quote:

In the beginning, when facebook opened, obviously everybody that was a member was still alive, a place full of vibrancy and colour. But at the rate they were growing it probably didn’t take very long before the first facebook member died. Given the fact that facebook initially was aimed at college students I figure that chances are that wasn’t a peaceful death of old age. More likely an accident or some terrible disease. As time passes the frequency with which people on facebook are dying will go up. The reason for that is that the average age of ‘facebookers’ that joined in the past will creep up, one day at the time, and that older people are joining facebook as well in ever larger numbers. Sooner or later facebook will reach a stage of equilibrium, just like the world population, where the number of people dying will balance (and will possibly even exceed for a while) the number of people joining. And in the very long term there will actually be more dead people on facebook then there are people living on facebook. I’d estimate that crossover to be around 50 years into the future, possibly a bit later. That steady state will be a cross between a place to meet the living and one to remember those that came before, and in the very long term the living will only be a very small fraction of the people on facebook that are dead! I wonder at which point the atmosphere on facebook will change, from photo sharing website to digital graveyard, a place where we come to worship our ancestors. To combat some of these ‘chilling effects’ (to put it mildly) Facebook has a procedure they call memoralization, this will limit the access to facebook pages to ‘confirmed friends’. Eventually those will pass away too and the moment when facebook’s last friend-of-a-friend passes away would be the moment the profile has finally lost value for facebook. So presumably, that’s the moment they’ll finally remove your browsing history, and that silly photo of you passed out drunk after the party. But that’s assuming that people actually report you to be dead. Another way to combat this is to set a practical limit to the age that facebookers can have, say 150 years. That way even if all your ‘friends’ forget to report that you kicked the bucket you will still be cleaned up by the digital grim reaper.

http://www.jacquesmattheij.com/dead...-term-facebook/

It's far more likely that, just like LiveJournal and MySpace, Facebook will become irrelevant in five years and this won't even come to fruition.

Last edited by idoru on Aug-26-2012 at 15:51

If you don't accept my friend request on FB jake you'll be in the Deadbook.

THIS IS A WRITTEN THREAT.

Idoru is right. We had similar concerns about Orkut here in Brazil, but the website is so dead it's now merged with "Google+" in a desperate attempt to revitalise it.

Think of it as a telephone listing from the 50's. Most people listed are probably dead - and even if they're alive - their numbers won't be working anyway.

This being said, I've got 3 dead friends on Orkut, and a friend request sent on Facebook to a guy the day before he passed away

___________________
Indiana Clones Upcoming Sets
[ I May Upload Something Someday ]

Someday, your great-grandchildren will be researching about you on facebook. Even if the site dies off in the next 5 years, they'll probably be archives saved with all the user accounts somewhere. Big Brother is always watching.

quote:

Originally posted by Zharen Someday, your great-grandchildren will be researching about you on facebook. Even if the site dies off in the next 5 years, they'll probably be archives saved with all the user accounts somewhere. Big Brother is always watching.

Actually, The Internet Archive has failed to archive most small websites I've ever worked on. The only exception is my first website ever... I guess it's from 15 years ago.

___________________
Indiana Clones Upcoming Sets
[ I May Upload Something Someday ]

Have you ever looked at people's facebook pages after they've passed? it's kind of neat, that folks still post on their wall and stuff, thinking of them.

quote:

Originally posted by Euforix It's asking how dare I get out of the site.

How dare you!

quote:

Originally posted by tubularbills Have you ever looked at people's facebook pages after they've passed? it's kind of neat, that folks still post on their wall and stuff, thinking of them.

It always scares the hell out of me when they're suddenly back on my timeline because someone tagged them in a post. I'm always like "OMG, they're back!" until I read on and understand it's not nearly as awesome as I first assumed

___________________
Indiana Clones Upcoming Sets
[ I May Upload Something Someday ]