Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/03/30/historical-perspective.html
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Myspace still exists. I think Facebook will just be relegated to niche social media site, slowly and inexorably as people move on.
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Agreed. Digg still exists, but in a much different form before their meltdown. Slashdot still exists, and they basically look the same as they did fifteen years ago.
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Yeah, but Slashdot 15 years ago people were already talking about how far downhill the site had gone. 
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As I recall there was a couple of years of crossover when people still had their Myspace accounts but would check them less and less as Facebook sprung up. As much as we like to dream about Zuck fading into obscurity like Tom, Facebook isn’t going anywhere until a cool new alternative presents itself. And Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, etc. aren’t kingslayers, they’re accomplices.
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Which always seems to involve misremembering what it was like.
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Dude The Cabana was hot.
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“They stab it it with their steely knives, but they just can’t kill the beast.”
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Slashdot is also not social media—i.e. it’s not based on users building a social network.
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Oh? I still have my list of friends, foes, freaks, etc.
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Hmm? I just tried to look into the history of the “Digg meltdown” and am none the wiser. I’m totally unfamiliar with it being a social media platform and just know it as another news aggregator like Boing Boing.
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Really? I’ve been a member since '98… never noticed that /. use required a social network. Did not realize there was one in the background. I differentiate that from sites whose use is based on the social network: facebook, twitter, etc.
There’s a, to my mind, idiotically illiterate impetus for some folks to call anything online “social media” (why stop at online?). I think competent internet literacy differentiates social media from wikis from blog rolls/link aggregators from stackexchanges from primary news sites. But that’s just my druthers.
But then, I’m kinda “Web 1.0, yay!” “Web 2.0, 
” “Web 3.0 omgeatbleachanddie !!!”
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Compuserve…I still have my Earthlink email that I actually pay monthly to keep.
Another plus is I also have dial-up access if I ever need it.
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I think there’s a very important difference between Myspace then and Facebook now. The author of that article states that you could find just about anyone you knew on Myspace. That was never true even within the US, let alone the rest of the world. The market that Myspace was serving hadn’t come anywhere near saturation. It was still mostly limited to suburban (and some urban) folks in one country with an above-average comfort level (for the time) with spending time online. There were plenty of people yet to discover social media, and for many it was was no better to make that discovery on Myspace than anywhere else. Is the same still true of Facebook with 2B+ users in 2018? I don’t think so. In fact, I think some of Facebook’s current issues are the direct result of Facebook having reached a saturation point that Myspace never did. They’re ubiquitous enough both for things that happen there to have real-world impact, and for a significant number of people to be tired of them as an entertainment alternative. So Facebook might be mortal, but not for the same reasons or along the same trajectory as Myspace.
Note: since others always like to bring it up whether it’s relevant or not, I work at Facebook. I’ve also been a commenter here for far longer, but hey, have fun dumping on a member of the community if that’s your thing.
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Replace /B/ with whatever community you want.
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I don’t know about Myspace, but FB’s customers are advertisers. That is their “market”.They compete with Google and others, as well as traditional media in that market. If you’re talking about “market saturation”, the question should be, what % of this market do FB, Google etc. already have and when will they approach 100%? If that is soon then these companies are grossly overvalued (unless they can innovate other sources of income).
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Google and Facebook already do have an overwhelming majority of online advertising dollar spend. Not 100% of course, but I think it tends to be well over 90% of most online ad spend. Def plenty of articles online that get into this stuff.
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