Is Facebook falling?

We all love Facebook or loved may be or you never did? Facebook has an interesting profile of members. Members who always complain about any little change Facebook does to their user interface. There is unanimous decision by Facebook's members that the change is bad and go on and on about how it moved this here and how it move that there! But guess what? They complained on Facebook? The complained on the place with the problem. I assume that when you have a problem on one platform, you move to another platform, an alternative, and speak your heart out about how what you moved from was that bad! So we can say may be they did not really have alternatives at that time. Thinking about it, many users of Facebook actually migrated from Hi5, MySpace and others and of course, there's no going back. But one question to ask is, would these users move if they were presented with another alternative at that time? Short answer, No! What keeps people on Facebook is not their interface per say. It's the fact that you meet your friends (your real world friends) there. Of course, if you do a quick Google/Bing search right now, you would find other unexplored social networking site with great user interfaces and interesting feature sets. You are not using those because your friends are not there. Facebook has your buddies there talking about all the trivia there is to talk about, view the pictures of the events you attended with your buddies etc. With the kind success Facebook has, it is logical to think other people would take the decision to build their own social networks and find a way to woo members there. And yeah, others tried! Tried really hard. Google+? The upcoming of Google+ was code-named, the Facebook killer. We've heard of other aspiring Facebook killers, Twitter? Well, while people find Twitter to be a viable replacement for Facebook, I think otherwise. Twitter and Facebook provide two distinct experiences for the user. On one hand, users are in this environment where they need to be heard by the respective audience concerning something they have "pledged" to talk about in a small but intelligent and concise manner.(Twitter) And there's another experience where the user is in their friends locality virtually and just talking about things only them can make sense of. (Facebook)

Facebook recently, bought Oculus Rift, bought Whatsapp and couple of other cool tech companies. You ask why? Good Question! When they bought Oculus Rift, I tried to figure out what could facebook (A social network) make out of Virtual Reality! Then ... wait for it ... Virtual Social Gaming. Now, not only do you get to chat with buddies in difference spaces, you get to bridge the spatial difference with virtual reality and add more value to the social experience you already have. Now remember this is just a projection of they might use the VR headset for. May be they may reverse engineer it to serve another purpose. The tech world is super dynamic and you must be open to surprises at any time. Then they bought Whatsapp which was met with a lot of mixed feelings about privacy and such considering the Snowden case and all. I heard people vowing not to use Whatsapp, saw people actively switching to Telegram. It seemed to me that Telegram came at the right time. However from what I have seen, the numbers have not changed. The number of active users of Whatsapp may have reduced slightly, but it did not make Telegram any bigger. Telegram enticed users with end to end encryption allowing you to have super secretive chats etc. But what happened? In my next post, I will delve into the battle of Whatsapp and Telegram and why Telegram does not seem to be winning.

So the big question. Is Facebook falling? Looking at all these current tech take-overs by Facebook, it is obvious, they do not want to go down so easily. On the general look things, a lot a users seem to have lost interest in Facebook. The number of active users seem to have decreased over the years and here is why. Mobile. With the advent of mobile apps & technologies, people stay longer on their phones than on their PC. You might say ... Hey Facebook has a mobile app. But lets face it. The user experience you get on the Facebook PC version is totally different from the mobile app version. The mobile app version seems to be very sluggish to me as compared to the Twitter app on my mobile device. Twitter has probably gained more grounds when it comes mobile usage as compared to Facebook. So it is hard to project what Facebook will make of companies they have in their "possession", but as a tech enthusiast, I am hoping they cook up something very very cool.

Intro

Hello, this blog basically contain entries of what comes to mind with respect to programming, making software etc. If I am working on a project, I'll be blogging to keep track of my progress. Hope you enjoy reading it. You might learn about how I approached some problems and perhaps help you find answers to your problems. You can also suggest better ways of accomplishing some task.


For Now, I am working on a Project I have code named SABE - Simulated Avatar Based Environment. This is actually my final year project. The reason I chose it as a final year project was because it is cool(super cool) and I can do it. I am so passionate about 3D visualization and game development. More to that I love the school I am in and I want to make some contribution to the school by making this system for the school. Before I continue, if you intend using this idea, be sure to contact me for approval. I might sue you in the future if you develop this idea without my consent Thank you.

This project will feature a stripped down version of the whole but as time goes and I get access to more computer resources, I would higher versions of the system

What SABE pronounced "Say Be" really is!
It consist of a Virtual Representation of my school which is actually the "world" for the system. People in the school(possessing school userIDs) will have the ability to login into the system and they are assigned an avatar. The user has total control over this avatar though and the avatar is fully customizable like physical appearance etc. This avatar would be controlled by the user around the world chatting with people as well performing other activities like attending meetings, parties among others. The avatar also has the ability to connect to their Facebook accounts to increase the immersion of the environment. (my o my its big: that was just by the way.(just got another great feature i can add in the future) I can have virtual adverts in there!!)

The Avatar Selection

Currently, there are two characters you can selected for both male and female

Almost done with the avatar creation room. Now you can change the colors of the clothes you assign your avatar. Currently working on changing faces and other unique bodily features. I hope its gonaa be easy.

Of the top of my head, some of the features that differentiate SABE from other chat platforms like skype is the ability for you advertise in the virtual world like pasting posters and banners on noted locations in the virtual environment. The general motivation for this system is its intuitiveness; that in the future, if you want to accomplish any task, just imagine how you would have done so in the real world and try it out in SABE for example, walking to the convenience store to buy airtime which would be automatically updated on your phone. Think about it, integrating multiple payment systems with SABE, all your messaging apps connected to SABE... GREAT
To be contintued!!