The Federalist Is Wrong. Facebook Is Not Dying.

This article originally appeared on the WideNet blog.

In a recent article for The Federalist, columnist Bethany Mandel declared (via satirical eulogy) that Facebook is dead. Her reasoning? Facebook is just too negative, thanks to the 2016 election.

"Facebook, The, 12, of Boston died in the early months of 2017, after a long illness stemming from the 2016 election cycle. Born of Mark Zuckerberg, survived by Instagram. In lieu of flowers, please click on an ad on the Facebook sidebar while you check messenger every now and then."

For Mandel, Facebook is too corrupted by hysteria and negative Nancies yelling about politics (uhh…welcome to social media, Bethany). She goes on to say how she longs for the days when all we did was post pictures of our kids, pets, and food, and how it’s time to abandon Facebook for the much milder Instagram (owned by Facebook).

"The year 2016 saw many deaths,” she says, “but one of the most notable may in the end be Facebook, destroyed by the obnoxious tendencies of those who built it: its own users.”

Now, I can empathize (especially from a users’ perspective) with Mandel’s frustration. But she could not be more wrong.

Her attitude/position towards Facebook shows, like so many others, the inability to grasp the enormous, life altering, market changing impact Facebook has had on the world.

This is not just some novelty platform that’s fun and cute anymore. Facebook is the largest, most powerful, expansive, innovative, widely-used, ever growing “thing” in the digital world today. Basically, it’s too big for even the most negative of Nancies to bring it down. It’s going to take something bigger and better (VR, maybe) to actually deal a death blow. And until that happens, Facebook isn’t going anywhere.

And now for the pivot.

Business owners and marketers should not let themselves fall into the same mindset as Mandel. It’s true that there is a ton of negativity and political pandering on social media. But forward thinking strategists should see these things for what they are: data.

There are no *problems* when it comes to social media trends and conversations. It’s all data and information that tells you something about the consumer. So if everyone is arguing politics, the correct response is not, “Oh Facebook is so negative now. It’s dead.” The correct response is, “How can I use this to market my business?”

Sorry, Bethany.