The Future of Facebook

By now the last thing you want to see is more news about Facebook.  I cannot believe the amount of hype surrounding the recent IPO.The real icing on the cake was Zuckerberg getting married the day after the IPO launch.

Now after all this hype, what is the real future of Facebook?  Can it really become the advertising machine that everyone expects it to be?  Will Facebook still be cool now that moms and grandmothers are on it?

These are all very good questions and we will all be watching closely to see what the future holds for Facebook and all its new investors.  I can only offer my opinion, and I remind everyone that it is just my opinion, but I hope it sparks some good debate.

I believe that Facebook is at its peak of popularity and that it cannot keep growing at this pace.  I also believe that like anything else, we will see more competition in the social media space.  Google+ is not going to disappear, and they have the money to invest.  I also feel that the younger generation will eventually rebel, and find something else to use.

I also think that we will see more affinity based social media sites.  So special interest groups, like your college, could have their own social media network.  This would give users a more focused experience, but it would also be very attractive to advertisers.

I also feel that there will be a backlash to the amount of data we are all sharing with the rest of the world.  Once users understand that the information they post becomes a permanent fixture in the cloud, they may be hesitant to post stuff at the same rate.

We can only wait to see if Facebook becomes another, more expensive, MySpace.