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How Facebook Can Become Bigger In Five Years Than Google Is Today

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Re: How Facebook Can Become Bigger In Five Years Than Google Is Today

#11

Post by pkaler »

vaksel wrote: post #4

this is the same crap we used to hear about myspace and friendster. Techcrunch needs to lay off the crack...facebook might be a billion dollar company...it might even be a 2 billion dollar company...but there is no way it'd beat Google. They compare it to Google revenues...but Google's ad product is a lot more effective. On Google the user is searching for widget, and Google tells them "hey widgets are 90% off at thi…

The rate of return is a lot worse with Facebook, because you can only target by demographics...not intent

Facebook will harvest much more intent than they do today. There will be many cases where "Ask your friends/experts" is much better than "Ask PageRank". We are seeing this with knowledge exchange sites like Quora and we will eventually see this with Facebook Questions. And this will seep into all of Facebook's Apps.

Google is having a hell of a time trying to monetize YouTube. They just aren't as good with display advertising. YouTube would be a massive revenue generation engine if Facebook owned it. Look for a Facebook Video that becomes huge.

Facebook will also turn into a massive lead generation engine based on Connect and Pages. Run the numbers for social distribution. You can do customer cluster acquisition through social distribution. With SEM you can only acquire a user at a time.

When you acquire a customer through a social network, they are more likely to lead to referrals than a user acquired through search engine marketing.

Comparing MySpace to Facebook does not follow. MySpace has massive leadership and execution issues. Facebook is probably the best executing pre-IPO company out there.

Re: How Facebook Can Become Bigger In Five Years Than Google Is Today

#12

Post by pkaler »

revorad wrote: post #7
vaksel wrote: post #4

this is the same crap we used to hear about myspace and friendster. Techcrunch needs to lay off the crack...facebook might be a billion dollar company...it might even be a 2 billion dollar company...but there is no way it'd beat Google. They compare it to Google revenues...but Google's ad product is a lot more effective. On Google the user is searching for widget, and Google tells them "hey widgets are 90% off at thi…

The funny and scary point this post made was that maybe (just maybe) Facebook is bringing back the inefficient TV ads that Madison Avenue loves in the form of Facebook banner ads. Facebook ads might make more money than Google ads precisely because their effectiveness cannot be measured (just like TV and billboard ads). Sure, engineers will cite poor CTRs but "brand managers" will be eager to dismiss that as oh-so-20…

Madison Avenue is about demand generation not demand harvesting. You can't market to people that don't realize they have a problem or a need.

You could invent the wheel and there will be no demand to harvest because everyone has always dragged their dinner back to the cave. A caveman will never do a Google search for a wheel.

Re: How Facebook Can Become Bigger In Five Years Than Google Is Today

#13

Post by nostromo »

ditoa wrote: post #6
vaksel wrote: post #4

this is the same crap we used to hear about myspace and friendster. Techcrunch needs to lay off the crack...facebook might be a billion dollar company...it might even be a 2 billion dollar company...but there is no way it'd beat Google. They compare it to Google revenues...but Google's ad product is a lot more effective. On Google the user is searching for widget, and Google tells them "hey widgets are 90% off at thi…

To play devil's advocate here do you have any evidence that Google's model generates higher return, click thru or revenue? To me it seems like Facebook is the best long term business model. Slowly, as you and your friends update every bit of your life, where you are, what you are doing, who you are with, etc. they can have a massive amount of data to target you with. Google basically made Gmail just so they could min…

We tried FB ads at a company I've worked for. The return was so bad we canceled the whole campaign. Compare that to Google SEM, which is the largest channel by far.

FB may have a ton of data about you, but no amount of demo data can beat a person who searches for "i want to buy x" when you're selling x.

Interestingly, Google has had the same difficult time monetizing gmail (compared to search), even though they are targeting based on the content of your inbox.

Re: How Facebook Can Become Bigger In Five Years Than Google Is Today

#14

Post by dinkumthinkum »

vaksel wrote: post #4

this is the same crap we used to hear about myspace and friendster. Techcrunch needs to lay off the crack...facebook might be a billion dollar company...it might even be a 2 billion dollar company...but there is no way it'd beat Google. They compare it to Google revenues...but Google's ad product is a lot more effective. On Google the user is searching for widget, and Google tells them "hey widgets are 90% off at thi…

I think the big problem with this idea is that Facebook is far more vulnerable to changes in fads and so forth than Google is. For the forseeable future we will need something like Google and Google will probably continue to stay on top (if they don't keep putting out Google Instants) but Facebook could much more easily be hit hard by a new social networking paradigm or some kind of fad change. Also, interestingly, it seems like probably the vast majority of Facebook's users use Google but converse is probably not true.

