[chasing]

Wasn't Facebook the "next Friendster?" I feel like it was actually a relative latecomer to the social networking party of the early '00s. Not to diss FB or their achievement, but it certainly felt like an evolution rather than a revolution upon launch. Only once they built up steam did it really begin to become an entirely new sort of beast.

Same with Google, no? I feel like they entered a crowded market of search engines and came out on top, but certainly weren't the first of their kind.

[dragontamer]

Some of us have longer memories than others.

* Facebook was the "Next MySpace"

* MySpace was the "Next Xanga"

* Xanga was the "Next Homestead"

* Homestead was the "Next Geocities"

[jseliger]

Wasn't Facebook the "next Friendster?" I feel like it was actually a relative latecomer to the social networking party of the early '00s.

A lot of industries also have early periods of extreme tumult, then greater stability as firms consolidated and success becomes more obvious and definable. Think about cars: it's become a commonplace that Detroit was the Silicon Valley of its day, but eventually a few car makers became dominant. When, say, GM first emerged, it might have seemed to observers that another rival would rise to take out GM—which didn't really happen until decades later.

Facebook may be the first of the "mature" social networks that isn't almost immediately superseded by something dramatically better. The fact that it now has so much lock-in inertia indicates that it may be with us for much longer than its day-to-day critics believe.