Facebook's appeal is largely casual entertainment. I say largely because there are some very practical features in the platform, like photo sharing and event planning/invitation. But it seems to me the bulk of its use is simply sharing links and anecdotes. Once the novelty of the medium wears off, people will look for the next entertaining fix.
I'm not sure how different it is from massively popular TV series of decades past, such as MASH or Dallas, where millions of people tuned in every week to see what would happen next. Eventually, all series die out. In the case of network TV, the medium itself, "what happened next" was cable TV, and then the internet.
I don't doubt it will be the same for Facebook (the product, not the company).
> Facebook's appeal is largely casual entertainment.
I don't know if that's truly accurate, at least among my crowd (a few years out of undergrad, who mostly joined Facebook in late high school).
The use of facebook for casual entertainment has largely faded. It was new and novel once, and now there are so many other forms of entertainment out there that for that purpose we could drop facebook in a second.
We (specifically my friends, I don't want to generalize to everyone in my demographic) use it because its a centralized way to stay connected. For the most part, my high school friends scattered all over the country when we graduated high school, and then my college friends did the same thing. Facebook's prime utility at this point is that we want to keep up to date on what those people are doing, and so far, everyone is still there. I'm not sure if there is something that can come along that take over that same role for us. Now we may grow up and stop caring about that sort of stuff, but I think it will take more than a few years.
This is what FB has pushed all along iirc, or at least it's the argument I've always heard, and only recently (I'm 31) have I noticed that this is really what I use it for. It's fun to see pictures from a friend's vacation in Vietnam, or to read that so-and-so-who-I-like-but-not-enough-to-regularly-call got a new job or got married or something. It's bizarre, but
> Now we may grow up and stop caring about that sort of stuff, but I think it will take more than a few years.
...I only seem to care more over time, which is weird. I shouldn't discount making-more-interesting-and-smart-friends and the 'unfollow'-or-'hide all from foo on my newsfeed' features though.
I'm not sure how different it is from massively popular TV series of decades past, such as MASH or Dallas, where millions of people tuned in every week to see what would happen next. Eventually, all series die out. In the case of network TV, the medium itself, "what happened next" was cable TV, and then the internet.
I don't doubt it will be the same for Facebook (the product, not the company).