Lately the digital media world can talk about little else than Facebook. It is a colossus, with 850 million users spending on average eight hours a month on it, seemingly poised to dominate the Internet. Its rule would seem assured.
And yet there is precedent for the fleeting nature of these types of reigns — and no, I’m not referring to the “You’ve Got Mail” era of AOL and its floppy disks. Back in the early 19th century, King George III of England was becoming ever madder and ever more entrenched in his power as king, which he had been since before the American Revolution. The poet Percy Shelley was eager for political change. He was heartened by the example of the French Revolution — Reign of Terror notwithstanding. He knew that the King’s reign would come to an end, even as the King gave every indication that he (and eventually he and his regent) planned on ruling forever. Shelley reminded his “old, mad, blind, despised, and dying King” that he along with everything else in our world will pass.
Responding to King George III’s 50-plus-year reign, Shelley’s poem “Ozymandias” tells the story of a man who travels in the desert and stumbles upon a crumbling statue of a long-forgotten king named Ozymandias:
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
The king of kings is reduced to wreckage. His confident boasts amount to detritus.
Who knows what will come of the big companies of the Internet in a few years’ time. Who knows if we’ll look back fondly on Facebook’s dominance in our culture. But at very least we ought to recognize that its reign will eventually end.
Tom Butler is a professor of English literature at Eastern Kentucky University. He moonlights as Digiday’s copy editor.
More in Media
Meta AI rolls out several enhancements across apps and websites with its newest Llama 3
Meta AI, which first debuted in September, also got a number of updates including ways to search for real-time information through integrations with Google and Bing.
Walmart rolls out a self-serve, supplier-driven insights connector
The retail giant paired its insights unit Luminate with Walmart Connect to help suppliers optimize for customer consumption, just in time for the holidays, explained the company’s CRO Seth Dallaire.
Research Briefing: BuzzFeed pivots business to AI media and tech as publishers increase use of AI
In this week’s Digiday+ Research Briefing, we examine BuzzFeed’s plans to pivot the business to an AI-driven tech and media company, how marketers’ use of X and ad spending has dropped dramatically, and how agency executives are fed up with Meta’s ad platform bugs and overcharges, as seen in recent data from Digiday+ Research.