What do you think is Facebook's long-term strategy?

[kirse]

I'm still trying to understand what is preventing Facebook from becoming just another social fad, especially after reading the whole article on the Google exodus to Facebook. Right now it's still just a glorified social network slowly trending towards Myspaceism with all the AppCrap (as I call it).

"We want to make Facebook into something of an operating system so you can run full applications..." (Zuckerberg). Ok that's great, but the majority of Facebook apps are FAR from what a traditional OS offers.

As a successful app developer (550k users) myself, the bin of roughly 9,000+ growing apps has made it pretty damn hard to unite any major Facebook usergroup behind a single app. It's the same problem as trying to find a single, unified, interest-group among the millions that exist (hint: you can't). If only 2 of your 200 friends have added the app, it's pretty much worthless from a SocialOS standpoint, no matter how awesome it is. Obviously "social apps"-"social"="plain old app", and there are very few Web apps that can compete with plain old desktop apps right now.

Facebook has executed the social network component amazingly well, but their vision as a SocialOS by web developers has not been much more than a hack-job with 99% of apps falling into the "Value-Added: None" category. They would do better to buy up the good applications by developers and make them permanent components to Facebook.

Don't even get me started on the SocialAds network either, that has absolutely ZERO benefit to the end-user other than another way to brag about what you've bought to your friends.

Right now the biggest thing Facebook has for it is the appeal of FB as the cool new thing to do (over Myspace) and the fact that many of us still use it as a glorified contacts directory (College student speaking here who's been on FB since v1).

So in summary, we have a great Social Network + Poorly executed socialOS + Privacy-Invading Ad Network. Right now users are only benefitting from the first one, and I see no reason why they won't just move on to the next great(er) social network. After all, that's exactly what's happening as people get rid of Myspace for Facebook.

[icky]

1. Get users (done)

2. Get investment money (done)

3. Lure developers on to their platform as sharecroppers (done)

4. Get more investment money (done)

5. Starve existing (and possible) social networks of users through network effects and platform lock-in (done)

6. Get more investment money (done?)

7. Hold out long enough to get at least a partial exit for founders. (working on it)

8. Implode

[indie01 → icky]

>>5. Starve existing (and possible) social networks of users through network effects and platform lock-in (done)

This is what Microsoft did. Maybe not necessarily with "social networks," but in principle. The fact that this little iteration of 'lock-in' is both preceded and followed by a "getting investment money" cycle would be a cause of alarm to me if I were a potential facebook investor or employee. Scratch the "investment" word and you're left with just "getting money." Welcome to the real world.

Lock-in is not a sustainable means of long-term growth, revenue, or profit. Obfuscating code behind a bunch of platform-specific run-around gibberish and license lawsuit nonsense doesn't benefit users and gives developers major headaches. Lawyers do seem to like it, though, since they always are "getting money".

As history has shown, superior, non-obfuscated, legal, free! open-source code will inevitably appear on the outside of any lock-in. Lock-in creates something known in management as "groupthink" and it's almost never (ouch, sorry for the pun) "group_wise_". Groupthink causes those on the inside to value that which is on the inside > the market is able to value it. There's a reason disclosure is required in the world of securities: it's called "insider trading."

So for long-term strategy, I'd say facebook flubbed bigtime by being greedy. Being greedy ala-Microsoft and "not accepting anything less than a billion" or . . . whatever the tipping point was that caused them to jump in the stew with Microsoft specifically . . . that was really just not smart. Trying to be too many things to too many people?

The Internet was built for niche markets. I'm hopeful on the open source niche. :)

[cratuki]

1. Get lots of users

2. ???

3. Profit!

I'm wondering how dangerous the police state aspects of it are. The fact that I've willingly told somebody "who all my friends are".

[JohnN]

Well....

1. Facebook does has a great Social Network and the chances of people moving elsewhere is unlikely because they have developed a critical mass. Millions of people are already invested in Facebook. Fads are easy to change. Its not easy to opt out of Facebook because your friends drag you back. I cannot go and join another network because none of my friends are there.

2. You say the social OS is poorly executed but you have to remember its early days and I am eager to see how the integration of Parakey will change Facebook. You are right when you say there is a lot of app crap, however slowly but surely I expect better more useful apps to be developed as Facebook become more professional. Its a fun social network at the moment but I've seen my friends profiles change significantly since joining megacorp. Their profiles are now like resumes.

3. The Privacy-Invading Ad Network pisses me off. But because of number 1 (above) I think its one of those things that will be accepted as a fait-accompli. Us guys and girls in the tech community may start a fuss, but Facebook now has millions of members. We can be ignored and if the majority of people don't care, I doubt Facebook will change things.

Conclusion - Its too early to tell were Facebook is going (they probably don't even know). Somethings about it may piss us off, but the tech community's influence in Facebook will wan.

[brk → JohnN]

Couldn't your Point #1 also be said of MySpace before?

