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

After Facebook fails

blogs.law.harvard.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 214 posts

Re: After Facebook fails

#61

Post by Dn_Ab »

cletus wrote: post #44

Here's my take on Facebook (disclaimer: I work for Google, these opinions are purely my own and not representative of the company, yadda yadda yadda). Display advertising works best when you have sufficient, quality inventory (publishers whose sites serve ads) such that you attract advertisers in sufficient quantity and quality. Targeting in display ads works because from the publishers, the intermediary has informat…

I can imagine two future timelines where facebook turns out big. Facebook could do either:

1. Figure out when people want something and what they want. And insert suggestive ads in people's streams in a way that is not creepy. Or gamble that beyond a token uproar, they will not disturb their equilibrium enough to allow a competitor's toy to slowly siphon their users.

Facebook could also figure out when people are looking to give gifts and aid in that arduous process with targeted coupon/ads.

2. Lobby to become the premier centralized digital consolidated identity provider once governments start to require this due to some misapprehension of how much security such a requirement would bring. With this toehold, Facebook would have more room to control your stream and could insert creepily timely targetted ads. The facebooks of the future may become the synthesis of insurance and big media companies of today.

Re: After Facebook fails

#62

Post by ssx »

cletus wrote: post #44

Here's my take on Facebook (disclaimer: I work for Google, these opinions are purely my own and not representative of the company, yadda yadda yadda). Display advertising works best when you have sufficient, quality inventory (publishers whose sites serve ads) such that you attract advertisers in sufficient quantity and quality. Targeting in display ads works because from the publishers, the intermediary has informat…

Agree with everything BUT if you screen "does anybody want ice cream" down Venice beach in the middle of the summer, I'm sure you'll get some customers. lol

But in all seriousness, great post.

Re: After Facebook fails

#63

Post by ThomPete »

cletus wrote: post #44

Here's my take on Facebook (disclaimer: I work for Google, these opinions are purely my own and not representative of the company, yadda yadda yadda). Display advertising works best when you have sufficient, quality inventory (publishers whose sites serve ads) such that you attract advertisers in sufficient quantity and quality. Targeting in display ads works because from the publishers, the intermediary has informat…

Facebook will only be really valuable once they find a way to combine interest with intent and location.

This can primarily be done on the mobile but even google haven't really found a way to be that profitable with mobile so the real question becomes can they improve it?

Re: After Facebook fails

#64

Post by ssx »

polemic wrote: post #46
cletus wrote: post #44

Here's my take on Facebook (disclaimer: I work for Google, these opinions are purely my own and not representative of the company, yadda yadda yadda). Display advertising works best when you have sufficient, quality inventory (publishers whose sites serve ads) such that you attract advertisers in sufficient quantity and quality. Targeting in display ads works because from the publishers, the intermediary has informat…

Agree with just about all of that. > "Their mobile presence is at the behest of Apple, Google and (arguably) Microsoft." A majority of non-techy types I know bought smart phones because they "do facebook". There is a deeply symbiotic relationship there, and woe is the mobile maker that couldn't provide a Facebook app.

I bet you those same non-techy types would by MySpace phones.

Re: After Facebook fails

#65

Post by thedaveoflife »

cletus wrote: post #44

Here's my take on Facebook (disclaimer: I work for Google, these opinions are purely my own and not representative of the company, yadda yadda yadda). Display advertising works best when you have sufficient, quality inventory (publishers whose sites serve ads) such that you attract advertisers in sufficient quantity and quality. Targeting in display ads works because from the publishers, the intermediary has informat…

How do you feel about his claim that we are in an online advertising bubble?

I am sympathetic to that claim, because (anecdotally of course) very few people I know actually click on ads.

Re: After Facebook fails

#66

Post by soup10 »

I have a crazy idea, why doesn't Facebook charge for premium accounts?

They would really only need to get what? Maybe 10% of their users to sign up to some kind of premium subscription service to justify their valuation. It's funny how this option is rarely ever mentioned, as if selling a service to consumers is some kind of taboo for internet companies.

