I wonder what's Facebook's move after Instagram becomes stale and no longer "cool". It seems to me that the popularity of social networks are cyclical, and there's very little that a company can do to satiate a user's appetite for something new. That's before we discuss future regulatory troubles Facebook might face.
What future revenue streams does Facebook have? Are they even capable of creating something new that users love? As far as I can tell, they haven't created any popular products outside of Facebook version 1.0.
Out of all the major tech companies, Facebook's position seems the least stable IMO.
They have over 2 billion monthly active users. This is a global penetration rate that is the best in the world. They have done something that no other company in the world has done. They are relevant to basically the vast majority of all Internet users in the world. To say they are the least stable or that their power over most humans is waning is, quite frankly, ludicrous.
To put it in perspective, they would need to lose 3/4 of their users to reach Twitter levels. Sure, Hacker News has loads of people that hate Facebook, but don't be fooled by the HN bias here. Also, all the armchair CEOs here would do anything to get even 1% of Zuckerberg's success. I don't think Facebook is going anywhere soon.
Windows has seen an officially reported install base as high as 1.5B. This was a few years ago; their numbers have taken a hit recently.
Considering the average annual revenue per U.S. Facebook user is ~$20, startlingly less in other countries, arguably Microsoft, not Facebook, is the more interesting company. Nearly as many active users as Facebook, but substantially more revenue per user (~$50-$150 for an OEM key? Add in office subscriptions, enterprise users, oh my) and substantially more "eye-time" (monthly active? once per month? ha. you used Windows the entire time you were on the PC). Arguably. I don't want to argue it. It's just a thought and it's not the point.
No one looks at Microsoft and thinks "they're going to absolutely dominate the home computing OS market in 2030." They owned the planet and they threw it away. At best they'll remain a second-rate player in the cloud market, riding the ripples of their 90s enterprise clients until those die out as well.
Meanwhile Apple and Google ate their cake. No one saw that coming in 2001. Wait, the company that nearly went bankrupt and now makes that really bad MP3 player, and... Google who? Hold on let me AltaVista that. The companies that are, today, worth almost nothing are worth a combined $2T in just 17 years? What the hell happens to the US Dollar in the next decade?!
Shit changes, and it changes overnight. Sometimes literally, most of the time just "faster than you expect". The only thing you can bet on is that "active users" means about as much as the moon landing conspiracy theories.
> Considering the average annual revenue per U.S. Facebook user is ~$20, startlingly less in other countries, arguably Microsoft, not Facebook, is the more interesting company.
Your points are all valid. However, you're comparing Apples to Oranges. MSFT makes a large chunk of their revenue from Enterprise customers. I don't think it's fair to put the two companies in the same category.
Your larger point however, I def agree. Microsoft diversified itself, and Facebook will eventually too.
Facebook might mature though. They have large data centers all over the world, if they wanted to, they could make their own cloud service and sell that.
React is one of the most used front-end frameworks in the world, so it’s not like they aren’t capable of doing what Microsoft does, if that becomes their focus.
I’m not sure either company is really that interesting though. Azure is limited AWS but with better support, Windows is more horrible than it’s ever been and the .Net environment is a shit show for anyone working in it because it’s running around like a confused cat. Which is awesome for some people, but terrible when you have to keep your employees up to speed.
I mean, going from asp to mvc to core 1 to core 2 has been ridiculously expensive. So has replacing half our services with modern power shell and orchestra. It’s not bad tech wise, but it’s so ridiculous expensive from an organizational perspective.
The worst bit is that in a few years, you can add to things Microsoft has changed for the apparent fun of it.
We didn’t have to adopt core from a tech perspective, of course, but my developers wanted to, to stay relevant in the .net job scene, so we kind of had to from a management perspective.
It’s too much though, and they are doing the same across platforms. Like we have skype for business and we’ve trained 7000 employees to use it, and now it’s becoming obsolete... That’ll litteraly cost us millions because 5000 of our employee can’t tell you if they are on an android or iPhone device when they contact support, so many of them won’t havd learned Skype before it dies. :p
I think the thing that describes the problems with modern Microsoft the best is how they enabled new 365 features by default. So suddenly we had non-tech savvy people creating teams (and new emails that were added to our address books).
Anyway, this was a long rant, but it’s just to show that Microsoft isn’t really doing well in non-tech focused enterprise. And we’re their main market share.
