On Facebook’s “Death Spiral”
Oh the problems of success. I was just reading this PCMag piece suggestively entitled “Facebook’s Death Spiral” (tinyurl’d so I don’t pass any link love to this crap article). While I certainly believe that Facebook suffers no shortage of hype, I was curious that they’d already be in a death spiral, no? I figured it be, more or less, some analysis and hopefully interesting reporting on that whole “user growth on Facebook down” story that’s been making the rounds.
It turns out that you know what kicks off this spiral of doom, according to Lance Ulanoff? That Facebook now allows you to delete your Facebook account. Seriously, it’s all over for Facebook because you can have your account information removed from their system (whereas before it kinda went into suspended animation).
I couldn’t believe that someone could come to that conclusion over two pages based on that, so I unfortunately read on. He talks a little bit about his inexperience with FB and how it works now. Then he gets on to the meat, if no potatoes, of his story:
To understand the gravity of Facebook’s decision and of the coverage of it, we need to recall the halcyon days of America Online.
Wow, really? I recall those days…
AOL was once online’s fastest-growing community. Removing yourself from it, however, was a gauntlet-like trial that most people gave up on halfway through.
Eventually, AOL agreed to make it much easier for people to cancel their AOL accounts. These days, few people talk about how many members AOL has, and I’m certain the number shrinks every day.
Uh… WHAT? This is a causal effect? That is, he believes that the act of allowing people to remove themselves from a service is the cause of the decline of that service? It doesn’t have anything to do with, y’know, NOBODY USING DIALUP ANYMORE? You know who else must also be in a death spiral? Google. Yes, amazing, you can cancel your GMail account! (oh wait… G is in a death spiral? maybe there is something to this AOL thing… nahhhh :) This is the dumbest thing I’ve read in quite some time.
Facebook is different from AOL in many ways, but it’s also the same in that its success depends on eyeballs.
Ok. Sorry.. no, that was the dumbest thing I’ve read in a long time. They are also the same in that they are both companies. He forgot to mention that. They also both have logos. Why did he fail to mention the many ways in which they are alike? My god, man. So, basically according to Lance, any website that allows you to remove yourself from their database is doomed to an AOL like end… because I’m not sure if he knew… almost every website depends on eyeballs, yeah, it’s a little known fact. Ugh. You know one of the few ways Facebook actually differs from AOL? Yeah… it isn’t a DIALUP NETWORKING SERVICE.
And then he goes into the textbook privacy screed against Facebook. The beacon fiasco, of course is mentioned. Some talk about the annoying, if you use an app it tries every trick in the book to get you to send it on to as many of your friends as possible. All the classics, but then weirdly he goes off script and improvs a little:
It’s also hard to delete things like mail, so old messages stick around as if they’re fresh. Everything seems more active than it really is.
Apparently, selecting the email’s you want to delete and then clicking the “delete” button is hard for Lance. I know it must be, but stick with it! You’ll get a handle on these dang blasted puters one day! And they don’t stick around as if they’re fresh, when they are fresh they are highlighted, as soon as you read them they aren’t. Just like how GMail works, for example.
There’s all kinds of other stupid in the article, but those were my favs. I can’t believe he got paid for that. I’m pretty sure my cat could have come up with a better thought out piece by randomly walking over my keyboard as she is wont to do.
In actual Facebook news you can read about the new tabbed interface coming to Facebook. Looks pretty good to me, although it seems developers aren’t in love with it. We’ll see.
UPDATE: Wow. According to this blog post, Lance is Editor in Chief/VP of Content at PCMag. Wow.
February 27th, 2008 at 11:29 am
He probably could’ve explained it better, but I didn’t interpret the article as harshly. Facebook’s unique visitors was down last month and that started some speculation as to whether social networking overall is slowing. Facebook’s marketing also depends a lot on the perception that there are a lot of users on Facebook, but the more meaningful number is how many active users are there. Facebook’s move signals either that they are now more mature where they no longer rely on the “total numbers of members” since their active community is now so large, or that they are getting backlash from people who no longer trust Facebook to host their public personas. It’s too early to tell where Facebook is at right now.
February 27th, 2008 at 11:41 am
Except for your leniency with the piece :) I agree with you. I linked to another piece about the user growth story - personally, I suspect that it’s overblown, but it could be the canary in the coal mine. But I have to judge the article on the basis of what he wrote - on that front, he doesn’t even mention those metrics. They should have been the main thrust of what would have been a carbon copy piece that’s circling the blogoweb these days. But instead he ignores it and decides to draw analogies with AOL and then he throws in some filler standards like beacons to round it out to two pages.
I completely agree that there’s a big case to be made that Facebook is hype and has already peaked. I don’t agree with it, but there are very reasonable arguments to be made. But Lance ignored every possible data point to be used support the argument and substitutes ridiculous logic instead.
February 27th, 2008 at 2:43 pm
Did you ever notice how Facebook and AOL are both viewed on screens? They both depend on it! Maybe there is something to that :) I would just like to say that I have never been on facebook, ever! Thank you.
February 27th, 2008 at 4:15 pm
I very much agree with you Felix, however I think you need to take a time-out, a deep breath, and your heart pill. Now go watch a pug getting vacuumed again.
There. better?
February 27th, 2008 at 4:37 pm
Poyla, man, you’re so right, I hadn’t even thought about that! You should email Lance and give him this supporting evidence! heh!
And those crazy pugs! I could watch that all day. I’m just saying. If I’d known I could get a job as a tech journalist and sub-contract that out to a monkey bashing on a keyboard, my life would be much more relaxing than it is now.