The eventual death of social media

So I went to an interesting lecture on campus the other day with speaker Hooman Radfar, a leader of widget development. His whole poin

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t was that Facebook has passed its peak, and in the next decade will become obsolete.

What?! I don't understand?! No more Facebook?!?! This guy must be crazy?!?!!?!?

Crazy, I think not. Thinking outside the box, most definitely.

His main point was that Facebook does 100 different things - photos, status updates, birthday reminders, messages and so on and so forth. Facebook only has 24 hours in a day to devote to everything is does. A sight that focuses solely on photos, for example, should in theory create a more user-friendly interface that more people would use and enjoy. Flickr could fill this need, if Flickr weren't awful. As more people become Internet savvy, they will move away from the convience of Facebook for better applications.

Radfar said the cracks in Facebook were starting to show, especially when it comes to status updates. Facebook clearly tried to imitate the Twitter phenomenon but having regular updates, as opposed to an away message-type status. Twitter is gaining members faster than the site can handle, literally, and more people are using Twitter, instead of Facebook, to let their peeps know what is up.

Radfar last main point about the eventual death of Facebook is that somewhere down the line, people a

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re going to realize how creepy it is Facebook has all this information on us, and we're going to want out. This sort of happened a few weeks ago when Facebook said it got to keep everything we put on the site, and people formed these protest groups and circulated Internet petitions. Whether we accept it or not now, Facebook has immense power with such a large user base. One day, we're going to freak out and not want this anymore, and we'll leave Facebook faster than the state tries to stop all funding to our University.

I don't understand Twitter

Apparently, as of February 2009, Twitter is the 3rd largest social networking site (after Facebook and MySpace) with around 6 million users. That's great and all, but to be honest, I don't understand Twitter!

A friend of mine recently created a Twitter and sent me a link, and this was my first exposure. I had heard people talking about Twitters, but I never cared enough to go investigate before now. It looks like all you do is write quick posts under 140 characters in length, either from your computer or from your mobile device. I don't understand how this is different from a blog. It just seems like a blog with shorter posts.

Twitters have been used for ongoing commentary-type situations, like during the President's recent State of the Nation. People were writing instant feedback to literally every sentence the President said on their Twitters. I guess that's cool.... I guess.

My friend, however, just uses his Twitter for "witty" observations about every day life, such as "Liberal arts means you have to dissect a grasshopper to be a journalist," or "Whoever decided that Al Gore should get a Nobel Prize before the guy that came up with pizza delivery obviously did not go to college."

It's mind blowing, earth shattering information, is it not. I think he should just get an imaginary friend to tell all these witticisms to, so the rest of the world doesn't have to suffer through them.