What Facebook Wants to Be Versus What it is Really
Facebook’s public offering this week went off with a bang and quickly turned into a thud. There is confusion between what Facebook wants to be and what it really is for users. This is true of social media sites in general and a flaw in their business models that confuses popularity with business strategy. Facebook expects their users to behave in ways that are contrary to the reasons why they use Facebook.
Facebook Wants:
- Dominate the Internet and meet all user needs for communicating with friends, shopping, making new connections, information, search and more.
- Be like Google, but bigger and better.
What Facebook Is:
- A free, online service to share information quickly with your friends.
- That’s it; Facebook is free and one social network needed to be on top or the concept does not work.
To really understand the value of Facebook we don’t need a stock offering, we just need a monthly fee. Take away the free service and the value becomes more clear and pushes Facebook to better define the services they provide and how they compete. Facebook then becomes worthy of a stock valuation and this would force Facebook to generate a real revenue stream from ads and other sources.
LinkedIn and Pinterest are doing a much better job of connecting their mission with user needs.
