Facebook deathwatch: a decade ago, it was impossible to imagine the fall of Myspace

In 2007, the Guardian’s Victor Keegan published “Will MySpace ever lose its monopoly?” in which he enumerated the unbridgeable moats and unscalable walls that “Rupert Murdoch’s Myspace” had erected around itself, evaluating all the contenders to replace Myspace and finding them wanting.

(Facebook didn’t even make the list of promising companies to watch)

As we #deletefacebook, it may seem like a meaningless gesture. Our friends will never jump ship in sufficient number, so, inevitably, we’ll be lured back into the strangling embrace of the zuckerpus’s tentacles.

But as big and powerful as Facebook is, it’s not immortal. Everything ends. Facebook’s primary value is in helping you find people to talk with (for example, finding other people with rare diseases), but it makes its living by making the experience of talking with other people as shitty as possible, with “engagement maximization” and invasive, manipulative advertising.

Full story: boingboing.net

By Cory Doctorow
Boing Boing