[beisner]

Facebook’s downfall as a service won’t be another social service that has the same features but is distributed/blockchain/FOSS/quantum/whatever. Facebook has an enormous amount of resources and talent that will allow them to keep their moat in the social networking space.

No, its downfall will come from a paradigm shift in technology that renders the feed-style social network obsolete. This is how most behemoth companies fall, they don’t get outcompeted at their own game, the game just changes around them. Maybe it’ll be VR, maybe it’ll be a virtual social assistant that has no browsable UI but helps you keep in real-time contact with the people you care about, maybe it’ll be a new kind of device or screen or wearable that completely changes the game. But it won’t be another social networking service.

[herbst]

I think we are already in the middle of a paradigm chance for everyday, social networking needs to more and more capable chat clients. Like Wechat, Telegram or even things like discord or slack.