moTi - 3:51 pm on Dec 31, 2010 (gmt 0)

concerning adoption rate.. i think it's the crucial point for facebook. will they manage to take over and retain peoples' minds in the rest of the world? undisputably they have reached the necessary critical user mass in north america by now. critical mass for me is, when most of all people socially or economically simply can't afford to not be a facebook member. i.e. you will be regarded as some kind of freaky outsider by your social environment or you are dependent on facebook networking one way or another.

i think the critical mass is not yet achieved in most other countries, or better in most social groups. as long as facebook adoption is somewhere well below half of the internet users of a certain sample or half of the people you know, there's a high chance that it peaks at that percentage - as concurrently, people keep on leaving facebook for different reasons. if a medium gains the critical mass, it's more comfortable to stay on top. but once the peak is reached at a certain level below the critical mass, the trend is destined to go nothing but downwards from there.

the point is, will facebook really manage to occupy the largest part of internet users like google or windows? or will it be more like aol 2.0 or a bigger myspace? if it doesn't manage to reach critical mass in the respective social environments, they can not be regarded as mass medium. instead they will face a long-term struggle against user decrease and will consequently lose.