Facebook Monopoly & Alternatives

what is an alternative to facebook (besides abstention, which I agree is viable in this product category)? the network effect is overwhelmingly strong.

There is no alternative, because facebook isn't just "a protocol and some clients/servers". As long as it's -the- social network to be on, then it will always be just that. You can't compete with social culture just with mere programming.

You're conflating facebook with social networking.We've had social networking since before the internet was created, and one of the first things to have been done on the internet was social networking (message boards, email, instant messaging, etc).Facebook is simply one implementation of social networking. There were others, and are still others. For example, email, instant messaging, forums, still exist, as well as new stuff like Pinterest, tumblr, twitter.Facebook's si

Folks have tried starting alternatives to facebook: I think the real problem is that facebook is more similiar to a phone company that only connects its users to others that have the same phone company. It was the only game in town for a while, so this has made it into a near-monopoly.If facebook was required to have some level of across-platform access, this might level the playing field and give us actual choice. Unfortunatly, I think this will take legislative action to accomplish. Until t

You can switch from Facebook, but since the value of Facebook is derived entirely from connecting to other people on it, any such switch would be utterly useless unless the people you want to interact with also switch.The result is that a sufficiently large social network is, effectively, a natural monopoly. Which is exactly why no-one has managed to dethrone Facebook yet, not even by throwing lots of money at a better alternative (like G+).

I'm sure a good chunk would be fine with it. Facebook only maintains their social media dominance because the product is sticky: when your friends, family, municipality, favorite businesses, and clubs use Facebook and only Facebook for announcements, you kind of have no choice but to participate unless you're willing to work around inconveniences. Most users barely log in, maybe once or twice a month to check their direct messages and waste a few minutes on the feed.It's a bit

Other people could make competitors, and more importantly, people who are using Facebook could switch. It happened to MySpace. Makes a lot more sense to me than turning it into a public utility or breaking it up anyway.Just stop using it, it really isn't that important.

Facebook doesn't need to do this.They have a huge market share on the real internet, they could simply give more people neutral internet access, and they would still grow.The fact that are attempting this means that they obviously don't believe in the longevity of their product on its own merits, so they are going to try to lock in a few users while they can.

Facebook can be so user-hostile precisely because competition in that sector is broken. When Facebook removed XMPP support, what did their users do? Nothing, because if they valued XMPP support, they also valued the conversations and friends they already had on Facebook. Network effects are definitely a thing.

That's exactly the problem: Facebook holds a special position on that ISP. Imagine a new social network trying to compete. If users can access Facebook when they can't access the new social network it's yet another reason to avoid switching.