Steve Ballmer

Social networks such as Facebook will have some staying power but will be partly a passing fad.

“I think these things [social networks] are going to have some legs, and yet there’s a faddishness, a faddish nature about anything that basically appeals to younger people”

Said on

2 October 2007 · Interview with Times Online (London), early October 2007, while Microsoft was negotiating its Facebook stake

Source

Ballmer says social networking is a fad · bit-tech.net

Should come true

by 2017

How sure they sounded

I think ... going to

Categories

Technology

Importance

3 of 5 · About the durability of social networking, which became a global industry.

Outcome

Partly right

Inferred window about 10 years (to 2017). Social networks lasted far beyond "some legs": Facebook passed 2 billion monthly users in 2017. Some networks of that era did fade (MySpace), but the "faddish" framing badly underrated the category, so the mixed result is scored partial as the cautious choice.

Evidence:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myspace