Once upon a time, in the tiny hamlet of Menlo Park, California, there was a company called Facebook.
This company was unlike any other (sorry, make that ‘like MANY others’) in that it connected people from around world through a magical and glorious technical achievement called the Internet.
Everyone loved Facebook:
“Oh my God, it is so easy to upload pictures of my baby!”
“I can’t believe I found all my old high school and college friends so easily!”
“Hey everyone, I’m off to get a coffee – can’t start my day without coffee!”
People from around the world chatted, and shared, and reconnected. There was something really exciting going on in the tiny hamlet of Menlo Park.
But then, one day, because Facebook was growing so so so very large – and its bills were growing so so so much – it needed to somehow make money.
Facebook was so kind that they didn’t want to charge people for the privilege of using its service – so it added advertising. Advertising so tiny that the people of the world didn’t even noticed the ads were there.
“There are ads on Facebook? You know, I’ve never seen one – and I certainly have never clicked on one! Good for them.”
Perhaps Mean Old Mr. Advertiser started to realize that no one was clicking or even noticing his ads.
But little Facebook still needed to get paid – I mean, even a whore has to eat – so they decided to work something out with Mean Old Mr. Advertiser.
Maybe they could somehow leverage their size and sell the personal information of their 900 million users. Would that keep Mean Old Mr. Advertiser off their backs so they could resume their happy life of connecting the world and bringing nothing but joy?
Facebook was so kind to its users that they even added a “Like” button (because “Like” is much nicer than “Dislike” and Coca-Cola doesn’t want to see how many people “Dislike” Coke Zero).
It was so simple, users could either “Like” something or choose not to hit the “Like” button. It was up to the user.
That worked for awhile until the users of the world started to realize what was happening. Many users got angry and felt their privacy was being invaded.
About 15 people actually quit Facebook (while another 100 million signed up).
After a few months, things calmed in the tiny hamlet of Menlo Park and the people on Facebook – to a lesser degree – felt fairly happy again.
But then, one day, Facebook decided that the users of the world needed to share every bit of information about their lives – from birth to even death – and put it all into a very conforming and dizzying glop of data called Timeline.
Mean Old Mr. Advertiser LOVED the idea of Timeline.
Finally, Facebook was thinking like him. Now they got the idea. Mean Old Mr. Advertiser could scour the lives of the people of the world and target them with goods and services that they may or may not enjoy.
And somehow, in just a brief eight years of existence – little Facebook grew and grew and grew and became worth $100 BILLION FUCKING DOLLARS! Oh, goodness, pardon me. (An IPO last year would been insane! What a missed opportunity!… but I digress.)
Well, from here the story gets a little tragic.
The beaten down people of the world and users of Facebook grew so exhausted from the daily overhauls of the site (which were necessary to maximize revenue) that they actually stopped spending time on Facebook – instead reading real books to their children and enjoying the outside world.
Comments started to appear on other websites (yes, there are actually other websites) saying they hate Facebook, are never going back and are quitting.
Poor little Facebook. They just wanted to HELP the world – not FUCK OVER the world.
How could a crappy redesign and a selling of their soul piss people off so much?
It’s just a website after all (one that is on its way to becoming WORTHLESS and must be STOPPED for the good of the world!… one more digression).
I mean, why do the people of the world care so much?
Well, we all know how the story ends.
Disgruntled engineers (and let’s assume an MBA or two) who helped create the chaos from the direction of Uncle Mark and Aunt Sheryl, began grumbling about their need to become millionaires and billionaires like so many of their friends.
The only way to stop them from leaving the tiny hamlet of Menlo Park – and going to, oh, say, the dangerous crack alleys of Mountain View and Cupertino to seek their fortune – was to take the company public.
By selling $5 or $10 billion dollars in stock to the ‘public’ (at a BULLSHIT valuation of $100 billion!) everyone could become rich and (yes) happy.
So at least the employees of Facebook will now be happy. The people of the world, who are seriously beginning to hate Facebook and are either leaving or staying away in droves, are less and less happy every day.
But Mean Old Mr. Facebook couldn’t care less – the users can go fuck themselves.
“Just put your freakin’ family photos in the template we have provided, “Like” the new Coke Zero, play the stupid Zynga games, pay for a movie rental, pay for a music subscription, and keep your stupid mouth shut. We’re not getting to a trillion dollar valuation from pictures of your goddamned baby!”
Mean Old Mr. Facebook is right. The User is wrong.
The moral of the story: Don’t screw your users. They’re the ones that built you up and they’re the ones that will bring you down.
Jill Kennedy – OnMedea
I laughed, a lot. People aren’t going to stop using it though, advertisements, arbitrary changes and overblown valuations aside.
Hahaha.. gave me a good laugh and made good points 🙂
While I totally agree with this article, does anyone find it ironic that you can “like” this article – and over 100 people have?
http://www.donnaklinenow.com/ Need to read up on this case about Facebook. Going to have huge impact on IPO! WILL BLOW YOUR MIND. Mark Zuckerberg is a thief!
FB has to change a lot to be profitable.
What a pathetic article. It reads like an old man screaming at his grandkids about the ‘good ole days’.
It’s hilarious to suggest that facebook users are leaving in ‘droves’ without anything resembling data and using anecdotal “evidence” as proof. The condescending manner in which the author writes is proof-positive she’s got a grudge against facebook because it’s likely hip in her goofy circle.
By ‘pathetic’ do you mean ‘awesome’?
Don’t worry Jill.