Re: After Facebook fails

#67

Post by thedaveoflife »

polemic wrote: post #16

I have no idea if Facebook is valued correctly or not, however I think this misses a vital point. Facebook is not nearly the same as other web ventures. It's ability to target ads seems secondary to this: From http://www.kenburbary.com/2011/03/facebook-demographics-revi... , slightly out of date, but still useful: - Average user visits the site 40 times per month - Average user spends an 23 minutes (23:20 to be preci…

In general, most people who are looking at facebook for any length of time are either playing a social game or looking at photos of themselves. It's confusing to me how this is a viable long term business model. Popularity can be a fickle thing...

Nobody doubts they have eyeballs and valuable data, and it seems like that should be profitable, but that doesn't mean it will be.

Re: After Facebook fails

#68

Post by InclinedPlane »

Unlike some I'm not convinced that facebook will fail. However, I think the risk that they will lose a lot of their userbase and/or they will fail to massively increase per user monetization over the next, say, 10 years is pretty high (maybe 50/50 as a SWAG).

The advertising revenue risk is a big one, but there are bigger ones I think.

First, we may be nearing the end of an era where monolithic social sites make sense. Social Graph as a Service and federated social networking just plain makes sense. I think the biggest risk to facebook isn't necessarily the one big competitor (like google) but a thousand tiny competitors who offer the same full suite of services as facebook but are more targeted toward a particular social niche.

Second, as technology advances the ease with which someone can bootstrap a company that has 10 million, 100 million, or even a billion regular users drops dramatically. Right now supporting a billion users takes over a thousand employees and data centers around the world. How will that change in 5, 10, 15, and 20 years? In 2022 it might be possible for a site with the same usage load as facebook to be supported by a company with less than a hundred employees and other expenditures on the same scale as payroll. When, not if, that happens it'll open up facebook to a much greater degree of competition. It also fundamentally changes the game, because then you will have situations where "fad" sites rise up and then evaporate away in a matter of only a few years, months, or days and yet still have gigauser popularity at their peaks.

Third, related to the other 2 points, social is just plain going to change, a lot, over the next several years. Anyone who thinks that the way social on the web works today should be set in stone and never changed is either clueless or evil. There is a lot that's missing and a lot that's broken today. Facebook has so much work to do just to be able to increase its monetization to a level that justifies their stock price, but they will also have a tremendous amount of work to do to fix and change social networking. If they do one and not the other they are doomed, but their competitors can get away with doing only one and they'll eat facebook's lunch.

Either way, it'll be exciting to watch what happens.

Re: After Facebook fails

#69

Post by damian2000 »

For some reason the Facebook IPO reminds me of when Steve Case sold AOL to TimeWarner in 2000.

From the AOL wikipedia page :- "AOL is best known for its online software suite, also called AOL, that allowed customers to access the world's largest "walled garden" online community and eventually reach out to the Internet as a whole."

At the time it was held in high regard for getting such a massive online user base (around 34 million) - which is a bit paltry by today's standards.

Re: After Facebook fails

#70

Post by aaronbrethorst »

ajessup wrote: post #55
cletus wrote: post #44

Here's my take on Facebook (disclaimer: I work for Google, these opinions are purely my own and not representative of the company, yadda yadda yadda). Display advertising works best when you have sufficient, quality inventory (publishers whose sites serve ads) such that you attract advertisers in sufficient quantity and quality. Targeting in display ads works because from the publishers, the intermediary has informat…

I'd be interested to hear any insights as to why Facebook hasn't yet pushed to build a display advertising network for third party publishers (a la DoubleClick). That way it could leverage the assets that it does have (behavioral profiles) against an asset it doesn't (users with direct purchase intent). On a side note - I'd take issue with your suggestion that the information on Facebook is largely useless to an adve…

I've been wondering the same thing for a couple years. It seems like an opportunity that's way too big to pass up.
Post reply on HN