Michael Scrip

People are heavily vested in FB, it’ll be tough to get anyone to abandon it.

Agreed!

There were a lot of spam accounts on Myspace as well… if I remember correctly.

And yes… I remember correctly ;)

Lots of bogus accounts. Myspace was a cesspool of spam.

But anyway my point was… more people eventually landed on Facebook… than were ever on Myspace. There is really no comparison between the two.

Even if half of Facebook accounts are fake (which is untrue) that’s still 4 times what Myspace ever was (again assuming every Myspace account was real… which we know isn’t true either)

People keep saying… “people left Myspace for Facebook… they could certainly leave Facebook for something else.”

And my response is… only a fraction of Facebook’s members came from Myspace first. For the vast majority… Facebook is their one and only social network. And there are sooo many people on Facebook who seem to enjoy it… and who aren’t looking for an alternative.

With 300,000,000 photos uploaded to Facebook per day… somebody must be using it!

Myspace never had that much engagement. It’s silly to cite Myspace to predict Facebook to fail.

The truth is… there is no precedent to what Facebook has done.

You can certainly share whatever you want with whoever you want on Facebook.

It’s just that most people don’t want to share their personal photos and stuff with the whole world.

People don’t want total strangers looking at their kid’s baby pictures… for instance.

Most people I know have their profiles limited to “friends only” or “friends of friends” for precisely that reason.

Exodus from Myspace to Facebook didn’t happen overnight either.

Only about 11% of Facebook’s members came from Myspace. The rest simply joined Facebook as their first social network.

Myspace had about 100 million members… while Facebook ended up with 900 million members.

So… roughly 1 out of 10 people had a Myspace page before they got Facebook… I wouldn’t exactly call that an exodus.

Facebook simply on its own by gaining new users.

When I first heard about this a while ago I also found it confusing.

It will be a race for the first company to grab .shoes

We’d end up with one of these:

nike.shoes
or
reebok.shoes

Only one of those companies will control .shoes right?

Of course they will each grab their own brand name and could have URLs like:

shoes.nike
or
shoes.reebok

My head hurts…

Let’s guess who will buy .books

That’s the promise of these upcoming Windows 8 tablets: a full PC when you need it… and a thin and light tablet when you don’t.

Let’s hope the hardware will allow that.

We’re about 6 months away from the Windows 8 release… will there be Windows tablets that are as powerful as a regular laptop… but are as thin as an iPad?

If a Windows tablet is supposed to be a laptop replacement… I don’t want to make tradeoffs.

Apple and Microsoft weren’t that similar anyway. The two companies had very different beginnings and business plans.

Apple built computers and sold hardware and software.

Microsoft licensed an OS to IBM.

Microsoft eventually repeated that success with many manufacturers… while Apple kept doing they do.

But you’re right… I don’t think Apple really considers Microsoft a threat anymore.

In PCs… Microsoft certainly moves more units… but Apple makes more money with Macs despite being a fraction of Microsoft’s installed base. Again… Apple sells complete computers while Microsoft only sells OS licenses. The two markets aren’t really comparable.

But most of Apple’s money now comes from mobile devices… phones and tablets… an area that Microsoft is having trouble in at the moment. Who knows what this next set of Windows tablets will do.

Wow. Android tablets aren’t doing as horrible as I’d thought. Judging from the media I thought iPads were 90%+ of the market but apparently it’s "only" 62%.

Don’t forget… the definition of “market share” is units shipped per quarter.

The other interesting number is “installed base” which is how many units are actually in use by consumers.

If we know Apple sells basically every iPad they make… and they’ve shipped 67 million iPads since April 2010… Apple has quite an installed base. I wouldn’t be surprised if the iPad actually does make up 80-90% of tablets people have in their homes right now.

It makes you wonder how many other tablets are out there and in use at the moment. Not many OEMs share their sales numbers. And when they do… it’s not very exciting.

But… the non-iPads keep shipping every quarter… someone’s got to be buying them, right?

I think Samsung makes OK tablets… but there’s more than just the piece of hardware.

It’s kinda like what Apple did to the MP3 player market. There were plenty of MP3 players that were “better” than the iPod hardware-wise… but Apple had a store to buy music. And it eventually became one of the largest music retailers in the world.

If MP3 players need music… tablets need apps and content. I really believe the ecosystem is a major part of any piece of connected consumer electronics.

The Kindle Fire’s big claim to fame is its price… but you can’t deny the attraction of the Kindle book store and the Amazon app store.

It’s these “one-stop-shops” that make a platform attractive. You can’t sell hardware on hardware alone.

Sure… the Google Play store has all sorts of stuff… but it clearly doesn’t have the draw that Amazon and Apple provide.

