social networking | The MarketFarm

Facebook’s future: It’s in your shorts

Just yesterday, a friend (that’s a lower-case, analog friend) told me how much he hates Facebook. He can’t believe how much time people spend there, he wishes he had never registered for it, and he resents the amount of attention it tries to demand from him.

With that said, he asked if I thought it would eventually fade away.

Social media is here to stay, I responded. While Facebook and Twitter may not always be the dominant portals, the notion of social networking that they represent will continue to evolve and embed itself into our communication – just as web browsing and e-mail have done.

Then this article, on Facebook’s acquisition of Friendfeed, crossed my desktop and my opinion evolved.

The most insidious aspect of Facebook is how it brings in new members. First, as I explained to my flesh-and-blood friend, every time someone sets up a new Facebook page, they get the opportunity to scour their own address book for potential Friends (digital, capital-F friends). And because Friends are the currency of Facebook — the more you have, the “wealthier” you are — most people accept this initial chance to let the social networking site into their personal data.

So Facebook searches your computer address book for people who are already registered with the site. I don’t know if it just looks for e-mail addresses or follows a more complex algorithm, but within seconds, it will identify every Facebook member you know and offer — with a single click — to ask them to Friend you. (It’s notable that Facebook has already created a legitimate verb in the word “friend”.)

Then Facebook makes a more extraordinary offer: It identifies everyone in your personal address book who isn’t registered at the site and offers — again, with one click — to let them know how much you’d like them to join Facebook with the purpose of becoming your online Friend.

Insidious and ingenious. For the new user, this is simply a shortcut to Facebook-style wealth — lots of Friends. For Facebook, this is the shortest route to ubiquity — which it could be argued has already been achieved.

So now, Facebook has acquired Friendfeed, which “enables you to discover and discuss the interesting stuff your friends find on the web.” This isn’t unique; Digg.com is better known and does essentially the same thing.

But here’s the key: Friendfeed lets you “Read and share however you want — from your email, your phone or even from Facebook. Publish your FriendFeed to your website or blog, or to services you already use, like Twitter.”

This isn’t unique to Friendfeed either. I’ve seen lists of social media sites that have 350 to 400+ sites listed, with new ones being entered daily. Try Googling “list of social media sites”. Most of them make it easy to publish on your blog, Facebook, Twitter and other leading sites.

What’s the point? Facebook is paying $50 million to buy a social media site that, as its primary function, collects more people — not just from the Web, but also from their phones.

This won’t surprise anyone who thinks strategically about social networking. But for anyone who wonders whether Facebook is going to fade away: It’s less likely every day.

On the art of ‘followership’

In his dependably brief and insightful blog, marketing guru Seth Godin writes about this video of a spontaneously developing community at a dance festival: “My favorite part happens just before the first minute mark. That’s when guy #3 joins the group. Before him, it was just a crazy dancing guy and then maybe one other crazy guy. But it’s guy #3 who made it a movement. Initiators are rare indeed, but it’s scary to be the leader. Guy #3 is rare too, but it’s a lot less scary and just as important. Guy #49 is irrelevant. No bravery points for being part of the mob.
“We need more guy #3s.”

There are lots of lessons you can take away from this. The one it most illustrates for me has to do with starting a business or launching a new product. More than once I’ve found myself dealing with a leading-edge product that I thought was brilliant. Too often, the response from the target market was, “Interesting. We’ll wait and see.”

The first copycat to come out with a similar product validates it, and makes it easier to sell. The next competitor helps flip the switch among customers from “wait and see” to “hurry up and buy.”

One’s an innovator; two’s competition; three’s a movement.

American Pie send-up on media

Anyone living through the media meltdown will enjoy this clever 9-minute rewrite of the old Don McLean anthem.

10 YOUNG entrepreneurs to watch

Warning: If you have more than 20 years already invested in your career, this is going to make you very tired and at least a little bit scared. Here, from ContentNext.com are 10 y oung entrepreneurs to watch. By young, they mean really young — no older than their 20s.

