Why Facebook is the next Yahoo!

I am not sure that I actually need to point this out because there is no chance I am alone in thinking that Facebook is quickly becoming the next Yahoo! for better or worse.

Let's examine the evidence:

• Fast growing.
• People are still suprised over it's success and speed thereof.
• Appears to act like it's the centre of the internet.
• Appears to be dominant.
• Appears to be extremely profitable in a short space of time.
• Appears to be at the forefront of web development.
• Appears to believe things will always be this way.

Everything listed above is exactly what was almost ubiquitously believed about Yahoo! back in 1998.

Yahoo! used to be the place to be, it was everything to everyone, had it all on one page and then index the "entire" web. Sure there were other competitors, but at the end of the day Yahoo! was king, and at the time very few people could have predicted it's fall.

Think about it, who would actually take on Yahoo! for web dominance? Even Mr Page and Mr Brin probably thought their little venture would end up selling to Yahoo! I can imagine the conversation:

L: Hey, we should do that idea for a search engine algorithm.
S: Yeah, but what's the point? No one will beat Yahoo! they are dominant.
L: Yeah but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try.
S: True, it could be huge and if not we could use it to get jobs at Yahoo!

Yes, believe it or not the founders of Google probably once dreamed of working at Yahoo! in the same way many now dream of working at Google.

Yahoo! probable seemed unbeatable and forever dominant, they had cornered the search and homepage market of the internet and I'll bet many executives and investors thought that too.

What were the odds that one of the biggest selling features of their destructor would come from the simplicity of Google?  Those of you who were there will remember the revelation on discovering Google for searching was that one of it's major appeals was speed. Speed it took to load the home page and speed it took to search. Google themselves were so proud of the speed that they announced it on every results page.

Facebook are looking at the same problem that Yahoo! did. The same problem which Yahoo! never recovered from. When you are the king, there is always a successor.

Speed on the internet isn't such a problem any more, unless you live in my house. But simplicity is. Credit to Facebook they have changed their layout several times and they persevered with change even in the face of user complaints. But it only takes one person to have an idea based on simplicity that Facebook will overlook for it to come crashing down to the floor.

I don't know what that idea will be, but history tells me that it will come as Facebook continue to become  Yahoo!. It is not so much a "maybe" as a "when". It is an inevitability.