Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 63 posts

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

#41

Post by il »

dtby wrote: post #34
il wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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."

Neither? Judging from the downvotes my comment has been misunderstood. My job is marketing, so I know better than to say it's bunk. For those who still don't understand, here's what Eugene Schwartz, one of the greatest marketers of all time says: "What are you doing when you market something? You are not creating demand for a product. If you think that you are creating demand for your product, you’ve doomed yourself to a lifetime of hard work and failure. You can’t create demand for anything because demand is too large for you to create. The demand has to be out there. The demand has to exist before you even walk into the picture...You cannot create demand. You can only channel demand. Demand is there. Demand is enormous. The bigger the demand, the better your ad is. You are getting in a boat and letting the stream carry you. Just don’t think that you can paddle up against the stream."

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

#42

Post by ankimal »

ankimal wrote: post #15

I m waiting for spolsky to comment.

I guess my earlier attempt at humor wasn't received too well.

On a serious note, I think there are too many ifs and buts for all this to happen. Google for some "is" the internet. Facebook is a social network and for it break out and become this behemoth which helps you do anything and everything online sounds a little far fetched at this point.

But then again, Facebook users are addicts. In the absence of any real competing service, they will stick on in spite of all the extra fluff. Their problem will always be, if not Facebook, then what?

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

#43

Post by redorb »

kristiandupont wrote: post #8
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…

It's true that Google has this advantage, but facebook has another one: "Hey, your friends x and y like these widgets".

if FB started selling products using my name based on me liking producst; I won't be happy.

i.e. don't try to sell my mom a playboy cause I 'fan'd' their page.

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

#44

Post by photon_off »

dinkumthinkum wrote: post #14
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, i…

Google will probably continue to stay on top (if they don't keep putting out Google Instants)

Google Instant only gains Google dominance. You may not like it, but some people do. That adds to Google's stickiness; those people are now much less likely to switch search engines. If the $.12/query rate is to be believed, that stickiness is extremely valuable in the long run. As for those that do no prefer Instant, I suspect they didn't have any trouble disabling it.

As a nice little bonus, Google gained notoriety for their Instant search. This means anyone else who implements it in the future will be riding in Google's coattails, and will be much less likely to realize the positive effects that Google did.

If it were up to me, I'd have Google churning out more of these features. I believe it's already the case that "search" is a commodity, and it's now the bells and whistles that are the point of competition. Google already has a huge head start, and they now need to maintain it.

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

#45

Post by greenlblue »

When was the last time anyone here used facebook to get something done and I really mean get something done and create something of value? Anyone? As long as facebook caters to teen type activities like gossip and displays of vanity it can not compete with google in any serious way. The best it can do in the long run is become a glorified dating site where your friends recommend and vote on your dates and that is all.

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

#46

Post by yurylifshits »

klochner wrote: post #40
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?

With the appearance of "mezzanine" investors like DST, there is much less pressure to go public. So Facebook's IPO can be deferred by a few years. Google was not having this opportunity.

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

#48

Post by qq66 »

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.

In fact, both have been out while I have been a user. When Google went down, I literally refreshed once, it failed again, and I went to Yahoo (today I would go to Bing). When Facebook was down, I did something else, since there was no substitute for Facebook.

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

#49

Post by Joeboy »

redorb wrote: post #43
kristiandupont wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's true that Google has this advantage, but facebook has another one: "Hey, your friends x and y like these widgets".

if FB started selling products using my name based on me liking producst; I won't be happy. i.e. don't try to sell my mom a playboy cause I 'fan'd' their page.

That's not likely to happen because Playboy's ads will presumably be targeted at (a subset of) men. Anyway, FB doesn't need you to be happy. What are you going to do, move to MySpace?

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

#50

Post by dododo »

pkaler wrote: post #32
vaksel wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 informat…

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

many universities still do teach Lisp (in AI courses, for example). this seems like an attempt to appeal to authority, which is another logical fallacy...

Post reply on HN