You couldn’t really describe the Microsoft investment in Facebook as breaking news, the story seems to have been going on for weeks. The final outcome, a 1.6% stake for $240 million, valueing Facebook at $15 billion. If Facebook is worth $15 billion, then I’m the Queen of Sheba.
Whilst I think that it is an outrageous price, it will probably work out quite well for Microsoft as it will tie Facebook into their adverts for the forseeable future. Whereas I don’t think it is necessarily a good deal for Facebook, they should have sold a little bit more whilst they had the chance, their stock is unlikely to be riding this high forever and they need to capitalise on it ASAP. Zuckerberg talks about going public in two years, by which point it will probably be worth half as much.
The other big social networking sites are going to continue innovating, new social networking sites will enter the market, the mobile market is going to become increasingly important, and teens are going to decide they want to hang out somewhere different to their parents. The market is constantly shifting, but the $15billion price tag seems to reflect a continued status quo. Yesterday Techcrunch published the growth rates of a number of different social sites, and the fastest by far is IMEEM a site that has managed to pass me by up to now. Whilst I have yet to have a close look at IMEEM, it serves to illustrate the point about emerging sites; it may be the next big thing, it may not, the point is nothing will stay the same.
However the future of social networking pans out, one thing is for sure: Rupert Murdoch got MySpace for a bargain price.
Over at GigaOm some statistics have been put up that show a fall in Facebook’s traffic, both in absolute user numbers and in the number of pages viewed. If it is indeed true, and I fear it may be more to do with the calculating of the figures, I would be very pleased indeed. I liked Facebook, but quickly got bored of it, and it would be nice if the fact its really ‘not all that’ was reflected in some sort of numbers. One of the things I hate about the web is the way surfers go crazy about the latest big thing.
OK, so the figures are not showing a ‘nose-dive’, and there may be a reasonable explanation for the dip in users, but more than anything it is a reminder to the blogosphere that there is a world beyond Facebook (and the other big current topic-the iPhone) and that we should really be keeping the iPhone and Facebook stories within reasonable limits. When Google bought Jaiku many bloggers felt it was necessary to explain what Jaiku was, surely if the blogosphere had been doing its job then the users would have already known what Jaiku was; unfortunately the blogosphere had been banging on about Twitter for months instead.
The latest research from comScore finds U.K. social networking site usage to be the highest in Europe. Whilst the UK users average 5.8 hours per month (with the heavy users’ average being 22 hours per month), the average hours per user in Germany is only 3.1 hours and in France 2.0 hours. There are two ways of viewing these result:
1) UK residents are using social networking sites to share ideas, collaborate, and come up with innovative ideas, and increased use of social networking sites will help economic growth.
2) UK residents are merely wilfing, aimlessly surfing the internet with little or no purpose (from the phrase ‘what was I looking for), and is of little productive use.
Whilst the press release lacks details on which social networking sites are being used (LinkedIn use seems likely to be more productive than MySpace), I fear that the majority of use is likely to be the big three generic sites (i.e., MySpace, Bebo, and Facebook), and people’s surfing habits have changed from aimlessly surfing the whole web to aimlessly surfing/interacting with their social network communities. Whilst I am sure that our fellow Europeans will soon catch up, I don’t think it will be something that they’ll be boasting about.
Whilst all the Facebook pages now have bright enticing ‘Facebook Flyer‘ adverts down the side, the lack of variety in the adverts (at least in the West Midlands), and the fact the flyers don’t seem to be content driven, means that you can happily kill time finding a group that (vaguely) amusingly matches a flyer that you have seen, and then re-find the flyer with the help of the refresh button:
An advert for gay dating on an anti-gay group:
Or the chance to win an iPhone on an anti-cellphone group:
I am almost tempted to join the London network for a greater choice in the adverts…. although I am sure there are more productive ways to spend my time.
Over the last week there has been a lot of news about the situation in Burma, and it is unsurprising to find that it is a hot topic on Facebook. Both Allfacebook and Mashable highlight the “Support the Monks’ Protest in Burma” group that was growing at 3,000 members an hour at one point, and at the time of writing this blog entry had passed the 225,000 members mark. Whilst I don’t doubt that there are many people in the group that sympathise with the monks’ situation in Burma, the ease with which people can now join groups or sign online petitions means that it is necessary to reassess what such large numbers represent. 50,000 people joining a Facebook support group is not the same as 50,000 people standing outside a Burmese embassy, in fact I doubt it is comparable to 1,000 people standing outside a Burmese embassy. The mass joining of Facebook support groups may even have a negative effect on a cause, as it allows people to assuage their guilt without making any real effort.
There is a place for Facebook support groups in the sharing of information and promotion of real-world activities, however if we focus on the numbers too much we run the risk of turning every situation into a Facebook race, where important political discussions are beaten by ‘just for funs’: Canada vs. America(493,356 members); “I secretly want to punch slow walking people in the back of the head” (424,980 members).
