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The Two Faces of Facebook
Young Urban Professional
The Two Faces of Facebook
I spend a lot of time gazing into a crystal ball that I know is going to be cloudy half the time. Lately I have been pondering Facebook's future.
Facebook is clearly on a roll and is knocking on Google's door as the biggest site on the web. Will it continue to dominate or see its lead slip? Here are two potential outcomes.
The Google Scenario
In the more rosy picture Facebook remains the disrupter. It transforms how we use the web.
Just as search changed our expectations that everything we want to know is accessible if we Google it, Facebook is the inverse. If information is important, it will find us through our friends and their friends and so on. We don't have to Google it.
'Trends from friends' is as tranformative as search. The more we use Facebook and the more we create and connect there, the smarter it gets in realizing what we need and when. We don't have to ask.
The opportunity cost of switching to an alternative is simply too great. This is why millions remain wih the same IM network they first tried years ago.
Facebook, like Google, groks data. And they know how to study and use it to make the experience and value grow with every status update, photo, connection and interaction. Once they get serious about search - and consumers see the value in using it for finding curated information - Facebook's value and power could grow.
The AOL Scenario
It's hard to believe but ten years ago AOL was once dominant. It was a hit with advertisers. Publishers paid for position and built grand palaces. It was the place to be. It was also a walled garden. Sound familliar? This begs the question: could Facebook follow the same path? Possibly.
Through continuous innovation Facebook is trying not to become AOL. That's the smart play. However each successive update has irked consumers. The revamped news feed, which rolled out last week, is just the latest.
So far we keep coming back; but you have to wonder if a social network has nine lives. It's possible fickle consumers will eventually migrate elsewhere.
Where might they turn? Just as with AOL they'll go everywhere. The entire web is becoming social. Facebook Connect is a play to make this happen on their terms. However this is where Google, Yahoo and other stalwarts could shine. They already control millions of IM and email address books and have lots of data
So which mask wil Facebook don - Google's or AOLs? My bet right now is Google's.
Reader Comments (11)
I'm betting on the AOL side. I asked if it would be 2 or 5 years before Facebook was considered the AOL of the new century (http://twitter.com/hawks5999/status/4432779065). The response from many (on facebook actually) was that it was already viewed that way. By 2000 AOL was mostly used by people who didn't know that an Internet existed outside the walled garden. I think Facebook will soon be used mostly by an older generation of people (Boomers) who got on to see grandkids pictures. But the bigger population of the 18-35 year olds will be off onto the next big thing (twitter or it's replacement). On the other hand, Google (or Bing??) will remain necessary tools to find information that my friends don't have.
I am betting that Facebook will innovate and connect itself as an even broader act. Great scenes are yet to come.
It's weird but the more I use Twitter and other social media, the less I enjoy Facebook. For me, Facebook is Family and Friends - no strangers. And Twitter is all strangers whom I can share an interest or inspire or receive inspiration and information from. Twitter is more fun, even though I love my F&F. It's leaps and bounds ahead of Facebook, and it is practical in ways I couldn't have imagined when my husband was explaining it to me first. I think Facebook will fade out but will still hold a large user community while Twitter and the *next Twitter* will continue to revolutionize the way we work, play and learn.
W.r.t. Facebook Connect, Yahoo, MySpace, and Twitter have begun to embrace social publishing from sites you're already at. In a more open, user-centric identity model you'll be able to log into any website with an existing account at Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo, Google, MySpace, AOL, Hotmail, Windows LiveID. Once you're on a site that's interesting to you and you do something there (post to a discussion group or blog, write a review, buy a product, take a survey, listen to a song, etc.) you'll also be able to share that activity with friends and colleagues on Facebook, Yahoo, Twitter, MySpace, etc. Qype (CitySearch for Europe) already does this using JanRain's RPX http://rpxnow.com
Buzzbook or Wallbook scenario? Good question. Twitter is more fun and more useful, at least for me. FB will fade into the mainstream of blandness. (I hope I don't have to eat that quote one day!)
I use Twitter every day and am a huge fan (it's a gigantic knowledge base for me). Facebook to me is a necessity but I'm not enthused about it. FB = old friends; Twitter = new friends, biz, KNOWLEDGE. At this point I tend to think FB will go the way of AOL over time.
FaceBook hide functionality. Try and get a FB page populated with your blog RSS and you need Google to find how to do that. And when you learn how to do it....FB give you no options. You take what they give or you leave. You can, for example, not import a snippet, you get all. As a business user of FaceBook I am not impressed.
Great post Steve! I tend to go with the AOL scenario, although they may be stay rather more relevant than AOL has become. To my mind there is a third possibility - that Facebook becomes the "Microsoft" of social media: big, lumbering, prone to bungling, deaf to its users and rolling out poorly-developed products. But you gotta have it. I blogged on this concept a while back. And Google is constantly innovating. Google Voice, Google Wave, Sidewiki. Much more likely they will take over Facebook's space.http://www.twitterthoughts.com/social-media-news-analyses/2009/10/10/is-facebook-the-microsoft-of-social-media.html
The advantage that Facebook has over say AOL is that its content can be extracted via RSS feed application to be used for marketing purposes (as can Twitter). Companies can then aggregate social network information (Facebook, Tweets, blog/RSS) along with internal and other external marketing information to create their compelling message for display at the point of sale (where consumers demand it). One example of this is SmartSymbols Interactive Technology.
Search moved away from the portal model of Yahoo and Altavista in 90s to search being the primary focus, which gave rise to Google. Now we're reverting to the portal models again though, and it's going to happen in Facebook.Actually, I don't think people are as irked by Facebook's new layout as much as they really seem to be. Ironically, I think the fact that they protest each new design so vehemently and still come back to it every day only shows just how attached and accustomed we really are to Facebook. I agree that address books are the next great social networks, but it's not going to happen via Google profiles, Yahoo, AOL, email addresses, or instant messaging.The only address book that's going to make the future is the one that is on your mobile phone. And right now, Facebook is the top social networking app across all mobile platforms worldwide and will continue to be so, and it's getting increasingly synched in with your mobile address book more so than any other medium can. Google Voice is a preemptive attack on this, an attempt to tie your identity to your phone number, but it will lose this game quickly. People will always come back to Facebook because their entire contact list will always be there; it's *permanent* - unlike email addresses, phone numbers, and screen names. Facebook is no longer a mere social network, it's more like infrastructure now.
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