27% (500 Million) of the Global Internet Community (1.9 Billion) is on Facebook. (January 2010)
Tapping into this ever growing large user base (16-44 year old) would be a strategically sound move since the majority of these people are active, fast adopting Internet users who are willing to transcend the physical and time boundaries and try new ways in which to connect and stay connected with people through mutual friends, a common interest, a purpose or a particular relationship intention (e.g. people that are single that want to play tennis and want to meet people to potentially date, etc).
Wherever it is with family members in town or overseas, or friends all over the world and from past phases of their lives or even contacting an artist, celebrity or sports person – currently Facebook holds the monopoly for bringing people together – humans are social beings, typically on the move (between home and work, traveling the globe to meet with family, traveling the world to discover and explore new places, etc)
Is the Facebook bubble of success set to burst anytime soon? Two years ago before they launched their new localization strategy and contextual advertising component, when they were in aggressive “get the member” mode (to acquire members by the country load) – I would have said YES, Facebook today, another social network utility tomorrow as they come and go like a revolving door!BUT, it seems Facebook may have a sustaining and all encompassing product strategy ( their value proposition remains the same by connecting people through an enticing yet sustainable UI, platform, business model, ad revenue model, localization strategy, technology roadmap) that may be the recipe for success that will carry them through the economies of scale and how these users continue to grow and evolve with Facebook being part of their lives!
Many industry speculators thought that the Facebook adoption would take a steep and sudden dive once any or some of the following challenges or underlying issues/risks grew big enough to put a dent in the whole Facebook craze:
- Privacy and identity theft issues
- Negative and scandalous exposure of people – those skeletons in the closet coming back to haunt one’s credibility or even pictures surfacing from that crazy party you were drunk at
- Scamming profiles – charity case imposters, scammers, digital right breachers, bots, criminal activity, etc.
- Risk of inundating the site with invasive ads and unwanted promotional content
- Misusing the user-uploaded photos by reselling them to marketing agencies, 3rd party companies (this is true check the T&Cs)
- Abusing their access to an immense load of user demographic data as they sit on a data-mining goldmine that Google wants to tap into, etc.
- Shock and awe UI redesign strategy – they have a way of launching a drastically different UI and navigational design every 6 months or so. For every minute that 1 user is disgruntled by the new design changes, there are another 100 that will sign up globally or be reinstated back into the Facebook world. And if the new UI does manage to put people off for a given time period, then the fact that there are > 20 family or friends in one’s circle of trust will quickly have them reinstating the profile.
Facebook has set a number of usage microtrends and “mainstream pop culture” wheels in motion:
- New breed of Facebook models – a guy or girl (mainly girls 14-23 years old) can post a set of “model looking glam” shots of themselves from their amateur or professional photo shoot and quickly claim they are a “model”. http://www.break.com/index/that-doesnt-make-you-a-model-song.html
- Garage or basement amateur musicians can quickly launch a “band page” with their demo tapes, recordings and content and use this as their claim to fame (MySpace went after this demographic before their user based tanked drastically thanks to Facebook)
- Make shift newscasters, media sharers, link posters and specialized content providers as most members become active sharers of Web content regardless of type, domain or subject. The viral marketing component is off the hook!
- Allowing existing celebrities, professional sports people, political icons and more to reach their “fanbase” or following e.g. Rafael Nadal actually writes his own status updates and posts his play-by-play off court pictures at the hotel and airport. He reaches out personally to his following, more so than the NBA stars who use the Facebook outlet as an additional marketing outlet.