The+Rise+&+Fall+of+Facebook

CIS125W – Summer 2012 David Sweet Course Project

“The Rise & Fall of Facebook”

A couple of years ago, during a film class at the University of Oregon, I was not too surprised to hear the instructor raise the topic of what was then a newly-released feature film, “The Social Network” (2010), based on the rise of Facebook. After everyone in the class who had an opinion about the film had shared it, the instructor attempted to sum up class sentiments by remarking how Facebook was such a wonderful new social phenomenon and how exciting it was to have this great new film about it. “Does everyone agree on that?” he said.

Not that I’m contrary or anything, but my hand did go up and I did find myself uttering the words “Pardon me sir if I withhold my enthusiasm”. “Why’s that?” he asked. “Well”, I said, “It’s hard for me to get very excited about a bunch of rich college kids who were basically just trying to see if they could get lucky”.

I suppose that lets “the cat of the bag” as far as my general attitude toward Facebook is concerned, but that’s OK because I’m here to argue that the very same factors that led to the Facebook’s rise will ultimately contribute to its fall. To help put things in proper historical perspective, let’s take a trip back in time to the beginning of Facebook…

Mark Zuckerberg and his buddies were students at Harvard and fans of the website “Hot or Not” (founded in 2000). In October 2003, Mark decided to create his own version of “Hot or Not”, placing 2 dorm student’s photos (which he had hacked the University’s computer to obtain) next to each other and asking viewers to rate who was the “hottest”. As the movie specifically implies, the idea behind this original version of Facebook (called Facemash by Mark) was not to create a modern “social network” as we now know it, but to create a network to use for the purpose of “socializing” (i.e. to help the rich college kids to get lucky). Therein lies the source of my own personal cynicism about the overall motives of Facebook, but the story of the phenomenon had just begun.

Facemash was a success and, in February 2004, while Mark was supposedly working with several other students on a new site called HarvardConnection.com he instead launched a new version of Facemash call TheFacebook at TheFacebook.com The others claimed that Mark stole their ideas and he later gave them an out-of-court settlement. So far then we have 2 early building blocks of Facebook: lust and avarice.

Meanwhile, The Facebook expanded to Stanford, Columbia & Yale and soon exploded to campuses across the country. In 2005, TheFacebook.com became Facebook.com, and its continued growth then opened the book on the next chapter of Facebook: greed. By that I mean that this is the point at which money (read Mammon) took over the helm at Facebook. Early investors, including Microsoft in 2007, began to buy up their shares. Mark’s share gradually got whittled down to the point where, at the time of the recent public stock offering, he only has 28% of the shares or a measly $24 billion worth left.

So enough with the history already, now let’s fast forward back to the present. Here we are over 8 years after the launch of Facebook, and can we say what its greatest success has been so far? Well, let’s see: there have been a trillion page views (literally), billions of comments and photos shared, millions of games of Farmville played, thousands of people have friended and unfriended, liked and unliked, bought Facebook stock and sold it again, and to what end? Good question, isn’t it? Where is it all headed?

I digress, but only to propose my answer to the question posed in the preceding paragraph: what has been Facebook’s greatest success? Without question, only one answer comes to my mind and that is the “bolstering” of democracy movements, particularly in Libya & Egypt, as we have seen happen several times in the last few years. Facebook, not the corporate entity but the social networking platform itself, provided the channel by which those who were oppressed could communicate, unite and eventually overcome their oppressors.

But, wait a second, what does enabling freedom fighters have to do with the money-making behemoth that Facebook has evolved into? Answer: nothing. And therein lies the foremost fallacy behind Facebook, the idea that there is but one Facebook, and that the corporation that owns the website Facebook.com In fact, there is another entirely different Facebook, Facebook the phenomenon if you will, where things happen not because they are mandated by the Facebook Board of Directors, but they are things that people do naturally just because they are people and are given the chance to do so (like seek freedom for instance).

