Back in the 90′s the Internet was dominated by ISPs who charged us for the privilege of accessing their adverts. Everybody expected this to be the new business model, but it didn’t last. New DSL providers came along, getting together with Google to provide us with free portals.
Through the late 2000s we’ve seen an explosion of “sharing” services, generally described as Social Media. These sites are competing with Google for our time, not only providing free portals but also adding value with sharing services.
By now we know how Google makes its money – targeted advertising. But just how the new sharing sites will make money is much harder to understand. The new sites, led by Facebook, and just like Google, can’t start to make money until they provide real value which businesses like us will pay for.
That value needs to improve our business prospects through helping us understand our markets and connect with customers and partners. We can break that value down into two dimensions a)understand and b)connect.
The basis of understanding is what’s typically described as content – information of all types.
The basis of connection is engagement – meeting people, knowing something about them, and opportunities for conversation.
Up until now Google has been King of Content, and Facebook has been King of Engagement. Google has had a business model, and Facebook hasn’t.
Up until now Facebook’s problem has been it’s success in the social sphere. It now has more than 250 million users, with 30 million visits per day. But look at the demographic of those users – mostly kids sharing their own type of humour. There are also grandparents keeping up with what’s happening in the kids lives. There’s another tranche of Social Media “experts” and a very small number of businesses/celebrities wanting to connect with the kids.
The people who have, and will spend, money – businesses – just aren’t on Facebook. It doesn’t do anything for them.
But that’s about to change soon, with Facebook providing a real alternative to Google for content, adding it to the proven engagement capabilities, and creating the new Business Internet in the process.
Businesses will flock to Facebook, completing the picture.
There are three signs of this new capability emerging:
- User selectable URL’s for Pages
- Recent purchase of content aggregator Friendfeed
- Facebook Search (watch the Gary Vaynerchuck video below)
The gamechanger here is the combination of Relationship, Content, Search and Real Time Search – not just what’s been published but what’s being said, as it’s being said.
I have no knowledge of anything happening, but imagine what comes next. What happens if eBay or Amazon buys Facebook.
Then we’d have the new Business Internet – Relationships, Content, Real Time Search and Transaction Management all in one service.
Anybody who wants to be in business in five years time needs to get stuck into this now.
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- Data Indicates Facebook Reaching Mainstream Visitor Rate (Compete, Alexa, Quantcast) (web-strategist.com)
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- FaceFeed: Why Facebook Acquired FriendFeed (allfacebook.com)
- Facebook Updates Are Now Searchable; Not What Most Users Joined For (readwriteweb.com)
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