13): However anecdotally I have seen Facebook decline somewhat, while I and most of the people I know still use it, collectively we spend less time using it, this is as we graduate and start making money, just the time Facebook would like us to spend more time on it. There is always less and less people posting statuses, uploading photos or chatting online than there used to be, despite having more facebook friends.
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Yeah, I think
FB is done, because after holding out for years I just joined!
The reason I joined is to keep in touch with relatives, which is fine, but also isn't super exciting either.
It probably is a good time for
FB to IPO, so the principals can cash in, and so it can officially transition from growth/hype phase into mature/stagnant phase.