Can Anything Stop Facebook?

Written by Darren Hewer

CTV News reports that Facebook “has now made half a billion friends, meaning one in every 14 people on Earth has joined the social networking website, the company confirmed this week.” Those 500,000,000 registered users generate a total of 1,000,000,000 (one billion) hits per day to Facebook’s website.

At this point, is there any chance that Facebook’s dominance will end in online social networking? A CNN article tries to imagine ways that Facebook could be “toppled” by exploring five things that could cause Facebook to fall from its perch:

1. Open, distributed alternatives [Addressing privacy/portability concerns]
2. Google Me [Competition from an equally huge Internet company]
3. Location-based services and the mobile device [Geotargeted and tailored specifically to handhelds]
4. The U.S. Postal Service [Seriously?!]
5. Overreaching on the part of Mark Zuckerberg [Will the young Facebook CEO try to reach too far?]

I might be willing to discount the idea of Facebook ever disappearing, but the CNN article mentions some other past Internet services that, at one time, we thought could never disappear. Think about MySpace, Friendster, Hotmail, Geocities, and Yahoo’s web directory … all of these were once considered indispensable, but have now to a greater or lesser extent faded into obscurity.

How do you use Facebook? Are you happy with the service it provides? What would it take to make you willing to switch?

Related: How to Meet People in University – Help for new college & university students to conquer loneliness on campus