What’s most instructive and startling is the transformational nature of what these kid are doing. Their businesses are, largely, based on ideas that couldn’t even have existed 5 or 10 years ago.

If you have any questions about the power of the Internet to foster change; or if you have any doubt that the next generation does things very differently than you’re used to, then you ought to spend 10 minutes scanning this article. Then resist the temptation to take a nap.

Marketing, or just anti-social networking?

When I heard about the college kids who are making money by advertising products with temporary tattoos on their foreheads, I knew it wouldn’t be long before something like Wrapmail came along. As reported in Inc. magazine, Wrapmail is a service that puts an ad in every outbound e-mail sent from your place of business. Inc’s example was pretty benign: a guy who sells copiers is using the service to promote his own products on e-mails sent out by his employees. I can’t really see very much wrong with that.

But it’s not really welcome, either. And how long will it be before the matchmakers step in — paying individuals and small companies to advertise national brands in their outbound e-mails? My guess: within the next 10 minutes, if it hasnt already started.

We all know: The Internet tends toward cesspool. Every time there is an uplifting addition to the amazing things this medium can achieve, there is someone who finds a way to just as quickly coat it with a certain amount of stink. I’ve learned to live with that, even embrace and enjoy it.

Which is why I’m writing about Wrapmail (which, incidentally uses equally intrusive pop-up chat technology as soon as you open their website). I’m impressed someone thought of it. I’m also depressed someone thought of it.

And if they want to get the word out, they might consider tattooing it on someone’s forehead. Because on principle I’ll delete the e-mail I will undoubtedly receive from Wrapmail after writing this post.

Facebook: eyeballs, China and deja vu

Is it possible to have two deja vus at the same time? Or is that simply schizophrenia?

According to Venturebeat, Facebook is raising money to buy back stock from its employees. It hopes to borrow $150 million to buy back 15 million shares at $10 each. These shares have been given to employees of the private company over the past few years, and those employees have the right to sell up to 20% of their holdings, according to the article.

And now that the market for IPOs is so rotten, this is apparently the only way the company can help them cash in anytime soon.

That’s where the first case of deja vu comes in. Just 10 years ago, during the first Internet boom, people couldn’t cash in quickly enough on their foundation-free stock. Yes, Facebook has an astounding number of users, but I’m not so sure about its business plan. The company will undoubtedly go public some day, but I simply don’t believe it’s monetizable to the same extent as Amazon, eBay and Google.

Facebook really has only one asset: a bigazillion eyeballs. Which is impressive in itself, and there ought to be a way to make money from it. But with ad markets drying up and Facebook’s genuine incompetence when it comes to figuring out how to let businesses participate in a way justifies their spending money, I don’t know what the company is going to do to pay back this next $150 million that it borrows — let alone the previous $460 million it’s raised, according to PaidContent.org.

Facebook is undoubtedly an 800-pound gorilla in the white-hot social networking arena. But there were scores of 800-pound gorillas a decade ago, whose names I can no longer recall, that went bust because they couldn’t figure out how to turn eyeballs into cash.

I’m not predicting Facebook is going to go under anytime soon. In fact, I’m sure it will be around to cash in on an improved IPO market sometime next year. But if I were an employee and could get $10 a share for stock that I hadn’t paid for, I would sell as much as I was allowed at the first possible moment.

Here’s another deja vu-inducing part of the story: Facebook can’t get the money from its usual investors, so according to the reports already cited above, some portion of the money is coming from Asia. I remember when Japanese investors bought (and overpaid for) Rockefeller Center in the late ’80s. At the time, it was assumed to be a disheartening sign that U.S. economic dominance was ending.

It’s clear to me that, no matter how strong and innovative the U.S. may be, the world is becoming a more competitive place; any perception that we are falling probably has more to do with the fact that others are rising. Still, do we need to make it easy for them?

It’s always bothered me when people complain that we’re losing our mojo as a world power, but they don’t seem to make a conneciton between that observation and our willingness to let Asia — China in particular — lend us the money to finance our foreign wars and deficit spending.

If China comes to own a third or more of Facebook, do you think these people will notice? Do you think they’ll care?