Beiruting News

Over the weekend, there was some scary news for the world's biggest social network. Facebook, the story went, was "dead and buried", teenagers were turning away "in their droves", put off by their parents' presence on the network.

There is doubtless much truth in that, given that a majority of adults are now members of Facebook. Why wouldn't young people want to move into a sphere of communication that did not, for the most part, include their parents? Just as teenagers congregate in the real world anywhere they are more likely to be unsupervised, the same is happening online. But, to take that trend as reason to doubt Facebook's viability as a business is to misunderstand its strength.



MySpace, held up as the example of how quickly a social network can fail, was never anywhere near as popular or deeply embedded in the lives of its members as Facebook. Teenagers may shun Facebook for now but they almost all have accounts, which will be used more as their lives develop.

Facebook is aware it is vulnerable but, unlike its younger rivals, it has created a slick advertising sales organisation.

Many of the teenagers using Instagram will be unaware that it is now owned by Facebook.

It may not be cool anymore but Facebook is here to stay.