I understood that some parts were still a little sketchy and I wanted some more time to think about whether or not this was really appropriate to release to the Harvard community.

— Mark Zuckerberg, 2003 (Source: The Harvard Crimson)

Why Facebook’s days are numbered and the social media world is growing up

When I was in the seventh grade, I got caught up in a bad episode at school. Someone had accidentally left their locker open, and another student had discovered that there were a bunch of CDs inside. It was a free-for-all, and I joined in on the fun. Later on, I was called to the principal’s office, where both the principal and a police officer were waiting. Another student, an honest one, had seen everything that happened and reported it to a teacher.

I was forced to face up to the facts. When it finally dawned on me that I was hurting an actual person by taking something that wasn’t mine, I felt terrible. It was also a wake-up call to me that I can’t do something bad just because other people are doing it. I decided that day that I didn’t want to be part of the “bad crowd”.

What does this story have to do with Facebook? I have been following Facebook’s rise since early 2004. During these first years, I came across several stories about Mark Zuckerberg of a shady nature: Scraping photos from Harvard’s student photo website (which was called Facebook) to create FaceSmash (Harvard Crimson, 2003), hacking into email accounts of journalists from the Harvard Crimson (Business Insider, 2010a), being hired by classmates to build a social network and instead using the time to build his own (Harvard Crimson, 2004), cutting his early investor out of his share of Facebook (Mashable, 2011), and even breaking into a Facebook user’s private email account (Business Insider, 2010b).

What becomes clear from these stories is a pattern of behavior: a willingness to skirt the law and ignore social norms of decency in order to achieve what he wants. Had these incidents occurred once or twice, I would argue he deserves forgiveness. But here we stand in 2018. Mark Zuckerberg is one of the richest people in the world, and Facebook is one of the world’s most powerful companies. By this point, Zuckerberg has had nearly 15 years to learn the meaning of privacy. He hasn’t, and he probably never will.

Consider this article from 2003:

Mark E. Zuckerberg ’06 said he was accused of breaching security, violating copyrights and violating individual privacy by creating the website, www.facemash.com, about two weeks ago. The charges were based on a complaint from the computer services department over his unauthorized use of on-line facebook photographs, he said.

Ultimately, Zuckerberg decided to take Facesmash down, saying “Issues about violating people’s privacy don’t seem to be surmountable.” Many would argue that the same could be said today about Facebook, which shares people’s private data with advertisers and third-party app developers on a massive scale. The main difference is that Facesmash was confined to a single university and not a profit-making machine, whereas Facebook has its tentacles spread all over the world and generates billions in profit. Despite the increasing backlash against Facebook’s many privacy violations, Zuckerberg appears unlikely to take Facebook down or even change it fundamentally. Just imagine Zuckerberg issuing a press release like this:

Issues about Facebook violating people’s privacy don’t seem to be surmountable, and for this reason, we have decided to shut Facebook down and liquidate all our assets.

Not gonna happen, right? I think not.

What will happen instead

Instead, I believe that Facebook’s über-dominant position in the social media market is going to be weakened and ultimately overcome by newcomers. Already newcomers like Snapchat have shown that it is possible in the current market conditions for a new entry to be born and to remain relatively successful. No social network, however, has yet conquered the privacy conundrum that Facebook faces.

This doesn’t mean that it is impossible or that some people aren’t trying. In March of this year, I founded a new company Pondenome that is developing a privacy-centric social network, complete with end-to-end encryption so that content can be shared without any sacrifice of privacy. Recently, angel investor, Jason Calacanis, launched Open Book Challenge to support Facebook challengers. There is no fundamental reason why a committed group of entrepreneurs can’t create a privacy-enhanced social network and gain traction in the market.

Here’s how I think it will play out: At first, only those who are very privacy conscious will join such a network. Because they believe in the vision, they will try to convince their family and friends to also join this new network, due to its superior respect for privacy. Not all of them will bother, but some of them will. A certain fraction of these privacy-conscious people will see this as a watershed moment and decide to finally delete their Facebook account completely (that is, those who haven’t already done so). Friends and family of such people will be further incentivized to join the new network in order to stay in touch. These early adopters will form the core nucleus of the new network.

At this point, high-tech and startup media will likely pick up on the birth of a new social network. As articles are published, readers will give the new network a try. If the user experience is good enough, they might even invite some of their friends and family members to join. After all, it is difficult to try out a social network if you don’t know anyone else who’s on it.

This will be a critical moment in the social network’s early life. I remember, for example, when Ello was launched in 2014. I joined it in hopes it could be a viable alternative to Facebook. But the user experience wasn’t great, so I quickly lost interest.

If the user experience is good though, the new users will stick around and start to prefer it over Facebook. As they grow to like it, they will also try to convince more family and friends to join. Once the social network reaches the one million user mark, it will likely attract the interest of outside investors, as well as more mainstream media. The new social network must be braced for periods of explosive growth, as recent examples have shown that new digital services can spread faster than wildfires (e.g. Pokemon Go).

Facebook beware

No one can predict who or when or what will usurp Facebook’s #1 spot in the social media world, but if history is any lesson, the market leader always has its vulnerabilities. Facebook’s biggest weakness seems to be its horrible track record on privacy, and this creates a big opportunity for the challenger who understands how to do privacy right.

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Rob Guinness is the founder of Pondenome, a company developing an end-to-end encrypted social network. Pondenome is soon launching a crowdfunding compaign on Indiegogo. Follow us on Twitter or join our mailing list to hear the latest.