What’s next for Facebook?
Much has been made of the challenges facing Facebook in the next 12 months. Here Benji Hall gives his view on the path we can expect to see the social media giant go down.
In recent weeks, months and years, we’ve all become used to hearing predictions on the demise of Facebook. Most of us in the marketing world realise the death of the social network is still a long way off.
However, it is true Facebook faces some big challenges, which are forcing the company to look down new, and potentially lucrative, avenues.Research shows less young people – those in their teens and early twenties – are logging on. The social network has struggled to compete with challenger apps like Kik and Snapchat, which are attracting a younger audience by giving people more control over their content. This is something that Facebook has struggled to do, particularly as it tries to balance monetisation of the site to advertisers with its offering to its users.
Benji, would this bring a new age of paid advertising to an otherwise clean app like Tinder?
I’m swiping left on that!
*Sponsored swipes*
Interesting thought Benji. For the sake of the Tindr community I’m hoping not! Then again, imagine the potential of a Tindr and (Facebook owned) Occulus Rift collab.
Once condescending corporates get all over any model, they generally turn to sh1t for the user.
Trust disappears when sold out. There are no pre roll adverts on Facey when it comes to Video……. Is there a model right there?
Rewarding the channel / page owner would be a way to compete with YouTube… Give something back Facebook.
Facebook acquisitions fall in to one of two categories: diversification and competition. Both are clever (and Facebook is copying Google’s playbook here).
Oculus was a diversification acquisition, Whatsapp and Instagram were competition acquisitions.
It’s hard to see where Tinder would fit in that strategy – it’s not even close to the right scale (10million DAU’s), and importantly it’s actually built on top of Facebook technology (which, as Twitter once found out, it can switch off at any moment).
An interesting argument against Facebook acquiring mobile apps is that a huge proportion of Facebook’s advertising revenue is driven by VC money. These VC funded startups (like Tinder) run ads on Facebook to get users to download and install their apps. Acquiring those companies then is actually going to kill advertising revenue for Facebook (some estimates have that VC revenue to be around 70% of all mobile FB advertising).
Given Facebook’s recent strategic pitch to become the video platform of choice for the world, I’d actually bet that some of the biggest acquisitions this year will be content related companies, and a huge swag of content creators (most of them poached from YouTube).
@Avid Tinder Fan @Matt Sim: We’re already seeing some paid ‘premium’ Tindr account options. I wonder whether we’ll see the day when Tindr will recommend ‘bars near your date’??
@Same Old- I definitely like the idea of page owners being rewarded for users watching pre-rolls on their videos. But like you say, will user trust and experience be grossly affected as they see even more ads on Facebook? Facebook always like to ‘test’ new scenarios and apologise later, but this seems a risky move in the short term.
@NH- Would a Tindr advanced subscription model offer higher quality matches based on Facebook profile data? Definitely some interesting points around the acquisition of content related companies.
@Benji – Tinder are offering a subscription model, launching in the next few weeks (http://venturebeat.com/2015/02.....-in-march/). But it focuses on travel and an undo feature, not better matching.
Getting a bit OT, but many studies have found that doing ‘better matches’ using computers is nigh on impossible, despite what the big data snake oil bottle might say. OK Cupid actually did an experiment telling couples who were ‘poorly matched’ that they were actually good matches – and people responded accordingly (http://blog.okcupid.com/index......an-beings/).
Another interesting direction is content production. Last week, Facebook announced plans to create a studio for the production of VR films on the Oculus Rift platform.
VR is going to be a game changer and Facebook has very shrewdly positioned itself at the centre. VR is the ideal vehicle for Facebook to re-build with the yoof!
is facebook just full of marketing types marketing to each other now?
honest question, dunno anyone who uses it anymore.