Even Beethoven.

Who cares about predicting the future of something on the Internet? Either climb aboard the Facebook express or don't.

I am on Facebook, but am wondering how long it will be until Facebook becomes another MySpace, AOL, or the other "once big, now forgotten" companies.

I read the most hateful diatribes against women on FB, and they take days (if ever) to remove any of it.

I just use it to keep in touch with a few people.

It wasn't true, or didn't seem to be, prior to the year 2000 or thereabouts. What changed?

It's not Mark Zuckerberg's fault that your friends are douchebags.

Delete them and you won't see their diatribes.

Do you have a "friend" who posts them? You can always unfriend them or at least unsubscribe from their posts.

..... but one thing is certain, it is not remotely worth the ridiculous stock market valuation it has right now, and it never will be.

And the defacto failure of the IPO proves that more and more folks are figuring out that this manic bandwagon is just like so many in the past and lots of dummies are going to lose a lot of money for "investing" in a name rather than a solid business proposition.

standard dotcom scam of the late 1990's. Put 10% (in this case 12%) in an IPO. Value your entire company based on the multiple between the float and the authorized shares. Voila! You're an uber-gazillionaire!

Maybe people are finally wise to that?

I just looked at their numbers, 88 seems really high and eps of 43 cents really low.

cuz' I'm tired of hearin' about that shit.

Here's another: Fuck'em

Facebook peaked a couple of years ago. It is no longer cool. And it doesn't have any compelling utility like Google. I've stopped using it as it has gotten more complicated and visually busy. I logged on for the first time in weeks this week and was appalled at the new Timeline user interface.

The IPO is already a bust. I think it will crater in the coming weeks and the stock will nose dive. Then it'll be another Internet company that really didn't have anything of compelling value that lost favor. Think tulips on this one...

at the graduation. 75% of the kids said they had. FB has the younger generation and may have them for the rest of their lives. Clearly a lot of older people getting on FB gave up on it but the younger generations are hooked and will be around for another 60 years. Should be interesting to see what happens.

My friends' teenage kids all say Facebook is uncool and that it's full of creepy old guys.

so I imagine there were a good 50 or so kids who don't do much on FB out of the 400 who were there but a sample of 400 is a better statistical indicator than a sample of a friends two or three kids.

Half the country is still on FB but the numbers are dropping in the US. Will have to see if they drop off a cliff or reach a equilibrium and level off?

He may have been up all night as they claimed, but now he has to show some sort of real product and he knows that. incoherent as to the future of the company.

He and his cashed in and the company will diminish on an escalating scale as the truth is revealed - there is no " there" there.

The number of users may increase for a while, but the functionality remains dubious to this almost non- user.

The only reason I have an account with no personal info or photo is to see pics and a bit of news posted by a very few real friends now and then.

I don't care what others "like" - I am capable of making up my own mind.

personal info on such a public venue, despite the constant assurances of "privacy." The trend for employers to demand FB account passwords only underscores my concerns. Whether it be stalkers, identity thieves, or solicitors or just those from the past you really don't want to reconnect with.... Well, that is why I've fought the urge to sign on to FB and why I'm glad now that I did.

When I heard about the IPO, I thought "would this be a good idea to invest?" My gut told me "no way". Most of the people who I know use FB have cut way back on the time they spend there, or how often they log on. A few of the tweens and teens are still doing a lot on it, but have also become disenchanted as they get older and wiser---they learn that having a place where everyone knows too much about them is not a good idea.

I agree....I have known some young people who have not gotten jobs because of what is on FB. I know some who have been in serious trouble with their parents over things they put up there or who they have "friended". These lessons do not have to be learned twice and they will shy away from FB.

I think it will still be around, and still be used. But I don't think that people will be as excited by it as they have been in the past. All trends fade, and this is just a trend.

Fb will be around for a very long time.

after reading about data aggregators.

grandkids who love it.

My 15 yr old daughter hasnt logged on in many weeks. Neither have most of her 18 cousins (4 of whom have de-activated in the past year). I cant say I track all of her 786 friends but when I've checked on her page it's mostly all ads and a few game players (yes I do have her password). There's not a lot of communication or interplay anymore.

Very few of my clients are on FB either - teens or adults.

Its never been a safe medium. Its reputation as a major vehicle for Zuckerberg to sell your info has always grated on many. Lately, the stories of employers wanting your FB account password - man if I were job-hunting, that would be the kicker to de-activate immediately.

I don't get Twitter.

Some of the most fascinating people I know are on Twitter, but their status updates are all like "The #47 bus is late again. Ugh." or "Went out for pizza last night with Bill and Jen."

Even to my stalker self, that is SO MUNDANE.

There's no sense of intelligence or personality or anything worthwhile.

But then this curmudgeon also doesn't understand why some of those Twitter personalities are so popular in the first place - I mean Paris Hilton?? What's the point?

and it won't be pretty

completely obsolete due to the ever changing face of the Internet and technology.

When the Internet was just becoming popular, we never could have envisioned social networking sites. I imagine something equally unimaginable will replace it.

After all, we now have Google working on glasses which allow you to access the Internet anywhere. These alone will likely radically change the way people communicate with one another.

as I am one of many that are not happy with the new webmail interface.

