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Monday, February 25, 2013

25 February 2013

We've heard it all before in all those media articles targeted at Gen X readers - Facebook has become a bohemoth of data and your privacy and nearly a billion users and this and that and Zuckerberg floating on the Stock Exchange.
Yes. 

Today's Daily Quota is a relatively brief, yet very interesting read from The Guardian.
It's called Why the Facebook and Apple Empires are Bound to Fall and it hypothesizes the steady decline of these two giants from their peak.

It must be noted that the author does not anticipate some kind of dramatic crash - he merely foresees a decline from former heights - Firstly due to less and less 'new customers', secondly due to marginally diminishing improvements, thirdly a heavy reliance on perpetual innovation, and finally, their heavy reliance on a fleeting demand for a specific service.

The final two paragraphs sum things up perfectly:


Although the eclipsing of Apple and Facebook is inevitable, the timing and causes of their eventual declines will differ. Apple's current strength is that it actually makes things that people are desperate to buy and on which the company makes huge margins. The inexorable logic of the hardware business is that those margins will decline as the competition increases, so Apple will become less profitable over the longer term. What will determine its future is whether it can come up with new, market-creating products such as the iPod, iPhone and iPad.
Facebook, on the other hand, makes nothing. It just provides an online service that, for the moment, people seem to value. But in order to make money out of those users and satisfy the denizens of Wall Street, it has to become ever more intrusive and manipulative. It's condemned, in other words, to intrusive overstretch. Which is why, in the end, it will become a footnote in the history of the internet. Just like Microsoft, in fact. Sic transit gloria.
Enjoy!

READ IT HERE

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