Cringely heard a talk by Roger McNamee in which McNamee cites the now-conventional tech viewpoint: Facebook has won.
Again, I’m not saying he’s wrong, but what I took away from this speech was first an image of Microsoft as the Roman Colosseum being mined for marble after the barbarian invasion, and second a sense that while Facebook is certainly a huge social, cultural, and business phenomenon, I just don’t see it being around for very long.
Facebook is a huge success. You can’t argue with 750 million users and growing. And I don’t see Google+ making a big dent in that. What I see instead is more properly the fading of the entire social media category, the victim of an ever-shortening event horizon.
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.
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.
Does this feel wrong to you? Listen to your gut and I think you’ll agree with me even if we don’t exactly know why.
Roger may not care since he will have already made his Facebook fortune and then some. But I think this foreshortening is important because it makes Facebook the winner, yes, but the winner of what? Super-IPO of the decade? Yes. Dow-30 company of 2025? No.
My interest is in what follows Facebook, which I think must be its disintermediation by all of us reclaiming our personal data, possibly through our embracing the very HTML5 that Roger loves so much. 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.”
You’ll notice I didn’t mention Apple. Black swan.
Facebook is the new AOL.
Cringley doesn’t get into my argument about the rise of social operating systems, but he points to Apple, where we just might see it first.
“Wherever you go, there you are.”
That’s sort of my life. I think that’s sort of any writer’s life. Sure, there’s the act of writing – sitting down with a notebook (of the paper or computer variety). But in your head you are constantly noticing the world around you while simultaneously plotting…
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There are lots of reasons we’re excited to be launching the Obama 2012 campaign’s new Tumblr today. But mostly it’s because we’re looking at this as an opportunity to create something that’s not just ours, but yours, too.
We’d like this Tumblr to be a huge…
Required Obama Tumblr Reblog. Do you think our President ships Klaine? Will he reblog “Treat Yo Self” gifs and declare it an official national holiday? Will other Presidents join Tumblr and only reblog each other? So many questions.
Help me fill this in. I’m trying to keep the language dry. If you have questions, here is a FAQ.
NOTE: To those of you just joining us, please don’t just read the first three links and then decide you’ve got the full story. The full story is complex and contains multiple points of view, not…
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