The problem for Facebook is that the cost for the users of switching to a newer social network site is practically zero. A little bit of time to create your profile, but no real significant costs.

If 3 of your most significant friends from FB emailed you about a new, free, social site, would you ignore their emails, or would you go check it out and maybe join them? If you joined them, how many people would YOU attempt to drag over?

[bosshog → brk]

the truth:

http://chimprawk.blogspot.com/2007/11/social-network-transit...

[JohnN → brk]

You make a fair point....

but Myspace never had the effect of Facebook because the social aspects are limited. The tie-in is not as string as Facebook and how many of us actually had a myspace page we updated regularly when Myspace was big? The privacy aspect of Facebook has prob been the main difference between the two companies

[Goladus → JohnN]

Social aspects aren't especially more limited in Myspace. You have friend lists, bulletins, status feeds, and profile comments-- all of the most popular features of Facebook. You don't have "MySpace Apps" but people add stuff like quizzes to their pages and send questionnaire bulletins all the time.

[waleedka → JohnN]

Good analysis. I think Facebook made a brilliant move by focusing on the "utility" aspect. They even describe themselves as such in their tag line. They don't say "a place to meet people", or "connect with your friends", ...etc. They say: we're a "social utility".

I believe they're aiming to be the next-generation replacement of email. A tool through which you connect with people for all purposes. I use it to connect with friends, and recently for business connections as well. They still have a long way to go, so we shouldn't judge them by the features they have today. At least they're moving in the right direction.

[nkohari → waleedka]

The trouble is, no walled garden will be able to replace email. Email works because it's open -- anyone who can set up an MX record and an SMTP server can send and receive email. Social networks will succeed if someone can figure out how to make it open in the same way. I'd say that's probably the future of communication on the web... some amalgamation of email, IM, and social networks. Meebo gets close, but I think for IM to work, it has to be integrated with the desktop. Maybe an AIR version or something like that...?

[nkohari]

There still has yet to be an application that takes advantage of the real value of the Facebook platform. Current applications are all about virility and simple fun. While there's nothing wrong with that, the social information about Facebook's users could be utilized for so much more.

Facebook has a chance to be the "source of truth" for the social graph. When you sign up for a new service that has a social aspect, the service could use the Facebook API to learn if your friends are also on the service. For example, what if when you signed up with Twitter, it figured out if any of your friends were already on the site? The future of the Facebook "app" is really a concept that could stand on its own, but instead leverages Facebook so its users don't have to re-create their social graph.

Of course, that means that sites that are "Facebook-driven" would require people to create accounts on Facebook -- at least to take advantage of the social aspects of the site. Depending on the site, that may matter a lot or not that much.

In terms of monetization, I think that Facebook still has yet to reveal their full advertising strategy... the new Pages system and SocialAds are pointless, because they add no real value to the consumer. It's all just glorified spam. They really missed the mark big time, because just because I bought a new digital camera doesn't mean I give a rat's ass about friending Sony.

However, if they could leverage the demographic and interest-based information in a user's profile, and use it to drive very good targeted ads, they could have something special.

[DanielBMarkham → nkohari]

So your premise is that there is a race to own all of my friendships, and FaceBook can be the source of truth for that?

I understand the premise, but I'm not drinking the coolaid. I have all kinds of friends -- personal friends, professional friends, friends from school, friends from work. I don't want to be mixing those guys up inside of one big FaceBook bag-o-social-goodness.

Right now my FaceBook friends are people who contacted me on FaceBook and wanted to link up. That's fine. But I don't go looking for others, and these same folks will be using some other app five years from now and they'll be inviting me to join it. I know, because I've been through several generations of this: classmates.com, MySpace, ICQ, AIM, GMail, etc. Everybody wants to make viral apps, which means everybody is constantly infecting each other and soon there's a new prominent infection going round. Won't be long until somebody out-FaceBooks FaceBook.

[nkohari → DanielBMarkham]

I agree that the Facebook site itself is nothing special, but the data that they control is. The next class of people graduating from college will have had Facebook throughout their entire tenure. It's likely that Facebook will try to evolve to follow them into their professional lives.

I also agree about having different kinds of friends. However, it would be pretty simple to categorize friends as colleagues, acquaintances, etc. It might insult people in the beginning, but if it was part of the system, it would become second-nature.

Apps that are viral for the sake of virility are a waste of time. They might be fun for awhile, and they might make their creators a little bit of cash, but Vampires and Werewolves will never have a sustainable business model. However, software that leverages the information in Facebook and the virility of the news feed will gain a leg-up on the competition.

[apathy → nkohari]

Virility != virulence.

Virility is manliness. Virulence is the quality of being viral.

I was wondering what the hell made an app 'manly' for a bit there.

[marketer]

1) Keep it pervasive across all generations - every kid who enters high school or college gets a facebook account

2) Make sure facebook remains a necessary tool for social interaction

3) Cultivate the app platform, and make sure there is incentive to develop applications