Now, in the present day, I think I might soon be looking for other things to fill my time with.
Saying Facebook is going to die is obviously a pretty big statement. It could also be complete rubbish, I've been known to go down that route, but there a few worrying signs that suggest the decline is approaching.
First off let's look at Facebook's users: Personal and brand.
Personal users flocked to the site because it was an easy, innovative way to keep in touch with your friends.
Brands followed suit because it was an easy, innovative way to keep in touch with their customers.
All happy families, right?
But recently things have started to change. As Facebook realised just how huge the potential was for it to be something that made money it learnt that it had to keep changing to keep businesses interested. It had to offer them more ways to talk and engage with their audiences and it had to find more ways that it could charge for them to do that. Offering advertising space was the first step. Following on from that came official brand pages. Now your Facebook timeline is dominated on the one side by ads and, something that was introduced a few months ago, promoted posts. A promoted post is like any ordinary Facebook update, only businesses can pay a little extra depending on how many 'new people' (ie: not fans of their page) they want that update to reach. This seemed like a great idea for anyone working in the advertising side of social; it was a way to ask the client for more dollar. However for anyone using the site as a way of socialising it soon became apparent that their time was being spent scouring through adverts rather than actually seeing anything their friends were saying.
Then Facebook went a step further, reducing the organic reach of a brand's update, almost forcing them to spend money to get a reach they were already achieving before for free.
Recently they launched that very same service for personal users. Now I can promote my own updates so that they stay higher up in the timeline for longer. My mundane activities can stay in the public eye for hours if I so choose (and am so willing to pay) meaning that even more people can decide they don't want to talk to me. I'm not going to do it.
All of these updates beg one question: Why?
In the past Facebook was all about social. Everything it did was in order to make the experience better for its personal users, that was the reason for it to exist. Now it seems a lot of things it is doing are in order to help with profits. Ever since their ill fated stock market launch it has been public knowledge that they aren't doing as well financially as they might have liked. Not only are they charging for a lot of new things that people perhaps don't want, but they're also advertising themselves like never before, all of which suggests they're experiencing something of a slump.
Put all this together and what do you get? A slightly less enjoyably user experience and a sudden loss of people willing to put up with it. Over the last month or so a number of my friends have logged off for good and once that starts happening it's very difficult to get them back on board. People fill the time they were spending on Facebook with something else, just ask MySpace. Just ask God!
So what if it does die? What next? Well, it more than likely won't be Pheed because it's rubbish and also far too concerned about the money to be popular. Will Twitter step up to the plate and become the dominant force? Will we all go outside and get actual lives? Of course not. But whatever it is, be sure that I will have enough spare time on my hands to sit here and blog about it.
You're welcome.