RIP Facebook?

It's been my belief for about 6 months that facebook is on it's way to the Social Media graveyard to hang out with My Space. I hear people saying that they don't think Google + has legs, but I disagree on a monumental scale. 

For me, Google+ combines all the best bits about the different social media platforms. For example, the ability to add people into your circles, or be added, as you would follow or be followed on twitter; or the business page capability on facebook/linkedin. I think it's taken a happy medium between the 3 biggies (facebook, twitter and LinkedIn) and as a result is luring me away from facebook more and more.

So. I have 2 different accounts on facebook, one for friends and family, and one for business associates. I know I could implement the list functionality, but to be honest, I forget half the time, and I don't want business associates seeing photos of me on a night out or my 4 year old son (beautiful as he may be!).

But quite honestly, everyone has got into a habit of posting arbitrary rubbish on facebook, or linking their twitter account to their facebook account, or twitter to linkedin. These actions break my golden rules! I hate seeing one side of a conversation, it feels like I'm eavesdropping! 

The beauty of google plus, so far, and as far as I'm aware, you can't feed any other platform into it automatically. (feel free to correct me) However, you can integrate your twitter timeline into your google plus dashboard using something such as Google+Tweet, although it seems fairly unreliable. 

What do you think? When I go into G+, I instantly feel more chilled out and zen, and given this image, it's no coincidence! 

So what do you think? This wasn't meant to be a G+ broadcast, but it's kind of turned out that way, sorry! 

I feel more chilled out when I am not in any of them.

lol! horses for courses! 

I doubt very much that Facebook is on its way out, if anything it'll just adapt. Myspace may be dead but bands still have myspace pages as they are more a status symbol than anything.

Google plus is ok but i've got more from facebook and twitter, all depends what business model you run though.

Google + sounds logically like it should the ideal mix of what others offer and more....but taking a while to get mometum and maybe I'm not the only one finding less than obvious how to use it. But then the likes of arch-networker Heather Townsend had made recent re-appearances there  ....maybe a turning point is not far ahead?  Hope so, as I feel it ought   to work.

I'm not understanding how the most talked about person fact is a plus as such? Its saying that the talk is more formal, but that doesnt really definitively mean its better for businesses...

the amount of people talking about Einstein might well be greater on Facebook than it is on Google plus (I have no idea if thats correct or not so am not using it as fact), Facebook just has so many more people. Facebook isn't going anywhere fast, its the standard in social media. If your not on any social media networks and you ask a mate where to sign up for one, Facebook will be the first thing they recomend.

I don't know of one friend who logs into Google Plus the same amount, or more than Facebook. I dont think Google plus will fail as much as to stop completely in the forseeable future, bu I can't see it coming close to contending with Facebook either.

The standard for social media is a bit of a stretch. 

Barring all the security and privacy changes they make on a seemingly weekly basis it's a blurry mess of trying to have a go at providing a business platform mixed up with all your personal stuff.

Facebook is NOT on its way out and will be around for the foreseable future.

Facebook will never be on it's way out. The whole time line thing is gearing it up to be a record of someones life for peoples children to see in years to come.

However, I do believe they're missing a trick for businesses and our Facebook fanpage is only used for building our brand. It doesn't allow you to target an audience unless you pay for an ad. 99 times out of 100 the people joining your fanpage will already know about you.

Twitter is a much better platform for targetting potential customers and building relationships with them. I'm checking out Google + but if theres not as many people on it as Twitter I won't use it as much because it won't be as beneficial.

Update after update facebook are putting an extra nail in their coffin.

People joined facebook because it was fresh, simple and there wasn't aload of young idiots on there (e.g myspace) everything looked the same (ie different profiles) and it was focused on content and sharing just a little information.

Now it has adverts, update feeds inside update feeds, chat, cover photos, timeline, aload of business pages forcing themselves upon you, app invites, games .etc

Facebook is now too complicated and stressful. When google + gets its next wave of interest I think it will take off. At the moment there aren't enough of my peer group on there though to make it a viable change for me.

I mean Myspace died out almost within a week as far as I could tell at the time, so no one can say the same about facebook. 

I dont think you cna compare myspace to facebook at all...for a start myspace was never as popular as facebook currently is, or anywhere near. also the age disparity on myspace was pretty large... if you were over ~ 25 and on myspace, 95% of the time it meant you were in a band.

Facebook is showing ads etc, yes, but how else do you expect to monetise Facebook? (there are other ways but ads is surely the number 1 thing they should be doing). I dont mind having ads on the side of a webpage so long as they aren't all that intrusive (which they arent) and the website offers content im interested in.

If facebook has less than 500 millions active users monthly at ANY point in the next decade I would be extremely surprised. I dont get why you think people would leave Facebook anytime soon, people have put so much time into uploading photos, and all other stuff to their profiles that its like a history of who they are etc. It would be silly to go through all of that on a new site instead... I guarantee that a large majority of Google+ users are on Facebook also, whereas the opposite is not true. A lot of Google+ users are likely just users with a google account that activeated their Google+ Profile but never actually did anyhting with it (such as myself).

And yet there's quite a large abandonment of usage of Facebook in the US, primarily over the shifting goalposts of privacy and the mess of business/personal. more people are shifting over to their niche social networks and interests that have communities.

Whilst it's very US-centric at the moment we'll eventually catch on over here in the general populace as privacy of data online comes more and more to the forefront of peoples mindsets. Don't forget, generally, as a nation we're probably at least 18-24 months behind the US in terms of adopting and sharing your life online.

Saying that a large majority of Google+ users are on Facebook is like saying a large majority of you must have a car, or had a car, or at one time sat in a car. Doesn't mean you ever drive it though ;)

And in almost uncanny timing : http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-18590929 Facebook facepalms again with privacy making their 'facebook' emails publically available thus circumnavigating whatever privacy you thought you had...yay!

I agree with you Matt, facebook are making one to many mistakes at the moment and causing far too much bad press, it will slowly start to make people think twice.

However I have met a few people who have a massive problem with Google and the amount of information they take off you. Their seems to be quite a movement behind this which is conveniently kept quiet, but thats another conspiracy / story and one that I don't have much time for either tbh. And the amount of people backing this movement usually have the same paranoia over facebook so we can write these out of the equation i guess.

Yes Facebook has to monetize now because it is growing. But what happens when a new smaller social media platfrom comes along. Simply offering ad free, friend sharing, photo + video uploading (something facebook seems to have quietly dropped) and status updates. With a sensible fixed design which will appeal to adults and non of the gimmicy game, adverts, poorly laid out events page.etc  Any new social media site will instantly take all the best and innovative features from facebook and put them in a nice simple package and learn from facebooks mistakes.

Internet users are fickle and alot of them don't expect anything on the internet to be permanent. I definitely dont. There are also programs which can save all facebook pictures to your computer in a few clicks. So I really struggle to think many people are in facebook for the long run to use timeline of our lifes like facebook intends us to, this is backed up by how few people have actually gone back through their timelines and added keydates, people can't be bothered and many dont care.

And yes Myspace and facebook are a very different story thats a valid point. Facebook is the first to capure everyone that uses a computer as their target market! haha. 

Also, if facebook was to start to crumble, who you do think would be the first to go? Because where as the younger people are more adaptive to new trends and sites, will older people simply get fed up of the privacy issues, game invites and complicated updates and go to google plus?