I came to the same conclusion of your article long before (2 years ago) and I’m not even a financial or investment type. Just a regular computer guy.
If I realized this early on I think there are a lot of others who do and they will act accordingly at some point.
I totally agree with your outlook. It’s a big fucking bubble and nothing more.
BTW, like your style and I’m bookmarking your site 😉
What a worthless rant. If you don’t like facebook, stop using it. But don’t assume your readers are dumb enough to think that people are leaving in droves because you say so. Facebook continues to grow its subscriber base, as well as its revenue. Based on all the ads on this site, it seems that you know a thing or two about revenue (isn’t that why you would write a baseless article titled to attract clicks?).
I can’t stop using them. I wish I could but Facebook is the only place I have all my financial information. Information I need to fill out all these re-fi papers.
Wat?
haha, nice sarcasm.
i usually use renren.com instead of facebook though. And I also cleaned up my facebook good so that you cannot fill my financial information from the info…at least I think….let me check again..
I don’t think its a worthless rant. I actually think its spot on. Facebook is a financial product and a very successful one. People who put their whole lives out there are just not careful.
Haven’t you been writing this same article over and over again for two years? When’s it going to start being true?
Do you mean this one?
http://mankabros.com/blogs/onmedea/2010/07/01/facebook-is-worthless/
and this one?
http://mankabros.com/blogs/onmedea/2011/09/01/facebook-must-be-stopped/
I would say about 6 months after going public things will start to become clear. Hey, you know, maybe they’ll be the one success story in the history of the social medium. Maybe they are so necessary to all of our lives that they will become the greatest company in the history of the world. After all, what does Apple really have on them?
I like how three of the past four responses don’t include email addresses, use ad hominem attacks against the author for no reason, and vary substantially from the response of a large sample of legitimate responses. PR damage control sure is pathetic these days.
Good article. I for one will short sell.
Might as well make the most of it eh? 🙂
What is the source of your claim that users are leaving in droves?
er… common sense?
I left in droves… and not joining any other “social network” ^h^h^h^h advertising platform any time soon.
Not EXACTLY on topic, but my complaint with Facebook is that it’s so fucking ugly. Really – who would even want to LOOK at it? Yes, I’m on Facebook (as an alias, my dog) because it is one way to keep track of shit on the internets. I use it like a kind of messy drawer, or info-shed, someplace to put the stuff I find until I can find a use for it or get rid of it.
But as for logging any leisure time online? Who can stand it? It’s just really, really ugly – and THIS makes it dumb-seeming. Facebook is akin to the aesthetic experience of shopping at WalMart – even their logos are similar, now that I think of it.
And all info-sharing issues aside, when your grandmother is on Facebook, you know it’s times are numbered.
Of course what I meant to say is, “It’s time is numbered” – but even thinking about Facebook turns me into an idiot.
Nope. I think you’re just an idiot all on your own. Because you corrected yourself with the wrong form of “its”; that makes it twice and it seems like you actually never got a fifth-grade education.
Hm, sounds like someone’s pissed that their significant other found old posts to past girlfriends/boyfriends. Get over it, the Internet is public. If you don’t want people to find stuff, then don’t put it on there to begin with. If you had the will power to say no to the internet, then you wouldn’t have to worry about it, but you don’t. You have a Facebook account and while you can moan all you want to, change will happen and you’ll sit back and take it. If you don’t like it, build your own Facebook. Heck, you could do a better job than them, right?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=5KvZ-KQWuJM
Oh, don’t you worry – a new Facebook is being built and it will be 4 times better. Guaranteed.
http://mankabros.com/blogs/chairman/2011/03/26/manka-bros-to-launch-facebook-killer/
Hi Jill,
I think the argument there is –> it’s not happening any time soon. Google+ tried it, but even though they got rid of all the ‘BS’ that Facebook has, they’re still way behind. The only reason they’re that far is because of who Google is. I’d welcome changes to Facebook that didn’t have the annoying ads pop-up or privacy settings that brought attention to how confusing they are to begin with, but I honestly think if people every do move on from Facebook, they’ll be moving on from Social Networking all together.
Wait… there are advertisements on Facebook?
btw, I noticed a spike in their subscribers in ’09. Could it be correlated with the spike in unemployement? There are more than just financial costs to unemployment!
I agree, but you can’t really claim that people are leaving Facebook in droves unless you have numbers to back that up. That’s just shoddy journalism, or as it’s often called, ‘blogging.’ Be a journalist — it’s way cooler.
You and I may yearn for Facebook’s myspacification, but they’re still attracting new people around the world all the time. Somewhere in the world, right now, Facebook is the dopest, illest shit around, and their newest user is psyched. And that will keep happening until there is a better alternative.
Instagram could have become that alternative, due to its nearly seamless sharing and following engine, but now it won’t, obviously.
Something will come along, a new social platform with the ease of instagram plus events. (Which is probably what facebook will end up becoming.) Maybe if this new perfect social network were truly open, and respectful of privacy, then people actually would ‘leave facebook in droves.’ But I wonder. Let’s hope.
$100 billion for a basic website like facebook is ridiculous. $10 billion valuation for a company like twitter is even worst. $1 billion for instagram, a basic photo app where you can apply 10 filters is the biggest joke of the history.
Not only facebook, I think we’re living a second bubble and a lot of people are making huge amount of money based on virtual bullshit (zynga is even selling virtual goods)..
That won’t last for ever trust me. All these people should take their money and leave the tech world cause it’s gonna end soon and they will lose everything in about a month.