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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

#21

Post by jacquesm »

dstein wrote: post #20
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 s…

> Google was the first to solve the "search problem".

Google definitely wasn't the first to solve the search problem.

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

#22

Post by dstein »

jacquesm wrote: post #21
dstein wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 s…

> Google was the first to solve the "search problem". Google definitely wasn't the first to solve the search problem.

That's subjective. I consider Google the first "good" search engine.

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

#23

Post by Goladus »

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…

Facebook has penetrated much further than myspace or friendster. My Facebook friends span several generations. I was skeptical of Facebook, I didn't think they'd pull it off. I still don't think they will be quite as ubiquitous as Google, but also I don't think that is going to matter.

And whether they "beat" google or not is rather beside the point. Facebook doesn't compete with them on search, except for people search.

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

#25

Post by JeffL »

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…

I've also tried both Google and FB ads (among other), and FB returns me next to nothing. I also don't spend money with them anymore.

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

#26

Post by natrius »

mikedanko wrote: post #19

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 LO…

You and your department aren't normal. I think their actual usage data tells a much different story than your anecdote does.

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

#28

Post by vaksel »

pkaler wrote: post #11
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 Ap…

spoken like someone who is a "social media expert"

look this whole Facebook is the future of search is just plain nuts. People want instant results, they don't feel like asking "what colors does the Honda Civic come in?". The answer to that will be "use the search"

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

#29

Post by mikedanko »

natrius wrote: post #26
mikedanko wrote: post #19

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 LO…

You and your department aren't normal. I think their actual usage data tells a much different story than your anecdote does.

We're totally not normal. That, I'll agree with.

Usage data, smoochage data. The point of bringing up ICQ was that at one time, for what seemed like a long time, it was king.

People seem to have given up and consider Facebook the winner of this era of the Internet. My point is that stuff comes along too often, and changes so much, that it won't matter eventually.

Besides all that are we really talking about two competitive products? People still haven't even decided what Facebook really is, nor have they really defined it either. Why? Because no one can figure it out.

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

#30

Post by CamperBob »

natrius wrote: post #26
mikedanko wrote: post #19

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 LO…

You and your department aren't normal. I think their actual usage data tells a much different story than your anecdote does.

No, his department isn't normal, you're right about that. In a great many workplaces, you're not even allowed to access Facebook.
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