Agreed. Unfortunately, when you take your social network public, investors demand growth. When user growth plateaus, it seems FB has chosen to be more aggressive in forcing you into their network ^.^
I don't understand why growth is measured as a percentage?
Obviously the growth rate for Facebook can NEVER be greater than the growth rate of the population of people born into households with internet. And that can be nowhere near 20% YOY even.
It's what is responsible for the stupid fallacy that PC is dying. It's not dying - it's has more longevity. A machine I built in 2008 is still going strong. Only had to upgrade the CPU once and switch out a RAM module. Many other people are the same.
If Facebook went away tomorrow, no one on the planet would be adversely harmed. IMO, investors price in the fact that most social networks are ephemeral. Grow or have stock price hammered into dust.
I would argue that productivity would increase and social stress would decrease. I can't think of any harmful effect of Facebook disappearing except for a few lost jobs.
Obviously the growth rate for Facebook can NEVER be greater than the growth rate of the population of people born into households with internet. And that can be nowhere near 20% YOY even.
It's what is responsible for the stupid fallacy that PC is dying. It's not dying - it's has more longevity. A machine I built in 2008 is still going strong. Only had to upgrade the CPU once and switch out a RAM module. Many other people are the same.
Also consider this scenario:
1. You have a world of 1 bn people.
2. A company has 0.5 bn of them as customers.
3. The population increases to 1.08% (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_growth) = 1.0108 bn
4. The company grows to 1 bn people which is a 100% growth.
5. The population increases to 1.02171664 bn.
6. The investors say that growth has slipped from 100% to 0%.
That's stupid. The growth has stagnated because there IS NO ROOM to grow!!!
Am I missing something?