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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

#31

Post by natrius »

mikedanko wrote: post #29
natrius wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 compe…

Your point about ICQ was fine, but the first paragraph of your original comment was inconsequential.

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

#32

Post by pkaler »

vaksel wrote: post #28
pkaler wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"

spoken like someone who is a "social media expert"

I resent the ad hominem attack. I happen to have a computing science degree from when they used to actually teach Lisp in university.

look this whole Facebook is the future of search is just plain nuts.

I said no such thing. It's more like we will see the rise of sort because Facebook and other services (Hunch, Quora, etc) have access to much more structured information.

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

#33

Post by ollerac »

ramanujan wrote: post #10
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 believe this is a failure of imagination. Facebook Credits will be their Gmail, the second act which shows that they are something special. Blippy, Groupon, and others are all in the general area of "social purchasing" but FB will simply dominate this when they enter the game. In a down economy, if you can get a discount by simply sharing or liking, you will. And advertisers can micro target not just demographics,…

Sounds cool, but I think these innovations would transform my idea of what Facebook is into something like how I think of Craigslist or Groupon.

Right now Facebook is where I go to see what my friends are up to. I think adding movie reviews, product recommendations, etc. might dilute its brand and its addictiveness factor -- in fact, I think they already have. Some commercial-type messages have already started diluting my news feed a little bit.

Google, despite having relevant ads in its sidebar, is still just a search engine.

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

#34

Post by dtby »

il wrote: post #17
pkaler wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm not sure what your claim is here: "Say's Law is hokum." or "Marketing is bunk."

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

#35

Post by yurylifshits »

Here is another argument for Facebook: hiring potential.

Right now, Facebook is the most attractive large tech company in the world. Out of 10 new geniuses 8 will go to Facebook, one to Google, one to Apple. Facebook is smaller (you can get a bigger project immediately), at Facebook your commits go live at the second day on the job ("Move fast and break things"), Facebook options are much more attractive, and also working for Facebook can get you laid (seriously, working there has much more sex appeal than working at other tech companies).

Because Facebook can snap the cream of the next generation of talent, it will be in ideal position to take on any big opportunity over the next 5 years.

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

#36

Post by raganwald »

vaksel wrote: post #28
pkaler wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"

spoken like someone who is a "social media expert"

What bearing does this have on the factual accuracy of the claims being made?

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

#37

Post by rebelvc »

ramanujan wrote: post #10
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 believe this is a failure of imagination. Facebook Credits will be their Gmail, the second act which shows that they are something special. Blippy, Groupon, and others are all in the general area of "social purchasing" but FB will simply dominate this when they enter the game. In a down economy, if you can get a discount by simply sharing or liking, you will. And advertisers can micro target not just demographics,…

Paying users to spam facebook will not work in the long term.

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

#38

Post by sbaqai »

Key quote: "This is not about the revenue streams Facebook has; it’s about the revenue streams they’re about to have."

Everyone who's been defending Facebook's $33B valuation is projecting the success of some yet-to-be-developed or nascent product at Facebook. Projecting growth based on past earnings and current growth rate is one thing. But imagining hypothetical revenue streams of yet-to-be validated products is batshit crazy. It doesn't matter how obvious or inevitable people think it may be or what the trends are. There's no track record with any of these if-they-wanted-to-they-could-do-this-tomorrow-and-make-billions products.

"Facebook Credits are poised to be this generation’s American Express"

Am I the only one that thinks Facebook isn't as omnipotent and in total control of its user-base as people like to think? Everyone is making these projections about users just falling inline with Facebook's potential revenue models, but they forget the shitstorm that was Beacon. Clearly, Beacon was a direct grab at a sustainable business model and it violated many of their user's trust. Facebook may act like its a benevolent dictatorship, but there's always been an element of democratic decision-making at the behest of angry users. And those concessions always occur at the boundary between potential profitability and privacy.

So many are quick to use Google as a benchmark when Google itself was an extraordinary circumstance. It was recently mentioned that Larry and Sergey were willing to part with their company for $750,000.[1] Now, you could argue if Bill Gross never existed, Google would never have be Google because they wouldn't have developed Adwords and have a perpetual license to Overture patents. And Google's advertising is its flagship product, accounting for 97% of its revenue.[2]

Google was a net win for the internet. It helped structure and organize the majority of information available on the net, and combined the best interest of their users (accurate, quality search) with the best interest of businesses (targeted advertising, purchasing intent). They unlocked tremendous wealth on a new platform and reaped the rewards.

Facebook has clearly had a social impact. Just like text-messaging and AOL Instant Messenger did. But the question of if it has unlocked any huge wealth the way Google has is yet to be seen.

[1] http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1288776/0001193125091... [2] http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2010/09/29/excite-passed-up-buyi...

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

#39

Post by chipsy »

Towards the end, the article inadvertently hints at how Facebook may actually collapse: a death of a thousand papercuts from more focused sites that include social features. However, this may come about in two different forms.

One way is akin to the "wheel of reincarnation" effect where social features centralize, then fragment, and then centralize again. One can easily see this in the lifecycles of most online discussion venues - a focused start, and then a gradual change and dilution of the site's character that hits a tipping point at some critical moment. Facebook has already gone far, far away from the "college facebook replacement" angle it started with, but it hasn't yet hit the landmine that might cause its own self-destruction.

The other way is the emergence of a dominant open system that is pound-for-pound similar in purpose and usability, and simple enough to run that it becomes a commodity. This can take eons of "internet time" to happen. Desktop Linux remains a work-in-progress(but one getting closer and closer to its competition), and Jabber, as a pure instant messaging platform, is still just one of many systems. So if a standard emerges for social networks(and we haven't really settled on one) it will still probably take decades.

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

#40

Post by klochner »

yurylifshits wrote: post #35

Here is another argument for Facebook: hiring potential. Right now, Facebook is the most attractive large tech company in the world. Out of 10 new geniuses 8 will go to Facebook, one to Google, one to Apple. Facebook is smaller (you can get a bigger project immediately), at Facebook your commits go live at the second day on the job ("Move fast and break things"), Facebook options are much more attractive, and also wo…

Options are only more attractive until they go public, which won't be 5 years.

How long did it take before Facebook started sucking post-ipo employees from google?

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