There are new social media sites popping up that are less corporate and respect your privacy. People will eventually migrate to one of these. Fb will die like myspace. Short that ****.
The other thing I forgot to mention is that a major problem for FB revenue is a massive (and growing) amount of their users use ad block -- so no money to be made there.
I think it's not so much ad block as: - Their ad click rates are not nearly as good as Google's (see recent push to start putting up context-sensitive ads) - They get no ad revenue from mobile, and everybody is going mobile. I don't know how they can realistically solve the second problem now with their current model without starting to introduce "sponsored statuses" and such like. Twitter can monetize easily with sponsored/promoted tweets. G+ has a well-thought out privacy model that gives them all the advantages of Twitter's public model while giving users the benefits they would get from Facebook. FB has nothing. Of course, the moment they announce they're going to start popping up ads in your news feed they will face another user revolt, and this time people might actually make good by bolting for ... Google Plus.
I agree about the mobile stuff, but I disagree on G+. That thing is a total disaster. It's been marketed as a Facebook competitor, but it's really much more of a twitter type system. At the most basic level, they missed what makes Facebook so popular: simple, two-way interaction. On G+, you can't post on anyone else's feed. You can't say "Happy Birthday" to your friend. You can post it on your own and tag them, but that's just not the same concept. Until and unless they fix that, I don't think G+ will be all that relevant in regards to Facebook. What G+ is better at is creating a solo feed that others can follow - and adding better interaction to that. It's basically Twitter on steroids. But one of the things that makes Twitter so popular is its sheer simplicity, so I don't know if that's going to be a net plus in the long run. At the end of the day, G+ is a great way to follow people - but it's not a great way to interact with friends.
They can't fix the first problem either (low click rates) because of the nature of the site. When you're on Google, you're searching for stuff. So you're looking to leave the Google Search website and find things - ads thus have a natural appeal. When you're on Facebook, you're busy doing things on Facebook. You're not looking for products or looking to leave your Facebook session, so there's much less incentive to leave the site.
I agree -- G+ isn't without its shortcomings, but I think Google could easily fix those. The point is that the FB model is not good for monetization, not without raising privacy issues. The Twitter and G+ models can be monetized easily; FB is much more difficult - partly due to its history of privacy concerns and partly due to the way it is currently set up. And that is the big problem.
or, through search. Either the obvious - partnering with an established like Bing, or buying an up and coming search engine. Or the less obvious - which is all these articles you read about how search is changing - hence the new Quora like sites. Personally, I understand search may be changing, but not to the extent that things like Quora will ever be the new king of search for the foreseeable future. I don't know what Bing contributes to Microsoft from a top or bottom line perspective, but can't imagine it's been a huge success. A facebook partnership seems too obvious. If I'm on facebook, I see something that looks interesting, and there's an integrated search engine I might just use it. Otherwise, I use google. I guess some people use Bing, but it seems they need more customers, and Facebook will ultimately need a better way to monetize via ads, especially mobile. But I imagine greed and ego will get in the way of that.
G+ is not going to work. People, like myself, already have WAY too much invested in Facebook. I have all the memories of my whole college life+highschool life through other people's photo albums. I have all my connections set, etc. There is no way I can ever think about leaving facebook and investing 100% of my social media time a day to G+.
Yeah, so it looks like their valuation was a bit high. The Nasdaq is up almost 3%, but Facebook is down 11%. Ouch. Sort of expected though.
I had it all on Myspace. I think part of Facebook's brilliance was that it started exclusive. With various colleges being added. It made people want to be a part of it.
very true, i was in the early yrs of HS when FB came out...and only college students were allowed...i was jealous
You don't need an api you could easily screen scrape it via DOM using javascript or c# or java or whatever language you want. However I think facebook doesn't need to worry. It has too much critical mass at this point.
exactly, when you're on google you're more likely to be buying. i do not see any adm revenue potential in facebook.
Lots of spot-on comments here. - FB 70+% revenue is from ads (other 20+% is from FB Credits, platform currency. At first they wanted the split to reach 50/50 but overestimated the adoption of Credits). - FB indeed has lower CTRs than Google but... - Google is search focused whereas FB ad clicks are ad-hoc although... - CPA rates are usually lower on FB vs. Google/3rd party sites for 1. smaller websites and 2. businesses where page/application integration is especially effective - FB has had two or three failed mobile projects now. 1. their base product is too complex for mobile 2. they couldn't get away from 1 product mentality hence... - they bought instagram and for once didn't incorporate or change the original product. their focus has been on mobile this year which... - Google search dominates. Android ICS 4.0 has a mandatory search bar. - G+ lacks critical mass, star sponsorship (twitter/FB dominate and are more niche) and "vestment" (slowly changing). I prefer G+ but the majority of users aren't new adopters, but originally Google product users like myself. - G+ is a different product. It's multiple asymmetrical conversations. Think of Twitter with many accounts all accessible at once (Sina Weibo is a great SNS product to compare with G+, Twitter, Facebook). - I think western culture is more prone to breaking off into niche tools and communities (pinterest, instagram, twitter - contrast with Tencent's portals and products). - FB apps are much more developed and a big sticking point for FB. over 40% of users supposedly have played games on FB. - one of G+ main strategies is to lure developers for higher quality apps. Revenue share on G+ is much lower than Facebook. - FB still has stronger contextual social targeting than Google. So if your friends are buying X, FB can advertise X to you better (the like button was brilliant) - FB has an extremely powerful API. it acts like a cancer, making websites feel they need to take advantage of FB's tools and critical mass, but at the same time it takes personal, detailed information from sites all across the web. This is one of FB's strongest points and Google is definitely playing catch up. - My guess is both are trying to get into e-commerce. Google with the hardware wallet approach, FB with business pages and FB credits. anyways, that's my input for now
I find it hard to invest in a company that some kid in a dorm room might blow out of the water within 6 months.
It's easy. People actively look for information when they use google, but passive receive ad when they check on friend status. BTW, I don't have FB account, and use google every hour.