Along with its founding values of lust, avarice & greed, this second factor (the social phenomenon of Facebook not under the control of Facebook corporation) completes the elements necessary to foretell the eventual downfall of the Facebook phenomenon as we know it today. How and why will it fall? Read on please…

Let’s start with the obvious: lust, avarice & greed. From personal experience, if those things don’t contribute to your eventual downfall, then I don’t know what will. And as far as desirable traits that one would hope to find in a modern global corporation, none of these make the list. The fact is that Facebook was set up to fail from the beginning, not as way for rich kids to get laid (at that it’s no doubt been quite successful) but as a long-lasting institutional part of our global social fabric.

<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','serif'; font-size: 16px;">While the above mentioned faults are quite enough to sink most any corporate ship, they only serve to make Facebook more vulnerable to the real threat to its domination of the social networking scene, and that is the aspects of the social networking phenomenon itself, including on its own platform, that it cannot control (i.e. that it cannot prevent from happening and cannot stop once its started). This is how Facebook evidently “marginalized” MySpace, by building a “better mousetrap” which could not be matched or improved upon by MySpace.

<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','serif'; font-size: 16px;">Since Facebook has now reached the level of 900 million subscribers and has billions of dollars in its war chest, how is it that anything could come along and “marginalize” Facebook in the same way they did to MySpace? Answer: the same way they did it, by coming up with the better mousetrap and in a way that cannot easily be duplicated.

<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','serif'; font-size: 16px;">Therein lies Facebook’s “Achilles Heel”. Regardless of the number of subscribers they eventually sign up (billions?), they still are based upon the lust, avarice and greed that they were founded upon. It is said that “you can’t serve two masters at once” and, without interjecting too much of a religious note into the argument, the two masters noted are the aforementioned “Mammon” (materialism, greed, etc.) and “God” (let’s just say Love, peace, etc.).

<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','serif'; font-size: 16px;">By devoting their efforts toward materialism, the Board of Directors of Facebook.com have definitely chosen which master they intend to serve and keep on serving in the future (the same one they’ve been serving since the beginning). Unfortunately, the same choice also means that they will not be devoting themselves to “Love” anytime in the near future.

<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','serif'; font-size: 16px;">Thus Facebook itself has made the choice which has set up the scenario for its own “marginalization” and eventual downfall. How’s that? By choosing “Mammon” they have “made their bed and lay in it” and cannot hope to duplicate the social networking efforts of those who have instead chosen “Love” (it would fly in the face of their core values of lust, avarice & greed). Beware the website you cannot duplicate!

<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','serif'; font-size: 16px;">And the second, and fatal, factor in the fall of Facebook, whether the competitor can come up with the “better mousetrap” so that people will beat a path to their door. There are two opposing sayings: (1) Money makes the world go around, and (2) Love makes the world go around. Personally, I’m with the latter persuasion. Can “Love” come up with a better mousetrap than money can? I sure think so. Anyway, according to The Beatles “Money Can’t Buy Me Love” and they must know something, after all they are The Beatles.

<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','serif'; font-size: 16px;">In any case, the folks at Facebook have chosen which “master” they wish to serve, and which they will not. So, when the soldiers of Mammon eventually meet the soldiers of Love, Facebook does not stand to be on the side of the victorious. Just as the Facebook phenomenon has helped to bring down the dictators of the world, so social networking stands to eventually bring down “Babylon” itself, and undoubtedly Facebook with it. <span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','serif'; font-size: 16px;">After all, love conquers all (even Facebook). <span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','serif'; font-size: 16px;">Sources: <span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','serif'; font-size: 16px;">(1) [] - Wikipedia’s Page on Facebook <span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','serif'; font-size: 16px;">(2) [] - Facebook’s Facebook Page <span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','serif'; font-size: 16px;">(3) [] - “The Social Network” at IMDB <span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','serif'; font-size: 16px;">(4) [] - MySpace <span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','serif'; font-size: 16px;">(5) [] - Info on owners of Facebook

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