Facebook isn't cool.
Facebook hasn't been cool for a long time.
Not being cool is catching up to Facebook.
AUGUST 2018:
"Facebook continues to make profits for the time being, largely due to an increase in users aged 55 and over. However, multiple sources predict that the end is nigh."
There has been chatter about Facebook not being cool going back five years or more but the stock was going up and people were signing up. That made it cool, even though used by parents, grandparents, businesses, and politicians. Its ubiquity was its strength and weakness. It was a public relations utility, which is un-cool.
Question: Why is Facebook not cool anymore?
Answer: Mom and dad started using it.
I tried to look at the Facebook pages of the generation Z people in my life. There is nothing there. Of course they aren't there. They don't want me looking at them. That should have been the hint to me that Facebook wasn't cool, but I have been slow to notice.
Facebook changed its name to Meta. I could have warned them had they asked me about the name change. In 9th grade, hoping to become cool, I tried going by Pete instead of Peter. The re-brand didn't make me cool and people still called me Peter.
Facebook/Meta stock price fell off a cliff last week. The company lost $250 billion in market capitalization in one day, a third of its value. As of now Facebook has underperformed the SP500 over the past five years. That means that not only is it not a "star;" it is below average. The buzz around social media companies is no longer about how rich it has made people. Employee stock options are under water. Employees who were waiting for their options to vest so they could get mega-rich and are now looking around for new employment at a startup, or Google, or Amazon.
The stock dropped because Facebook reported disappointing earnings. They were losing users. Its advertising model is disintegrating. Apple gave its giant customer base the option of disallowing Facebook to "cross-track." Most people with Apple products clicked the do-not-track option. Facebook no longer knows every move users make on every other website. That data was a big part of its value to advertisers. It isn't a coincidence that two days after one glances at a site on toenail polish that the Facebook user starts getting Facebook advertisements for cures for toenail fungus.
At first Mark Zuckerberg's arrogance was part of Facebook's coolness. Zuckerberg would break norms and rules. There was something James-Dean-cool about it. He is confident, free, arrogant, and unconstrained. The movie The Social Network picked up on that. The Winklevoss twins were the privileged Harvard preppies you liked to hate because they were so smug and entitled. Zuckerberg stole Facebook from them. He could and he didn't care. Zuckerberg was the smart, scrappy one on the outside looking in. The movie was finished in 2010, when Facebook was on the way up.
We know the story of fast success and hubris. Pride cometh before a fall. Icarus flew too close to the sun. People and ideas on the way up overshoot in their overconfidence. The hare napped. Citigroup's president said there would be disaster when the music stopped for junk mortgage origination, but that as long as the music played Citigroup would keep dancing. Chuck Prince told me and 500 other Financial Advisors not to worry, that management had it covered. They didn't.
There is satisfaction in watching the arrogant get their comeuppance.
The European Union told Facebook they needed to adopt privacy protection rules to keep operating in Europe. Facebook said no. Facebook thought they were bigger than Europe. They aren't.
I am among those people who have essentially dropped out of Facebook. I wrote Goodbye, Facebook back in October, five months ago. I decided Facebook was a toxic place, sort of like a McDonalds restaurant. The food is tasty but unhealthy. .
Facebook won't disappear. People my age will still show off photographs of food they cooked themselves. Young parents will show off their toddlers. Anti-vax people will share "research" about zinc and Hillary Clinton. I will glance from time to time to watch the toddlers of young parents. I clicked the do-not-track button, but I don't care very much if Facebook figures out a way to track me anyway. I am hardly ever there to see their ads.