I was using Facebook Marketplace to sell something and decided to go through my profile. The timeline wasn’t a weird amorphous dump of random musings, it was actually a timeline. It showed pivotal life events. Friends came into my life and eventually started to fade away. Weddings, reunions, races, and parties were all beautifully captured. Jokes that I forgot I made cracked me up.
It was all personal. No viral posts, no flame wars, no outrage. But starting around 2015, there were fewer items on my wall. And since mid-2017, there have been no new entries. Stuff happened since then. Parties were attended, friends were made and lost, life went on. But it’s now only a memory.
It’s weird that a place like old Facbeook doesn’t exist anymore, at least not for my demographic. I get that Facebook has evolved into something else, but it’s strange that nothing took its place. Early Facebook had a few warning signs of what it was going to become. I remember trying to rack up my friend count and gawking at how some kids I knew had over 300 (!) friends. Politics was part of the DNA early on with a field for political leaning in the profile, but it was mostly about people.
But much like Google search, Facebook was captured by the equivalent of search engine optimization. Brands and what would later become known as influencers hacked the platform to push their product. Facebook welcomed the change. They needed a business model and it worked. Here’s their revenue over the years:
If the chart is not clear, their revenue grew between 21% and 154% per year and continues to grow today. It’s an incredible growth rate over a decade. Their monthly active users grew at a similar rate and continue to grow:
Facebook is far from dead, but it’s not what it was and nothing has taken its place.
There are other social networks like Instagram and many people have private profiles. I’m not active on Instagram or very familiar with how people use it, but there are some key differences that are different from how I used Facebook in the past.
Instagram is picture focused. The images you post on Instagram don’t even have a date visible, making it less of a timeline and more of a gallery. Comments are hidden away so there’s less of an opportunity for inside jokes or other musings. It doesn’t serve the same purpose and the old Facebook.
TikTok is even more like this and is focused around discovery. But what if you don’t want to discover, and want a place to document what’s going on in your life in a semi-private way. No social media that I know exists to fill this niche.
I don’t know if the old Facebook is a viable service. When Facebook was first launched, the social media playbook had not yet been written. No one knew what it was going to become. But today social media is boxed in to mean something specific. It’s about influencers, promotion and expanding your reach. There is no other model. Even if and old-school Facebook could be built, it would likely be captured by the same powers that took over Facebook.
People throw a lot at hate at Facebook, and much of the criticism valid. But that shouldn’t take away from what Facebook was when it first came out. It was pretty great and I was lucky to experience it while it lasted. I’m just sad it doesn’t exist anymore.