According to Mashable, from tomorrow you will be able to add a photo to your profile page on LinkedIn. Whilst I agree that it is a good idea, as it helps with the identification of people, I don’t agree with Mashable’s conclusion that:
It’s clearly a move that aims to keep up with Facebook, which increasingly looks set to steal LinkedIn’s audience.
Facebook and LinkedIn are extremely different animals, appealing to very different markets. Whilst there is a big overlap between the two social networks in the types of users, their purposes are very different, and the same user on the different networks will use them in very different ways and for different purposes.
Whilst Facebook has shown some innovative ideas that other social networks want to incorporate, such as the developer platform, this is not necessarily the same as the other social networks wanting to be Facebook. After all, it would be a very odd ‘potential Facebook user’ who decided to stay with LinkedIn purely due to the addition of a profile picture.
It would be nice if sometimes the web could talk about social networks without discussing Facebook, and mobile phones without discussing iPhones.
I don’t know how many times I have read rumours about Microsoft buying Facebook, or bits of Facebook, or how much Facebook are looking for in another round of financing. Every time these stories raise their head I think, surely this is the opportunity for Facebook to really be innovative on a big scale and utilise that social graph they are always banging on about.
Why doesn’t Facebook sell a portion of the company to the users. Their enthusiasm would push the prices higher than they would get from Microsoft, and create a network of Facebook evangelists who would get everyone they knew on board, however young or old, tech-savvy or tech-incompetent.
Whilst I am sure it would be a logistical nightmare, and that Microsoft brings more to the table than a rather large chequebook, it would be nice to give the investment opportunity to those that have built the value of Facebook rather than the corporate suits who already have plenty of money.
Nielsen/Netratings have just released figures showing the most popular social networks in the UK by unique audience. The inevitable has happened and Facebook has finally overtaken MySpace, with Bebo continuing to grow faster than MySpace. As Facebook has been the topic of (what seems like) millions of articles in the mainstream press it is unsurprising to find it the most popular social networking site, although it seems likely that many of the users will be relatively short lived…a factor that will go unnoticed in the short term.
For me the most surprising result was Friends Reunited at number 5. Not only holding its own, but continuing to grow! Why on earth are people continuing to use this site? Where you pay on Friends Reunited, its free on Facebook. It may be that Nielsen have combined the ratings with Genes Reunited and Friends Reunited Dating, nonetheless it seems to show that the constant stream of Friends Reunited adverts on the ITV web site is doing them some good.
Whilst the popularity and growth of Facebook makes comparisons with search engines inevitable, it is missing one key ingredient: it is not indispensable. My numerous online hours can pass quite happily without feeling the need to look at Facebook, and I have noticed of late that days are passing before I remember to log on. Whereas once I made an effort to keep up with all the latest Facebook applications, news and rumours, now I find I give a little shrug. I find I really couldn’t care less about the latest applications being sold on ebay or the introduction of Facebook’s auto-complete for the sidebar search.
That is not to say that facebook doesn’t have a lot of potential, I just haven’t found that one thing that makes me need to go back again and again. Whilst there are applications that appeal to me, they are often clunkier versions of something that already exists at another URL in a more user friendly format and I prefer to visit those. For example, both chess.com and shelfari.com have applications on Facebook and standalone web sites, but applications aren’t as good as their sites, and whilst I have no need to return to Facebook, I want to return to chess.com to make a move on a game I am playing, and return to shelfari.com to add the latest book I am reading. The purpose of Facebook is just not defined enough for me.
Somebody needs to create a Facebook application that requires an already established user network, and is so innovative that users will have to keep coming back…whoever does that will quickly become very rich.
It sometimes feels as though every other story I read on the web is talking about either Facebook or the iPhone. Surely more than they deserve? Especially for a UK reader where the iPhone is not yet available and the last I head Facebook was in third place in the UK. Admittedly it is the fastest growing, but much of this is due to the extremely low starting point as it only recently opened up to UK users.
So has the over-exuberance of the web, and especially the blogosphere, for the iPhone addled the minds of those people at O2 who, its being reported, have paid through the nose to be the UK carrier of the iPhone. Whilst the iPhone has created enough of an internet buzz to really get people interested in the next generation of mobile phones, does this mean it is necessarily the best, or that it is good enough to draw people to the O2 network.
There is no doubt that the iPhone is a stylish looking bit of kit, but does it really compete with the functionality offered by the N95? Whilst it doesn’t look like it, it doesn’t have to. The majority who buy the iPhone will be buying it as a fashion accessory, and there will undoubtedly be plenty of them.
Personally I weighed up the option of waiting for the iPhone on O2 (it had been rumoured for a while) or going for the N95 on a carrier who offered unlimited web use for £7.50 a month, it was an obvious choice. Looking at the O2 site today, I still can’t see an unlimited web use option (the only price I could spot was £3 for 2MB of browsing), and unless it introduces an unlimited tariff for the iPhone (which they may not be able to afford to now), I wouldn’t touch it with a bargepole.