Re: How Facebook Can Become Bigger In Five Years Than Google Is Today

#16

Post by tlack »

revorad wrote: post #7
vaksel wrote: post #4

this is the same crap we used to hear about myspace and friendster. Techcrunch needs to lay off the crack...facebook might be a billion dollar company...it might even be a 2 billion dollar company...but there is no way it'd beat Google. They compare it to Google revenues...but Google's ad product is a lot more effective. On Google the user is searching for widget, and Google tells them "hey widgets are 90% off at thi…

The funny and scary point this post made was that maybe (just maybe) Facebook is bringing back the inefficient TV ads that Madison Avenue loves in the form of Facebook banner ads. Facebook ads might make more money than Google ads precisely because their effectiveness cannot be measured (just like TV and billboard ads). Sure, engineers will cite poor CTRs but "brand managers" will be eager to dismiss that as oh-so-20…

I, and many others, get measurably better click through and conversion rates from Facebook because I can target people who are interested in certain topics and likely to buy. A person's search term is not the whole story.

Do you really think marketers want to blow all their money without returns? Why do you think Google Adwords is so popular in the first place?

And a final note, from someone who worked at a large agency that focused on media buying: display ads often reinforce a keyword/CPM/CPC campaign and lead to better overall results, despite how ridiculous that sounds.

Re: How Facebook Can Become Bigger In Five Years Than Google Is Today

#17

Post by il »

pkaler wrote: post #12
revorad wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The funny and scary point this post made was that maybe (just maybe) Facebook is bringing back the inefficient TV ads that Madison Avenue loves in the form of Facebook banner ads. Facebook ads might make more money than Google ads precisely because their effectiveness cannot be measured (just like TV and billboard ads). Sure, engineers will cite poor CTRs but "brand managers" will be eager to dismiss that as oh-so-20…

Madison Avenue is about demand generation not demand harvesting. You can't market to people that don't realize they have a problem or a need. You could invent the wheel and there will be no demand to harvest because everyone has always dragged their dinner back to the cave. A caveman will never do a Google search for a wheel.

FYI, it is impossible for any single company to generate demand, they can only create products that meet existing demand. Demand rises organically over time through the combination of all market forces, cultural trends, etc.

Trying to educate a market that they need your product is a losing proposition. Trust me.

Re: How Facebook Can Become Bigger In Five Years Than Google Is Today

#18

Post by jacquesm »

Facebook may become bigger than google, but they'll never be more important than google.

If facebook would suffer a 1 month outage it would be a 'meh' event, nothing you couldn't live without. If google would be down for as much as 24 hours it would seriously impact a very large number of people and businesses.

Re: How Facebook Can Become Bigger In Five Years Than Google Is Today

#19

Post by mikedanko »

But I don't use Facebook. I work in a department of seven, and they all are extremely reluctant to even check their Facebook accounts. Google? We use it all day. Google is like Linux, you can't even count how much you use it until you actually talk to an engineer.

Facebook just reminds me of ICQ. It was all hot shit, everyone thought it was going to take over the world, but it was just left to little old ladys who LOL'd at everything you had to say. Which, according to schedule and my wife's age, is probably going to be about another 10 years. Facebook gets another 10 years before it's ICQ.

Re: How Facebook Can Become Bigger In Five Years Than Google Is Today

#20

Post by dstein »

jacquesm wrote: post #18

Facebook may become bigger than google, but they'll never be more important than google. If facebook would suffer a 1 month outage it would be a 'meh' event, nothing you couldn't live without. If google would be down for as much as 24 hours it would seriously impact a very large number of people and businesses.

I think you're overestimating the chances that in the future Google will play as important a role as it does today.

Google was the first to solve the "search problem". They won't be the last, and finding information is only one aspect of one thing people do on the internet. Google has not been very good at making money in any other way. Competitors in the search engine business are emerging. I can totally foresee a scenario where Google's core business shrinks quite a lot over time, and I have a sneaking suspicion they do too. They're scared, whether they admit it or not, their acquisition spree is evidence.

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