According to facebook's company profile, there are more than 400 million users, half of which log in every day. With the average person having 130 friends or more on facebook, its a popular way to share topics of conversation, chat with friends, send links to websites, and send messages among other things. Just recently online gaming has reached into facebook with apps that include advertisements and paying features. All of which make facebook an ever growing network. According to studies its nearest competitor MySpace holds just a few more million users, and with a growth rate of more than 57% compared to MySpace's 10%, it will only be a few more years (even months) before facebook overtakes MySpace. In fact analysts project facebook to overtake MySpace by the end of 2010.
With this ever growing social network, people are communicating faster than ever. As was commentated on in a previous blog post, text messaging is also an increasing method of communicating, but I think the two serve different purposes and are actually stark competitors of each other.
If you go to facebook.com on your computer's browser you will see several advertisements, usually on the left side of the screen. In addition, applications and groups are used to advertise. What mobile devices do well, annoyingly for advertisers mind you, is essentially limit or eliminate all advertising. If you use the facebook app for the iPhone, there is just a concise version of facebook, you can fully manage your friends messages/wall posts, but you can't see advertisements and games. This limitation in viewing advertisements may spell long term problems for facebook as people ever increasingly switch to mobile platforms. As there are more users, there are going to be increased costs for servers and this will incur more revenue from advertising to match the demand. So, maybe facebook should invest in figuring out new strategies to be sneaky and advertise inside their mobile apps.
Further, texting does not incur any advertising at all. Facebook does however. If more people start to use their mobile devices, i.e. iPhones/Blackberries they are likely to just use texting as their way to quickly communicate and have facebook for their public selves. In this advertisement free environment, who is going to pay for facebook's costs? As more and more advertisers realize this, they may pull away from advertising, decreasing the revenue for facebook, which may lead to its future peak and downturn. Just a little advice to facebook is to look out for mobile devices, but don't ignore or restrict involvement, but embrace it. Figure out ways to make a profit, not just provide a convenient tool for users (but do that as well).
One other thing I find interesting about facebook and social networks is one's ability to "facebook stalk" people they know of or complete stalkers. There is a certain amount understanding when one posts online, but where is the limit on privacy? Of course there are safety/privacy restrictions, but it just feels a little too creepy to me to think that literally hundreds of people are seeing the latest picture of me, or hearing about my latest status update. Quick fact, people update their status's 60 million times per day on average. I guess one should just use the cardinal rule, post only what you want other people to see, because remember, you boss or university may be looking at it, not to mention your mother or father.
For whoever reads this blog, what do you do on your facebook?
- Do you log in every day?
- Do you "facebook stalk" your friends / strangers?
- Do you have family or people at work on your page?
- Jeff
No comments:
Post a Comment