Facebook wins - among my crowd its now totally mainstream

It’s looked increasingly unlikely for a while now that anyone would be able to usurp Facebook as civilisation’s de-facto standard social networking tool, but I’m prepared to say that Facebook has now won. Game Over. Pack up your bags and go home. This show’s over.

On the weekend, I went to a family barbeque and I lost count of the amount of times I heard someone mention Facebook. And we’re not talking techies, Gen-Yers, or even office professionals here. We’re talking mainstream folk I didn’t even know who used computers. I’m also getting a heap of friend invites from old school friends, family members - people from all sorts of demographics, in terms of jobs, age, socio-economic, etc.

From where I’m sitting, Facebook has well and truly crossed over. It’s now mainstream and as a mainstream, social application where network effect must prevail, Facebook has this game wrapped up. It’s now just a matter of monetising the platform and seeing how far it can be extended. I still believe a social platform like Facebook would be where I would start if I was building a truly web-native OS.