Don't get me wrong, I love Facebook as much as the next person. It's helped me get back in touch with loads of people I'd drifted away from and it's generally lovely and a nice place to spend a few hours a week. However...
I don't know about anyone else, but I've noticed things slowing down a bit on FB. Not everyone's as active as they used to be - I know I've certainly stopped the poking and vampires and group-joining, and my homepage feed suggests many of my friends are doing the same. There's always going to be a usage profile like this with social sites; it's the ones which settle down into the background fabric of your life that win out - I say this but realistically haven't experienced it yet.
So, that's the user perspective: the honeymoon is over, boredom and real life sets in. Now two points from a business viewpoint, neither of which are news particularly but hey, it's my blog and I'll regurgitate hackneyed viewpoints if I want to.
1. Their business model just doesn't work. It's based on advertising revenues and yes, a normal revenue model would go through the roof given their traffic stats. However, not only do they have one of the lowest click through rates I've ever seen, their much-vaunted targeting is non-existent and they're massively overcharging for the privilege. There's a limit to how many £300k cash dumps a marketing budget can take before someone starts asking for proof of ROI.
2. They're on the verge, within a few hours I reckon, of being bought. Microsoft and Google are both in the running, but strong rumours suggest that MS is a front runner with a $15bn deal. Although Mr Zuckerberg will only get a tiny slice (if you call $240m tiny, it's still only a 2% stake), so it looks like Steve Ballmer had him over a desk.
Now, the cumulative effect of these two things is this. As a $15bn new toy, it's got to be made to work. So it'll be monetized in different, more aggressive ways. The problem with this is that the relative advertising quiet was / is one of the things that makes Facebook a nice place to be. Given that I'm getting bored already, it won't take many poorly targeted advertising gambits to make me pack up my vampires and head over to Orkut or something.
All that said, I'd genuinely love it to stick around. Partly as I do find it useful, partly as making something as genuinely Web 2.0 as Facebook work as a business would prove that the internet is evolving in a solidly commercial way. And that would make a web professional like me sleep soundly at night.
Next post will be back to rambling nonsense about shoes or something, I promise.
1 comment:
And me who thought it was just a bit of fun...
I can only speak for myself, but I think you're right about the transiant character of social network sites. I don't go to Last.fm as much as I used to, and I barely visit myspace these days. We do get mored easily I think. Plus, there's always a better one, a nicer one, one that looks better, around the corner. Or is there?...
As for making these as viable commercial offerings, I am a bit dubious to be honest. I don't know whether it is just me, but I seem to have built up a level of immunity to internet ads. I just don't see them most of the time, and when I do, they annoy me. It's like I have an inbuilt ad blocker. I just don't see the sponsored links on Google for instance. I couldn't tell you where the ads are on Facebook. They annoy me on myspace, but there are so many that you cannot miss them. Hence probably partly why I don't use the site. That and the fact that it's aweful to use, and not very interesting. I am a subscriber to Last.fm so I don't see the ads there either, but that's not essentially why I subscribe.
I think Facebook has a good potential if it stays as it is because it is easy to use, helps you keep in touch with loads of people, is quite fun, and also allows you to link to other social networks (Last.fm, Flickr...). I'd be a bit concerned if Google gets their hands on it, and even more concerned if Microsoft do, but would it stop me from using it? Probably not. At least, that is, until I've found some greener grass elsewhere...
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