What a story! Facebook creates a global footprint in a matter of years, changes all our lives, takes its small company to the market, and rams its face into The Great Chinese Wall going downhill from there. Founder Zuckerberg’s (brilliant, billion-$, I’m-a-CEO-bitch) head is on the line. And people start envisioning the world without facebook in it -not me!
Here’s why I still believe in facebook …
First and foremost, Facebook has become part of nearly 1bn people’s DNA, and that number is growing by the day. They check their facebook profile/newsfeed when they get up and before they go to sleep, share their lives along the way, interact with long lost friends again, find relaxation, humor, and what not. It is part of DNA because people NEED that sense of belonging, and facebook “enabled” that to happen (see the social media interpretation of the Maslow pyramid of needs below). Interesting factoid to prove my point: first thing 60% of newlyweds do is update their facebook status -says enough. Most users on facebook have built a humongous story/book about themselves over the past 5 odd years. Being a writer myself, let me tell you: you don’t just throw that away, even if a better platform would come along.
Secondly, let’s forget for a second the absurd overenthusiasm that pushed the share price of fb to $38 during the IPO process. In absolute, facebook is not an unhealthy company. Facebook makes about $5 per user now, but, frankly: they haven’t even started “exploiting” their revenue possibilities to the fullest. And with the heat under his feet, I’m sure finding a big revenue boost is Zuckerberg’s first concern and the thing that keeps him awake at night. Once that unlock is there, facebook might one day beat Apple!
Third, the addition of Instagram is potentially a really big deal. With the world turning more visual by the day (case in point: Pinterest), I have high hopes they will embed the photo-sharing platform into fb in an interesting way. And from a marketers point-of-view, the change to Timeline was a genius move, giving brands a lot more storytelling possibilities.
Forth, I wrote a post a while back about building an emotional, advertised brand for facebook. Not only to build a solid image, but also to withstand the wave of new players on the social market place. And…to have MORE users…MORE revenue potential. Read it here. For God’s sake, listen to me for once, Zuck 😉
Lastly I would argue that a lot of people still symphathize with Zuckerberg. The zero-to-hero story as portrayed in the movie “the social network” is very powerful. And baby-face Zuckerberg still looks like the geeky guy from around the corner. That helps. I guess. I hope.
Thank you for reading this blog post!
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Kurt,
I’m behind you 100%! Facebook is too much of an integral part of our lives to let go. In addition to our life stories compiled in one location, the time it took to track down all our friends and family was no easy task. If a better platform existed, how sure are we that all of those people would follow us there? Facebook has room to improve with the addition of mobile advertising, better analytics, and maybe even it’s own shopping platform one day. However, Facebook is far from being extinct with me!
Check out Zuckerberg’s talk at TechCrunch yesterday, explaining the vision and plans for fb: http://www.ustream.tv/TechCrunch
Nice post.