Samsung did say “We’re not doing very well in the tablet market…”

these "analysts" or their corporate masters also have stocks in Apple

They need to tell more stories about things Steve was involved in.

The stock has dropped $80 in a few weeks!

Steve wasn’t bedridden for the last 2 years… so who knows what kind of work he did with his company towards the end.

Maybe they had meetings at his house.

I don’t know… and neither do you!

I don’t believe it actually. Sounds more like an attempt to assure Apple fans…

Steve and Company were working on products… or at least roadmaps… for the next 3 years or more.

Don’t forget… Steve only died 7 months ago…

I’m sure he was involved in all of the products we’ll be seeing over the next few years.

This is what popped into my head when I read your comment:

That’s exactly what almost all of my friends said when Facebook came out. Why use Facebook when everyone is on MySpace?

Don’t forget… there weren’t that many people using any social networking sites back then… so it’s silly to compare the landscape back then to today. But here is some info:

Myspace had 1 million users when Facebook launched.

Facebook had 700 million users when Google+ launched.

That’s quite a bit different… wouldn’t you say?

Facebook came in… took all of Myspace’s users… and added 800 million more in the process.

Most of Facebook’s users were new to social networking. They hooked ’em early.

Google doesn’t have that advantage… they have to get people to switch from Facebook.

And that’s gonna be difficult. The first app people install on their smartphone is Facebook. There are 300 million photos uploaded to Facebook every day. Every TV news broadcast ends with “visit our Facebook page”

Myspace never had any of that.

Facebook is much more a part of people’s lives than Myspace ever was. There is simply no comparison.

Will Google do to Facebook what Facebook did to Myspace? Time will certainly tell…

Yeah. Twitter for me is a way to get links to stuff that people post.

You’re right… Twitter is not very rich!

Oh… and I use Twitter for the same sorta reasons as Google+

Following journalists, public figures, celebrities, etc.

Again.. only a handful of my real friends use Twitter.

I wanted to add…. I do check Google+ daily on the computer and on my iPhone. But I use it to follow photographers and other techy people.

i only have a handful of actual friends on Google+ and none really post there.

Facebook is where the engagement happens for me and my friends.

True

Whoa! Harsh tones!

People post pictures on Facebook because they want people to see them.

Or do you think narcissistic people use Flickr or 500px?

Correct. Myspace still exists.

I just logged into Myspace… and the last posts people made on my page were 3 years ago:

If we’re talking about engagement… Myspace has none!

What?

Facebook was a hit on college campuses first… do you think that was all techies and nerds? Heck no.

And as for people “switching” from Myspace to Facebook… remember that Myspace only had 100 million members at its prime.

Facebook now has 900 million members.

There is no precedent for that.

There are a lot more people in which Facebook was their first and only social network… they don’t know anything but Facebook.

The “it happened to Myspace, it must happen to Facebook” has no basis.

Myspace and Facebook were started within a year of each other… a long time ago in Internet years.

Google+ came out 5 years after Facebook opened to the public… long after Facebook had gained critical mass. I think the early-mover advantage is in play here. Hook ’em early and hook ’em young.

We were already hearing TV news reporters saying “visit our Facebook page” at the end of every broadcast… by the time Google+ had an official launch.

People can’t click on billboards… but there are tons of them littering the highways :)

There’s something to just simply getting the word out.

Seems to be missing some visibility in aqua-mode.

But still bad-ass!

Exactly.

Every room at the dance studio has a CD player… it’s very familiar!

I even got one of the studios that needed a new CD player to get one with a USB port… thinking I could put each teachers’ music on their own flash drive.

None were interested… they still wanted CDs…

I’m a dancer. And while all the laptops we use currently have optical drives… I’m finding I only have to burn CDs right before a competition.

We’re now using iPhones and iPads for rehearsal… and CDs only for competitions or the odd performance. A lot of competitions let you use your phone or MP3 player. That’s fine with me :)

I cut music for a lot of other dance studios… and it kills me to have to burn CDs for them. It seems like such a waste!

I’m assuming these will play nicely with Adobe’s Mercury Playback Engine?

Did he do a good job? Yes… then that is all that matters.

Did he?

He became CEO in January, right?

I hadn’t noticed that Yahoo made a drastic recovery in the last 4 months…

I don’t think it really matters who is in the driver’s seat at Yahoo.

Yeah… I doubt we’ll be able to replace everything in our wallets with a smartphone. Like you said… your ID is the big one… plus insurance cards and other things. I don’t think the wallet will ever go completely away.

I think it would be cool to “pay with your phone” someday.

But I’ve been “paying with a plastic card” since 1995. For the time being it works… and I’m pretty happy with it.