Back in the early 2000s, Friendster was the biggest thing in the Philippines and was essentially the Facebook of people back then. Not long after, Multiply was the biggest thing. And at least in the Philippines, the rapid adoption of Multiply marked the demise of Friendster. I know myspace was huge in North America, but in the Philippines, that was not the case. Following Multiply was Facebook. Just based from these, it seems that social media platform, albeit widely used at that time, do not last for more than a decade. And I think Facebook might be nearing its end soon.

In 2008 when I first started using Facebook, I found Facebook an all-in-one online platform wherein I can have fun playing online games with my friends, interact with them and share things I enjoy. This might one of the many reasons as to why Facebook was quick to replace all those other social media platforms. However, I can’t speak for everyone, but in 2011, I started losing interest on Facebook. I saw a trend where people in my network started being less active online – less were playing online games and less engagement in general. A recent research done by GlobalWebIndex confirms the decrease in activity of Facebook users, especially the teens. The research defined “active on Facebook” as doing more than just “liking” a separate page on the web and was done surveying teenagers in 30 countries. These teenagers seem to be shifting to mobile chat applications, such as WeChat, and photo-sharing apps namely Instagram and Snapchat.  Tom Smith, CEO of GlobalWebIndex, said, “There is a clear, definitive shift to mobile in general..”

I think one of the many reasons behind this shift to mobile apps is not necessarily because teenagers are more on their phones than computers, but because things that you can do on Facebook are starting to decrease. With people being less active on Facebook, there is only so much you can do on an online platform that is based on social interaction. What do you think?