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Is Social Media A Fading Star?

  • Cringely, Thursday, July 21, 2011 12:57 PM
If perhaps a bit prematurely, tech writer Robert Cringely is busy preparing obituaries for Facebook, and the entire social networking phenomenon. "Facebook is a huge success," he admits, noting that its 750 million membership is obviously impressive. (And, no, Cringely doesn't envision Google+ bringing Facebook down.) What he sees instead "is more properly the fading of the entire social media category, the victim of an ever-shortening event horizon."

So, what does Cringely imagine will take the place of social networks? It must be its "disintermediation by all of us reclaiming our personal data," quite possibly by people learning to speak the language of the Internet, i.e., HTML, rather than letting gatekeepers do it for us. "The trend is clear from 'the computer is the computer' through 'the network is the computer' to what's next, which I believe is 'the data is the computer.'" So much for technology simplifying our lives.

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1 comment about "Is Social Media A Fading Star?".
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  1. Matthew Cronin from House of Kaizen, July 21, 2011 at 4:24 p.m.

    That is absurd:
    - people don't search on mobile? really?
    - “What I see instead is more properly the fading of the entire social media category, the victim of an ever-shortening event horizon.” - translation: people will become so sophisticated they don’t need to interact with one another. really?
    - “Each era of computing seems to run for about a decade of total dominance by a given platform. Mainframes (1960-1970), minicomputers (1970-1980), character-based PCs (1980-1990), graphical PCs (1990-2000), notebooks (2000-2010), smart phones and tablets (2010-2020?). We could look at this in different ways like how these devices are connected but I don’t think it would make a huge difference. - no, it makes no difference whatsoever to consider the evolution and accessibility of the network connecting people (not machines alone) over this time. really?
    “Now look at the dominant players in each succession – IBM (1960-1985), DEC (1965-1980), Microsoft (1987-2003), Google (2000-2010), Facebook (2007-?). That’s 25 years, 15 years, 15 years, 10 years, and how long will Facebook reign supreme? Not 15 years and I don’t think even 10. I give Facebook seven years or until 2014 to peak.” -right, because it makes sense to place IBM and Facebook and on the same continuum – yes they do precisely the same thing and IBM is such a failure. really?

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