How Facebook Will Crash and Burn

If social networks are not fluid, people abandon their core functions. Yesterday, I was taking pictures on the Hudson River and came across a fancy idea.

We saw it happen with MySpace. They were hot, hot hot! Myspace didn’t have their own verb like Google it! and Facebook me but people still said: What’s your Myspace? Then … They crashed and burned, now characterized mostly by talentless bands, spam bots, and pedophiles. But why?

Answer: All of the smart people moved on.

Jeff Jarvis and Mark Zuckerberg both speak of adding to the value of a community, for reasons why a network lives to see another day, and this is important and very clearly true. But I think there’s a hidden trend at work here, too.

Trend: You need to keep the smart people.

Remember: you don’t own them, they own you. But you need to keep them. All the smart people left Myspace for better communities like Facebook and Twitter. Myspace didn’t change. (They tried to and failed.) A fixed object can only stand still in an ocean for so long, without reinvigorating its energy.

Recent discussions with “smart” people have revealed the [above] trend. Here are common responses:

• I am using Facebook much less than I used to
• I use it to share my work only
• I stopped using it all together

The “smart” people are either becoming niche-y and picky with how they use Facebook or have stopped using it all together. This is important. Why does this happen?

Less tech-savvy people are still bickering with one another via Facebook over plagues that haven’t affected forward-thinkers in new digital culture for a couple decades. This is where the gaze is now; this is where they focus their attention–They are distracted by each other.

We either find things we don’t like or we get bored with their use. After you have provided “elegant organization” to a community, you need to figure out how to keep pushing that envelope to create a sustainable business / social network.

The U.S. is trending toward a Freelance World which I think shifts attention of Facebook users, indirectly. I’m finding that I–along with people I interact with in new media and tech industries–cannot afford to spend time promoting Facebook. (E.g. Feeding them content.) These kinds of people are busy doing our own things.

The collective “we” gives away a lot of our life to things like Facebook in exchange for connectivity. And that’s not a bad thing, except when it affects workflow and productivity. I have decided …. Y’all just need to do the same, to determine if it’s worth it.

If enough smart people reconsider Facebook, the premier social network will crash and burn because intelligence has found a new home. (It’s a good thing they had enough cash to buy Instagram.)