Only mobile can save Facebook and the Internet from the so-called "breakpoint"

Summary: Tencent Science and Technology (snow) Beijing time July 30 news, Wired Magazine online edition recently published in the article said, for the social networking giant Facebook, to achieve growth to build a large audience size is essential, but a gathering

Tencent Science and Technology (snow) Beijing time July 30 news, Wired Magazine online edition recently published an article said that for the social networking giant Facebook, to achieve growth to build a large audience size is essential, but a network of too many users can also cause trouble. The article points out that only mobile can save Facebook and the Internet from the so-called "breakpoint", so that Facebook from the slow and painful to "death."

The following is the full text of this article:

Research into biological systems is probably the best way to help us understand the complex networks created by humanity. All successful networks experience a "breakpoint" on which the growth rate will stagnate. After this "breakpoint", some networks will fail and decline, but at the same time, there are many networks that can achieve spectacular success. The human brain, for example, shrinks after a period of growth, and in this process we will have access to intelligence. This is because our brains accumulate too many neurons and neural connections as a child, so that we become wiser after becoming adults. Without this procedure, we may never be able to gain intelligence.

The internet is the largest technological revolution that human beings have carried out in the 20th century, and is likely to be the driving force of innovation in the years ahead. But today, the Internet is facing a situation where a "breakpoint" is looming, while many of the technologies and businesses that rely on the internet face looming "breakpoints". In particular, we have seen the incredible growth of many social networks, initially classmates.com and Friendster, and then MySpace and Facebook.

In terms of these social networks, each one looks like it will grow endlessly in their respective periods of prosperity and development. Both Classmates.com and Friendster, as well as MySpace and Facebook, have seen explosive growth as they hit their "breakpoints".

Like all software, social networks are limited in their ability to attract and satisfy users, and whether social networks survive depends on their usefulness. For social networks, growth to build a huge audience is essential, and every social networking company described above has succeeded in doing this. But in this growth phase, most social networking companies end up failing.

However, a network that gathers too many users can also cause trouble. Compared with the number of relationships the human brain can handle, Facebook's "Dunbar" number, the theoretical limit on how individuals can maintain stable social relationships with people around them, is well beyond the former. On the Facebook site, the average number of "friends" per user is 262, and a reasonable guess is that a large portion of these "good friends" is not that high. What is the result of this situation? You may receive this notice: Aprille Lie Moore (April ridmoore) downloads the song "Call Me Cames" at Spotify, the streaming music services Web site-Wait, who is Eli Moore? Maybe you won't remember, it's the girl who went out with your brother in high school and she mocked you last year.

To some extent, Facebook is already trying to limit the speed at which its networks are growing, so that it does not grow freely. The company has introduced features that make it easy for users to disable Notification Services, and has made significant progress in allowing users to reduce notifications as much as possible. And, typically, the "random" encounters you encounter on Facebook are people you know, know, or indirectly know, a lot different from MySpace, where users often receive dozens of of strangers ' requests for a complete stranger every week.

Basically, Facebook is the "King of social networks", more intelligent and successful than any previous social network. As Facebook itself points out: "Facebook is made up of many networks, each based on workplaces, regions, high schools or universities." ”

Each of these social networks has a very strong connection within its own network, because each network has a large number of users, and the connections between these users are powerful; But from a network perspective, the user relationship is much thinner Just like the neural connections in the brain are mainly used to connect neurons inside the subnet.

For Facebook users, a small amount of unsolicited, worthless notifications can lead to a decline in the usefulness of the social network. In this case, the sensible idea is that the user cleans up the buddy list, cancels the update subscription, and blocks all notifications. However, few users would do that, instead of reducing usage and deleting accounts, and looking for the next new network as a place to live, the new network needs to have a cleaner, less distracting social structure, and at the same time, like all social networks in the past, Facebook's network will fade as it touches a "breakpoint".

How mobile can save Facebook and even the internet from "breakpoints"

Mobile social networks are often simpler, and each aspect is more streamlined than a web version, just like an application. It is clear that mobile sites must be small to accommodate the smaller physical size of the mobile phone. But this is only one aspect of the problem; the other reason for the smaller mobile sites is that reducing what is provided can lead to higher value and practicality. The web itself has touched its "breakpoint", too many good things have caused it to endure too much pressure.

Newer and more flexible mobile networks are emerging, just as search engines stand out in the early stages of the World Wide Web. In the human brain, for example, when the brain touches a "breakpoint", it filters out foreign information through "cell suicide", in which neurons "sacrifice" themselves for the benefit of the entire network. At the same time, the brain cleans up unnecessary connections and deepens the most important connections. In the end, this paradoxical contraction of the brain makes us smarter.

So what can Facebook do to become smarter? Like the human brain, Facebook can eliminate unnecessary relationships and enhance those important relationships. Interestingly, this "back to basics" approach has been accidentally tried, but it has been a great success. The application version of Facebook is a compact version of its Web site, in which Facebook has abandoned a lot of things, leaving behind only the basics: posting on "Information Walls", reading tweets, sending and receiving information, etc. In other words, for Facebook users, communicating with people is the most important thing, and everything else can be put aside.

Of course, it is not Facebook's intention to reduce distractions, which is rooted in the fact that Facebook has to do this because the size of the mobile device is too small to hold too much information. But the result is a remarkable success: In 2012 years, users spend about seven hours a month on the mobile Facebook service, compared with six hours on the desktop version of the page, which is a good time. Facebook's number of independent PC users declined for the first time in 2012 years, according to data released by Nielsen, a market research firm.

Facebook has gone through its own "breakpoint" and is now in the midst of a landslide, while on mobile devices Facebook continues to show healthy and record growth. Rather, a big part of the growth in the mobile business is that users are more likely to use social networking services, rather than computers, by near-hand smartphones. Of course, the popularity of mobile devices is one of the factors that make this happen.

However, the role of a simpler user interface in this trend should not be overlooked; This is a very important element in the big steps Facebook has taken to move to the mobile market. In fact, other social networking--twitter, picture-sharing social platforms Pinterest, consumer review sites Yelp, professional social networking sites LinkedIn, and even Facebook's photo-sharing site, instagram--, have not shown signs of contraction.

One of the things that we can realize is that when a network is in a "breakpoint", reducing what is unnecessary is equivalent to increasing the amount of usage. What we need to be mindful of is not how to avoid "breakpoints", but to avoid the excessive expansion of the "breakpoint". Growth is no bad thing, unless the company sees nothing but growth.