Facebook Is The New AOL

[HardOCP News]

Facebook is the new AOL, Google is the new Microsoft and Apple is the new Sony? Hmmm, I think this guy is on to something.

Of course Facebook is the new AOL. Facebook is the beginning and the end of the internet for a huge number of normal people, a combination of primary service provider (user profiles, messaging, photo sharing) and 90s-style portal to the wider web. Facebook has its own IM platform, Messenger, just like AOL had AOL Instant Messenger.

 

[Armenius]

Does that also mean it will quietly fade away into obscurity like AOL? One can dream...

 

[kbrickley]

Does that also mean it will quietly fade away into obscurity like AOL? One can dream...

I wouldn't hold my breath ... AOL was very USA centric (and subject to the vagaries of that market), Facebook is a global phenomenon (it could fade away but it will take two things for that to occur ... a strong competitive alternative and time ... it is hard to shed a billion users usually)

 

[i960]

Facebook will have one less user soon. I never make new years resolutions as I think they are silly, but this year I made 2. One is to do a full audit of my online life and delete accounts that I no longer use or care about. Facebook is one of those. The second is to change all of my passwords.

 

[wra18th]

As with every other wildly popular social media, Facebook too shall pass. I'm glad I never started any social media.

 

[trick0502]

what is twitter?

 

[shspvr]

what is twitter?

Trash

 

[kbrickley]

I thought it was more interesting with the analogy of Qualcomm being the new Intel ... personally I don't think you can write Intel off just yet and I think they will at least offer a stronger competitor to Qualcomm than AMD has offered to them

 

[Wierdo]

I thought it was more interesting with the analogy of Qualcomm being the new Intel ... personally I don't think you can write Intel off just yet and I think they will at least offer a stronger competitor to Qualcomm than AMD has offered to them

Intel's too big to fail, and they're in full control of a huge niche. They're not going anywhere, at best they'll go sideways imho.

 

[mt2e]

SO TRUE , lol

 

[Ur_Mom]

what is twitter?

Something you don't use, so it must be trash...

It's useful for some, and not so much for others. If you find it a waste of time, it's not for you. Doesn't make it trash, though.

Photoshop... Trash. I don't use it.

 

[Megalith]

For Facebook to be the new AOL, it'd actually have to be fun and entertaining to use.

 

[Jagger100]

Something you don't use, so it must be trash...

It's useful for some, and not so much for others. If you find it a waste of time, it's not for you. Doesn't make it trash, though.

Photoshop... Trash. I don't use it.

What makes it Trash is that you can't make unchallenged declaration of reality.

 

[MScrip]

As with every other wildly popular social media, Facebook too shall pass.

What other social media platform has been around for over 10 years?

That seems kinda long for a "fad"

 

[Droc]

I stopped using Facebook for years and recently got back into it. Probably because I have a non blackberry smartphone nnow and that I'm never at my computer and hardly see family.
My wife takes daily photos of our kids and its a great way to share it with our family that lives at a distance

SSame time, I'm sick to death of the ads in my feed and how I am choking on "recommend pages".
The end is clear though. 90% of the stuff I see is junk clickbait links

 

[the-one1]

As with every other wildly popular social media, Facebook too shall pass. I'm glad I never started any social media.

Welcome to the [H]

 

[defaultluser]

Intel's too big to fail, and they're in full control of a huge niche. They're not going anywhere, at best they'll go sideways imho.

Yeah, Intel's not going anywhere. They have a large installed market that likes their compatibility, and they're using that muscle to try and worm their way into other markets.

That said, the comparison to the two is inaccurate. Qualcomm is hitting the same wall that Intel hit 10 years ago with the Core 2: there's not much more performance to be found in the cell phone market, and people are starting to realize that they don't need more, so they just replace it when it breaks rather than upgrade.

The big difference is that Qualcomm has nothing unique to protect their market, since LTE is not the big selling point that people thought it would be. Rockchip and other fabless Chinese companies have the low-end 3G market completely locked-up, because it's easy to build an Android SoC with a "good enough" featureset. And the big players with fabs (Samsung and Intel), looking for somewhere to grow, are making their own LTE chipset (making 4G a rapid race to the bottom).

Today Qualcomm's lowest-end 210 comes with 4 A7 cores, a serviceable GPU, LTE, 720p screen and every other feature you could imagine. The reason they offer it is because less and less people are spending the premium for the 800 series, and those people who would have bought an 800-series in the past now have too many other servicable options. That trend will continue, so I worry for Qualcomm.

 

[Vexorg]

So does that Make Microsoft the new IBM?

 

[mnewxcv]

Facebook the new AOL? thats weird.... I havent got my free trial in the mail yet.

 

[kbrickley]

Facebook the new AOL? thats weird.... I havent got my free trial in the mail yet.

Facebook is more like the Hotel California ... you can check out any time you want, but you can never leave

 

[Scythe]

Facebook the new AOL? thats weird.... I havent got my free trial in the mail yet.

This.....I used to stockpile the AOL disk you got in the mail, format them, and use them for other things.

 

[heatlesssun]

So does that Make Microsoft the new IBM?

This comparison started being made in the 90's. Not really sure how applicable it is today. Today's Microsoft and IBM are very different companies and while Microsoft is mostly an enterprise IT company it has a much bigger consumer presence than IBM ever had.

 

[nilepez]

Facebook is the new AOL, Google is the new Microsoft and Apple is the new Sony? Hmmm, I think this guy is on to something.

I think there's a difference between FB and AOL. AOL was charging people 20 bucks a month to be an ISP and virtually everything they offered was freely available elsewhere. There was some logic to that in the early internet days, especially when you were going to play for any other dialup option too, but once broadband came, they were essentially charging you their ISP fee and you already paid someone else (nevermind that other dial up ISPs were much cheaper at that point).

FB is free (user info aside). I wouldn't pay for it, but as a free service, it's fine. Even whatever ads they have are pretty noninvasive....so much so, I'm not sure I ever see them.