The Media is Coming Around: Facebook Backlash at Last

Well that didn't take long but here is what could be an early outlier of the inevitable "Facebook backlash" from the media.

Complexity is the enemy of social networking, and complexity is killing Facebook. The beauty of the ancient bulletin board systems from the eighties was that there were so few people on them you didn't need to worry. And no one thought about using something you posted against you in a job interview; they flamed you in ALL CAPS and that was that.

Facebook realizes it has a problem. There's already a "what's the next big thing?" vibe permeating its pages, as if everyone knows we've stopped honestly sharing things on the site because we're either too fearful or simply tired of friending and unfriending romantic partners (or just unfriending people who post too many funny possum videos -- you know who you are).

Um, I'm sorry to have to report there really isn't a "next big thing" as far as I can tell. Email will probably be a big bust and this article points out that if they try to sell your info people will freak out. I'm sure they can link more services like Skype or Netflix or something but these would be add-ons. What will be the next killer app for Facebook? If it is nothing $50 billion dollar market cap will go to $50 million in a big hurry.

So you can't use Facebook for fun any more. It's also not really for business. And it certainly isn't a safe place to pick up a date. So is the Facebook fad already over?

Um, not quite yet but check back this time next year and you might start nodding your head. One thing Facebook could do is allow companies to create social networks for their employees. Close it off from the outside and just let their employees collaborate and post Excel Files and schematics instead of pictures and Farmville Requests. Maybe people will pay for this service and maybe not.

A lot of big money is betting that the answer is "not yet." But there's no such thing as brand loyalty on the Internet. Remember Prodigy? Remember Pointcast? Remember AOL and Yahoo? They were are all darlings of the digital age, too.

Also remember MySpace? People dropped it like it was garbage just a year or so after it was taking the world by storm. This can happen to Facebook so fast it would make your head spin. Then you will read an article on how "Facebook squandered millions in search of the next big thing."