More on the Future of Facebook

I’ve post a bit about the future of games and social media.  So following on from that, this post on Facebook caught my eye…

And Facebook has “already lasted a long time, in Internet years,” notes Douglas Rushkoff, author of Program or Be Programmed: Ten Commands for a Digital Age. But for Facebook to last decades, it would have to become as prevalent as email, and Rushkoff doesn’t believe that’ll happen.

Rather, Rushkoff predicts a Facebook backlash. Either something disastrous will happen, like a huge privacy violation or security breach, or people will just get sick of Facebook. The way we use the internet and connect socially is always changing, so at some point we’ll probably all fall out of sync with Facebook. If Facebook does survive, it’ll be as something almost unrecognizable, that just keeps the brand name “Facebook.”

“Facebook has a bright future,” as long as it can stay “human and open,” contends Gerd Leonhard, founder of Green Futurist and author of The Future of Content. “Facebook is infrastructure now, like a highway, or water.” He predicts Facebook will rival Google in terms of revenues within three years, and already rivals Google for importance. The main challenge Facebook will face is user fatigue, as it adds more and more services and forms of content.

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