Google accomplished two things that were very popular in the past - their search engine, and their email system.

Now I know Google f'ed up their search engine, and I'm currently looking for a clean replacement.

However, I am livid about the changes of the interface at Gmail - this is a forced change on us, after I *repeatedly* reverted option to old interface, and would have preferred that they keep it permanent. Google claims that they are trying to copy Facebook into their business model - I say it's a bad idea. I liked Google Gmail because it was easy and was a great email service. I quit Facebook a while ago, and I'm not happy that my e-mail is turning into a Facebook wannabe.

And there is no way to contact the Google developers except for their insipid forum which is heavily censored.

I don't think it will be Google Plus either. In fact, I don't think Google Plus will ever catch on. I could be wrong, but at the moment, Google Plus just seems like another Facebook wannabe.

Look where Myspace has gone.

Murdoch bought it for $550(ish) million, and then sold it at $35m.

I think Facebook has hit its peak, and IPO was mainly set up to pay their venture funders.

Myspace held its position as the top social networking site for all of two or three years before it quickly collapsed into near-obscurity. Facebook has been popular, and continues to be popular, for four years now - overtaking Myspace in 2008, when Myspace consistently, from 2007 & '08, had more hits than Facebook.

Facebook currently has 901 million active users and that has shown no signs of changing anytime soon. Myspace was a one-hit wonder - Facebook continues to prove to be viable year after year.

That's not to say it won't change, but it's not a good comparison. Myspace was hemorrhaging users to FB the second FB opened its networks up to EVERY user - not just college kids. There is no evidence FB is hemorrhaging users to any other social networking site - tumblr, Twitter, or whatever.

Until something bigger and better comes along, and I think Twitter just isn't that yet, I doubt you'll see it take the same path as Myspace.

But it's not going to happen in 2012 and I doubt it will happen in 2013 and 2014.

Facebook still remains immensely popular and though I know a lot of people like to use it as their whipping boy, no other social networking site, from myspace, to moco to Friendster, has been able to perfect on the FB model. Until something much better is offered, I just don't see Facebook falling into obscurity.

Myspace failed because it was clunky, filled with malware and pedophiles. Facebook certainly has some of those issues, but they've been able to keep it far more under control than myspace. Because myspace didn't adapt well enough, and continued to allow its users to personalize their pages with hundreds of videos, gifs, moving fonts, backround images and background music, it turned A LOT of people off - specifically those who might have signed on to MS back in 2004 when they were in HS (like me) and outgrew that kind of shit, so, when Facebook opened its network to everyone - not just college kids - a lot of users migrated over there and have remained.

But MS only held the market for maybe a year and a half before FB overtook it in traffic. FB continues to be, for the last four years, the largest social networking site on the net. So, two things need to happen for that to change: the social networking trend goes the way of the blogging trend (Blogger, Live Journal, whatever were huge in the mid-00s and while they still exist, they're not as popular today), or another bigger and better social networking site launches. Google + was supposed to be that site. A year after launch, though? Eh...no evidence it has the firepower to overtake FB. Twitter was supposed to be that site. But even though it's growing, it offers a dramatically different level of social networking, so, it's not necessarily in competition with FB.

But until that happens, FB will continue to be viable. It won't forever, as every website on the internet, even DU, will end someday. But that day probably won't be tomorrow.

Comes along and makes something better with tight privacy. Maybe some rich smart kid that isn't influenced by money that makes a free site with no ads and keeps it that way. FB would try to buy up or do lawsuits to trip it up but maybe it will fail if the new site got big fast.

Think of Craigslist, the owner refuses to sell even though offered big money.

Also makes me think of a used bookstore in the expensive part of town I used to live in. All around the older store is brand new high priced condos. The owner has been offered a lot of money for her property and over many years refused to sell. And she doesn't have money, just makes a decent living in the store she loves. We need more people around like that.

If someone that can't be bought out created a great site all would happily leave FB. I only stay on it because my kids post family pics of grandkids on it.

Unsorted, unclassified, ungraded information, piled high and deep. I use it to keep up with my friends and family, and that is absolutely all. It works OK for that, and I get to watch my nieces and nephews and their offspring there. Beyond that, I see no value in it at all. So, it's not that valuable in the grand scheme of things.

Anyone remember MySpace?

Apple, Microsoft and Google (or whatever they evolve into) will be around 50 years from now

It's like a pyramid scheme right now. Will it lose steam?

I've been a member of many fad sites that were huge at one point--collegeclub.com, myspace.com, etc. Facebook has been very smart about infiltrating every part of the web, however, and serving as a web identity service. Even Yahoo.com allows you to sign in with Facebook now.

On the downside, people are becoming wary of the way employers and others are using their Facebook posts and Likes to judge them. I've thought about deactivating my profile to avoid having controversial statements become a part of my permanent web record. I think more and more people are going to start using fake names so that they can play games and comment on their favorite Pages without fear of repercussion.

can you imagine a word in which people go back to using email to keep in touch? Yeah, I can't either. I think there will always be SOME central site that allows people to interact, post photos & videos, make friends, find like-minded people in various groups, and so on. So, if not FB, there will be some variation of it for a long time.