Facebook had a cloud. It was called Parse. They bought it in 2013, then they promptly shut it down in 2016. It wasn't a failed product. It was in use by hundreds of thousands of customers. But it didn't align with their "vision" or whatever, which of course no one noticed when they paid $85M for it three years before, but visions change and whatever.
Point being: they squandered any trust they'd have been able to gain in that arena, and they're competing with the most powerful companies on the planet. I don't see it happening.
> They have over 2 billion monthly active users. This is a global penetration rate that is the best in the world. They have done something that no other company in the world has done. They are relevant to basically the vast majority of all Internet users in the world. To say they are the least stable or that their power over most humans is waning is, quite frankly, ludicrous.
Yahoo used to be the most popular email provider, too. It was relevant to a vast number of American internet users, when American internet users were most of the internet.
I don't think you can infer future relevance from present usage statistics. There are definite network effects with social networks, but fashion and novelty also play a major role. If Facebook/Instagram lose the latter, I don't think the former can sustain the kind of user engagement they require to thrive.
Facebook is here to stay. They are not Myspace. They are following the model of many of the tech companies that survive. If they can't copy it they will buy it. They have enough revenues that they can buy any hot startup and nurse it to success. Zuckerberg will likely be CEO for at least the next 10 years and has shown that he can learn from mistakes and continue to succeed. He's one of the few that has learned his way to successful CEO of a large company.
There's very little that can bring them down. Even if the government regulates them the regulations will not be so stringent that they will cause Facebook to fold. The irony is that regulations favor big companies since they make it harder for small start-ups to succeed.
facebook might actually move away from Web 3.0 and then become here to stay like ... TV 2.0
the content already feels like a mindless one-way feed from a centralized provider. barely at all like the original incarnation that connected me with my friends.
Facebook is dead. They have lost all momentum. The older people that have not moved on to snapchat or Instagram are exactly those that will be flummoxed by the changes.
Why do people compare Instagram Stories to Snapchat? Instagram copied stories from Snapchat, but they didn't copy the core of the app, ephemeral pictures.
Honestly, it is dead in terms of people wanting to be on it. But in college, as I've recently discovered, everything is on Facebook, whether it be clubs, your hall mates, study groups, anything.
I mean, can they not BUY the next one? It's what they did with Instagram after all.
>What future revenue streams does Facebook have?
The amount of Data facebook has on the behavioral nature of current parents and current and future American children of said parents is _insane_. Facebook may not be a social media company for ever, but big blue will be an advertising powerhouse for a while with the amount of data they have.
I'm much more bearish on antitrust than most people throwing that term around, but even I am against Facebook being able to buy another upstart social network. They cannot be allowed to do that.
Maybe they can do something completely different like Oculus and leverage their infrastructure to make the best product possible. But even then that's a huge gamble, and I don't think Oculus has lived up to anywhere near the hype.
They're getting into sports for VR, buying licenses, streaming rights and stuff. Most european soccer clubs are already primarly interacting with their fans through FB. FB might attack Sky sports and similar, and instead promote the idea of the self marketing of clubs and their streaming rights. Right now, in many countries there's still a "middle man" or body that handles the streaming license stuff for entire leagues.
Once clubs realize that they could fill virtual stadiums or sell virtual tickets, this may change. They may even switch to free tickets in the real world to better the stadium atmosphere and fill their virtual stadiums that won't have a capacity cap..
Cool probably doesn't matter nearly as much as it used to given Facebook's user base size. As long as they have eyeballs, they'll have a revenue stream. Their willingness to pay what appeared to be outrageous sums for competitors users reflects that. But now that they've got the lions share of the social network using world, it's doubtful that they'd need to do that again in a big way unless they see something getting serious traction with people who are not already Facebook users.
You say least stable but let's look at Yahoo as an example: they've been dead for over a decade and lots of people still use them. Massive data breaches, people still use them etc. etc. Imagine how many people will keep using Facebook if all they manage to do is be a less bad version of Yahoo. People are creatures of habit and once they develop a habit, especially one that doesn't cost $$$ upfront, it takes a herculean effort to get most of them to change their behavior. Once people are hooked, many of them seem to be willing to be abused nearly forever.
I think the next big thing for FB is VR. If VR becomes mainstream soon (and I think it will) and FB lead the space with Oculus, then their future is bright.
What future revenue streams does Facebook have? Are they even capable of creating something new that users love? As far as I can tell, they haven't created any popular products outside of Facebook version 1.0.
Out of all the major tech companies, Facebook's position seems the least stable IMO.