Brands just aren't what they used to be. A brand used to be something that stood the test of time. Now a brand is still powerful in terms of defining what a product is all about, but when it comes to loyalty, fuggetaboutit. Brands today are volatile.
Nowhere is this more apparent than in the social networking space, where Orkut and Friendster are about as attractive as yesterday's dog food. Myspace, the hot item just six months ago, is in a brand tailspin from which it may not recover; even the kids are sneering at it. And the new darling? It's Facebook, which a year ago looked like a dead-end street.
For a long time, Facebook was a closed system. You had to have a college email address to get in. It was focused, but it also was obviously limited. Unless you're the Comic Book Guy, your college years tend to have a beginning and and end.
But Facebook has opened up in a smart way, giving its users fine-grained control over how much, and to whom, they want to reveal on their profile pages. It's made its system extensible by third-party developers, and as of today there are 2,254 applications in its library -- games, toys, mapping tools, enhanced messaging tools, devices that embed content from outside services in your profile page. (Unfortunately, it's a one-way street. You can embed Flickr image in Facebook, but you can't export your Facebook photo gallery for use elsewhere.)
Users are signing on in droves, and Facebook suddenly has blog buzz.
Twitter, a service designed for one-liner microblogging, may seem annoyingly shallow, but a similar tool on Facebook makes sense. Bruce Koon worked late last night. Terry Heaton is waiting on paperwork to close on his house. Bob Benz is going to see Lysistrata tonight. Jack Lail thinks Rusty Coats does a pretty good version of Werewolves of London. This is all utter trivia and not at all interesting to anyone ... unless you know the parties involved. It's addictive.
In a week my friend list has grown to over 70, mostly online newsfolk. I've joined NAA, OJR, ONA and other work-related groups on Facebook, plus one titled "My Last Name is Yelvington... and it's not THAT hard to spell."
Facebook's founders supposedly have turned down offers approaching a billion dollars for the site. Smart or not? Facebook is certainly ascendant. The question I have is: For how long?
Comments
Facebook VCs and traffic
You now have VCs investing specifically in Facebook app developers. That's pretty amazing given that the platform is brand new. I saw some stats recently on how much traffic Facebook apps are generating.
Some already large sites are seeing 2x-4x the traffic.
Facebook's Marketplace
Another interesting move by Facebook that has been overshadowed by the explosion of games, maps, toys, etc., is its dive into the world of classifieds with its marketplace feature.
I recently searched the marketplace for an apartment, and when I found one that looked interesting, I was greeted with the following prompt:
"Would you like to send Brandon a message? You are not friends with Brandon, but you are both friends with Lisa."
Capitalizing on its enormous wealth of networks, Facebook brings the power of weak ties to every user's fingers - pretty good news for anyone who believes that social networking sites will be the ultimate platform for information exchange.
And what's more, in so doing they exploit one of Craigslist's greatest weaknesses and establish immediate reputability and trust between buyer and seller by identifying a mutual friend.
Facebook's brand has a lot of currency right now because they are making some pretty smart moves. If they keep it up, I'd say they can avoid the fate of the Friendsters and Orkuts of the Web, but I guess time will tell.
Facebook's "status update" widget
Clive Thompson in a recent issue of Wired magazine make a good point about why these views of what you're "friends" are up to. He was writing about Twitter, but it applies to Facebook's "status update" widget as well:
"... most Twitter messages are stupefyingly trivial. But the true value of Twitter — and the similarly mundane Dodgeball, a tool for reporting your real-time location to friends — is cumulative. The power is in the surprising effects that come from receiving thousands of pings from your posse. And this, as it turns out, suggests where the Web is heading."
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/magazine/15-07/st_thompson