A high percentage of users are reported quitting their behavior to regularly logging into the social media platforms like Facebook (FB) and Twitter (TWTR), and there are also many wellness-related articles endorsing the idea for both mental and physical benefits. Furthermore, a research study by the University of Bamberg and the University of Frankfurt in Germany supports the idea that overload social media could lead to emotional exhaustion and consequently induce the quitting behavior from social networking site's user. Put aside user's psychological withdrawal, Princeton Research says FB is impending doom comes from its growth curve to that of an infectious disease and losing 80% of its peak user base within the next three years in 2014. "Ideas, like diseases, have been shown to spread infectiously between people before eventually dying out, and have been successfully described with epidemiological models," the authors claim in a paper entitled Epidemiological modeling of online social network dynamics. In 2010, after Facebook for the first time updated its controversial user privacy policy, whereas one of dozen criticisms received in its thirteen years history, there were many user concerns decided to deactivate their account (#deleteyouraccount). Upon all those controversies (e.g. politics, religion, sex, etc), the fake news problem on FB during the post-election of 45th US President was the most being criticized, and accused of impacting the election result today, in fact, the truth1 was its algorithm prioritizes “engagement” and fake stories didn't. In regardless, FB has already lost their credibility and reputation substantially to the public, and more than 11M youngsters have actually fled FB since 2011. At the FB 4Q16 earnings conference call (Feb 01, 2017), CFO David Wehner reiterated his comment in last three consecutive quarters that FB "continue(s) to expect ad revenue growth rate will come down meaningfully" after mid-2017. Adversely, in after the 3Q16 earnings conference (Nov 02, 2016), FB admitted itself "messed up the ad metrics" causing its stock dipped the same day. But why did the miserable happen again and again on them? We first have to look back the history of social networking for some clues. The social networking chronicle can date back to the dawn of 21st century began from a company named America Online (AOL) founded by Bill von Meister in 1983, first called Control Video Corporation (CVC) that sold subscribers modem and its Gameline service to temporarily download video games. That's as well the beginning of online game streaming business model. Unfortunate that the company went nearly bankruptcy. Therefore, in 1985, Jim Kimsey (the first Chairman of AOL) was brought in as a manufacturing consultant, along with Steve Case (the first CEO of AOL) consulting in marketing, to rebuild the company from the remnants of CVC as Quantum Computer Services to sell a dedicated online service for Commodore 64 and 128 computers. Their new direction was very successful and spontaneously changed its service name to America Online. Then, further expanded their service for Apple II, Macintosh and IBM-compatible PCs, and promoted to people unfamiliar with computers in 1989. Throughout the early 90s, AOL continued sweeping down its rivals such as Prodigy, CompuServe and GEnie. Following in Dec 1996, it amended its billing cycle from hourly to a flat fee $19.95, stimulatingly grew its user base to 10M people. AOL ad interim became the key newsfeed of Americans in Presidential Election '96. By 1997, about half of all US households with internet access had it thru AOL. Their ambition didn't just end there. It relentlessly acquired companies, including eWorld and Netscape, to dominate online service internationally with more than 34M subscribers (out of 248M internet users worldwide, 4.1% of world population) - A full decade-long of affluence in Internet history. The breaking point henceforth began for AOL when it merged forming the AOL Time Warner, Inc., and their culture conflict would soon cause AOL's business model to tumble. In 2002, Jonathan Miller was hired to be the new CEO decided to drop "AOL" from its corporate name and retired its full name "America Online" following in 2006. To bolster its subscription base, a variety of services and software, included Norton Antivirus, anti-spyware, firewall and phishing protection, was bundled. Even though more value added into their subscription service, but AOL couldn't defeat the attack of broadband services like Comcast, Verizon-MCI and SBC-AT&T and free email providers like Yahoo and Microsoft Hotmail. Twenty years after the birth of America Online service, its user number dropped dramatically to 10M people only. Its executive officers unremittingly shuffled in later 2000s. From 2009 to 2015, the company attempted to captivate the "AOL" name again and transform into a digital media provider for the return of its saga, but it never performed. In June 2015, a surprising twist that Verizon thereafter secured its acquisition of AOL and announced its intent to acquire the core business of Yahoo, once a giant of the Worldwide Web directory.
