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On Facebook, Appendix: The Rapid Decline Of AOL

In an earlier blog post, I called Facebook “a 1998-vintage AOL that doesn’t suck,” by which I meant, Facebook is a convenient way to aggregate and streamline all the information on the Web into a smaller, easier-to-manage stream of information, just as America Online was in its heydey.

The benefit of Facebook over other portals and social media — including AOL — is not only that it brings together several kinds of sharing (video, pictures, text, blog, application, games, etc.), it allows the end user to effectively customize what he shares, how he shares it and with whom.

In other words, the Facebook experience is driven by the end user, not the limitations or expectations of Facebook itself. (Yes, I understand users can’t do things that Facebook is incapable of or unwilling to allow them to do. Please grant me the license to make my general point.)

At least, more so than with other social media platforms, such as Twitter, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon, etc.

Which made my stumbling across this recent chart from International Business Management News, detailing significant events vs. AOL membership over the last decade, all the more serendipitous (click image for full-size pic at flicker, in new window):

I think it’s safe to assume that old-media thinking is at the heart of the problem. When AOL changed its models, it did so too late; and no amount of stealing big-name talent and purchasing promising start-ups can overcome trying to sell the wrong things to the wrong people in the wrong way.

Again, congratulations to Facebook for its success, be that the result of wisdom beyond its time, sheer luck or a combination of the two.

But I fully expect that luck, wisdom and success to run out, right around the time it looks like the Facebook behemoth can’t be stopped — as it was in 2002, when it looked like AOL would surely own the world, or in 2008, when clearly Google could do no wrong.