A new theory about the fate of Facebook is floating around the internet. Mike Elgan says it best: "Don't look now, but Facebook is quickly becoming the new Yahoo." And he doesn't mean that as a compliment.
The backlash comes hot on the heels of Facebook announcing two new features: the Subscribe button and Smartlists. We pointed out at the time that the Subscribe button negates the need for Twitter--or at least Facebook would hope so. It's not dissimilar to Yahoo launching its own social network, Mash, at the same time that Facebook was becoming recognized as the world's primary social network. Yahoo shuttered the service after only a year. Similarly, Facebook's Smartlists is an obvious repackaging of Google+'s major innovation, Circles. Kind of like that time that Yahoo repacked Yahoo Mail as Ymail in a naked attempt to compete with the new rising star Gmail. All the while, Yahoo survived because of their Herculean traffic numbers and the display ad revenue that came with that.
http://www.theatlanticwire.com/technology/2011/09/facebooks-newest-challenge-being-boring/42595
