Like Friendster, Will We Say Goodbye to Facebook?

Google wanted to buy it for $30 million back in 2003, but - burdened by technical glitches and a more nimble competitor in Facebook - it was pretty much dead in the U.S. by 2006. 

It ended up being a kind of "controlled demolition," with weakly connected chains of friends quickly disintegrating, says David Garcia, a professor with the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology and one of the authors of a recent paper analyzing Friendster's demise (here). (cited from wired.com) 

A diagram of the Friendster demolition is depicted below. And you might find it is quite easy to follow and understand.

Image: The Demolition of Friendster

The researchers describe heart of successful networks in terms of what that they call K-cores. These are subset of users who not only have a lot of friends, but they have "resilience and social influence" 

Garcia says. As these K-cores disintegrated, the whole Friendster thing fell apart. And for Facebook, the decline would simply the interests' of users which are now disturbed and compromised. 

Swarming of ads and unnecessary notifications and photos-tagging, Facebook is paving its way to the downfall. And the major group in Facebook (as K-cores in Friendster) are loyal and long-time users, such as me feel and see this 'big scene'. 

I and maybe other users may see the improvement, triggered by the IPO of Facebook, had degraded the essence of Facebook friendship. Long time ago, Facebook really connected friends. It was a true social media. 

But now, it has deliberately become ads site. It has eroded the friendship interaction and emotion. Our timeline is much sorted and personalized, that we only see ads and not-so-important news. 

Too many buttons to click in Facebook. And for sure, I only open Facebook just as I open my fridge. Though it has only the same things, I actually open it to see is anything would change. And no, nothing has changed. 

Regards, 

Solo, 22 January 2014 

03:07 pm