Posted by Andrew Edwards on December 16th, 2010 at 6:00 pm

I will tip my hand on this one:

Remember a little company called "AOL"? And how it was the ten ton gorilla in the on line space in the 1990s?

Remember "MSN", which was supposed to be Microsoft's very own Internet?

Remember "Microsoft", the company that would rule computing forever and ever?

Mr. Zuckerberg, now (I believe) a billionaire and the face of Facebook, is the Time Magazine Person of the Year. Not sure if that is as ominous as getting on the cover of Sports Illustrated, but I cannot help imagining we will, several years from now, look back on this designation and find it, at best, cute and most probably, baffling.

As with all things overhyped, Facebook has spawned its own sub-industries. Social media specialists? Of course! Facebook consultants? Yes. Facebook marketing consultants? Indeed. And in Holiday Spirit, let me also say "Yes, Virginia, you can microtarget using Facebook."

But does this all add up to a permanent fixture in the on line firmament?

Folks are fickle. Trends turn to treacle in flash-freeze moments. Today's Essential becomes tomorrow's Garage Sale.

Will things be different for Facebook?

I say no, and here are some reasons why:

Facebook is a clever web site publishing admin tool. Brilliant! But it's a closed system. Nature doesn't like closed systems. Once they get to be a certain size (see AOL and MSFT), they tend to gain more competitors and detractors than champions. At a certain point, folks just don't really want any mogul anywhere deciding policy on their ability to communicate. Right now it's convenient enough. Tomorrow Facebook itself may come to appear haughty and dated and, I will wager, uncool. And then it'll be time to dim the lights.

Facebook is too much of a muchness. Millions of years ago, the mighty Titanothere stood twenty feet at the shoulders and would have frightened the tusks off a bull elephant. No more. It was too big, it ate too much, it got slow, it got eaten. We live in an entrepreneurial gulch, and the tech space is the most entrepreneurial gully in the gulch. Wait for someone to hit big with a better, cooler, less centralized way to do all the same things Facebook does, except different. And so will the legs under Facebook begin to weaken for lack of nourishment (eg. customers).

Facebook is inane. Okay, I am a Facebook Scrooge, I will admit it. The amount of entirely unnecessary, fatuous, gratuitous information shared on the darn thing would fill several Burj Khalifa buildings every single day of the year. How long can that last? What happens when the right person in the right place decides "this is inane" and that becomes the meme associated with Facebook? Truth will out.

Facebook is for people, not companies. I know every company on planet Earth must have a Facebook page, and so does mine (heaven forbid). But in the end, this is a poor fit. Most users of Facebook want to look at stuff like baby pictures and make fun of each other (don't they?). The notion that they are hungering for the latest word from Rolr-Sk8s-R-Us (a fictional name I hope) is--and I have not often used this word twice in one sitting--fatuous. And without the business side of Facebook working in high gear all the time, eventually it becomes more about baby pictures again, and how many times can you sell pampers to the same customer? I am oversimplifying of course. But at some point, the "personal" nature of Facebook, now its strength, may turn out to be its weakness--it will have no "business community" to speak of. Uh-oh.

Finally--I think Facebook is a one-hit wonder. A big one, yes. But it does not show the continuing innovative genius of, say, Google, nor does it espouse the (fictional or not) "openness" that Google promulgates to its own benefit and wild success. Facebook has already made gaffes and missteps but seems to have come out relatively unscathed. How many more of those will occur before it becomes "scathed"? I say, not many. And in the same amount of time, how many miscues have we seen from the genii at Google? How about "none"? It's a cultural thing no doubt. But it isn't one that bodes foreverness for Facebook.

Bottom line: you may want to print out some of your favorite Facebook pages, as you otherwise won't have them around when you're old and feeble and want to tell the grandkids about that crazy picture of you playing beer pong. . .