Yep, you heard right. And to be honest, if it weren't for the fact that I help maintain an active church Facebook page as well as enjoy seeing pictures from my friends (one of the few things Facebook still does well), I'd seriously consider dropping Facebook altogether.
And here's why: social media, by its very nature, comes in waves. Remember when MySpace was all the rage? Five years ago I had a conversation with the daughter of our church secretary, who at the time was in eighth grade and a MySpace junkie. "Facebook is going to be the next big thing," I told her. She thought I was crazy. Now she's plugged into Facebook like the rest of us and probably hasn't checked her MySpace page in years. Like the rest of us.
I'm not convinced that Google+ is the next evolution of social media - it's intriguing but still has shortcomings. For my money, I'm placing bets on the old standard, Twitter. In a minute I'll share why, but first some thoughts on why my Facebook may be jumping the proverbial shark.
Part of the allure of Facebook is the extent to which it's intertwined in the web. Nearly every website has the infamous "like" button, and just about every business, cause, musician/band or whatever you can conjure up has its own Facebook page. It's easy to set up an RSS feed so a blog post or podcast shows up in your profile (this is what I do with my personal blog, as well as the church worship services and online newsletter). In ways we don't fully comprehend, Facebook has saturated our online world.
The interesting thing, though, is that because of that saturation, people are actually going to the Facebook website less and less. I used to leave mine open in my web browser all day long, neurotically refreshing it to see "the latest." Now I'll log on for a few minutes here and there, but that's about it. The aforementioned "LIKE" buttons all over the web enable you to interact with Facebook without actually going to the website itself - a kind of one-way communication. Something else: these days I'm doing what most people are - checking Facebook through my iphone app. It's a convenient but clumsy way to do Facebook (more on that later). Throw in that Facebook has a nasty way of changing privacy settings on a dime, along with the inevitable "Facebook fatigue," and it's only a matter of time.
And when all is said and done, I think Twitter will be left standing. Here's why:
A simple interface: one stream, real-time. You knew this was the way to go when Facebook did a major overhaul a few years ago to a similar format (which, I might add, was met initially with much weeping and gnashing of teeth by the Facebook community). At the time I saw it for what it was: a blatant attempt by Facebook to be more like Twitter. And while I'll give props to Facebook for making it work for them, the fact is that Twitter still does it better.
140 characters rule: No pontificating, no rambling on and on. Sure, you occasionally have to use a bit of shorthand, but the character limit forces you to put some thought into your post. In a social media world where it's all too easy to spew out a knee-jerk comment that can easily turn into a diatribe, forced brevity and pre-thought is not a bad thing. The 140 character limit also makes for quick and easy consumption on the reader's part. I don't know about you, but I'm less inclined to wade through a six or seven-line Facebook status update than I am a shorter, easier-to-digest offering on Twitter in a sentence or two.
Made for the Smartphone: We're using computers less and smartphones more, and that's not going to change. And Twitter works great on the smartphone. I click the Twitter icon on my iphone and boom, everything is there. I can scroll up or down to see more recent or later posts. Facebook, however, is multi-dimensional (news feed, pics, notes, inbox, events, pages, groups, chat) which is difficult to replicate in a smartphone format. Lots of clicking and swiping and more clicking and swiping.... none of which is needed in the Twitterverse.
Less of the silly stuff: You get the occasional weird "follow" that can be easily blocked. Still, it's nothing like Facebook, where clicking on some questionable video will result in all kinds of nastiness. Nor do you have to deal with individually "X"ing out annoying posts about your friend's games activities, advertisements, or the hated Farmville. Less garbage in the Twitterverse.
Trending: Simply type a hashtag ("#") before a word or phrase and you'll see what other Twitterers are saying about the same thing. This is great if you're trying to catch up on the latest news, like the #debtceiling debate a couple of weeks ago. Nothing like this in Facebook.
Twitter plays nice: Never once has Twitter changed my account settings or altered my privacy settings without asking me, period. They've modified their interface once in the past four years. I don't feel like I'm being jerked around in the Twitterverse. I feel like I'm a valued patron rather than just another assimliated part of the Borg.
I could be wrong about Facebook's demise, of course. Maybe it'll be around a little bit longer. In the meantime, I'll continue updating my Facebook status through Twitter via Selective Tweets and the #fb hashtag and only go to the actual site in when I'm inclined to - which is a lot less than a year ago.
So what do you think - is Facebook on the way out? What will social media look like in five years, and who will be the main players?
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