Facebook: A Ship Lost in the Dark of Night
Facebook went public a week and a half ago. The IPO, thought by many to be the grandaddy of them all instead was a dud, as the stock barely rose on the first day of trading and actually fell an additional ten percent on the second day. After that, came allegations that investors had hung the company out to dry by selling the stock off prior to open because they felt like the social network did not have a viable monetization plan. The money, while made by those who were in the company early, is for the most part gone. Everyone who has gone in since is now in the red.
I’ve been rather harsh on the company since its opening. Even though I’m in social media and work on community management for a living, I have always found it necessary never to fall in love with one particular social network unless there is a true and tried business purpose. For me, Facebook has been that revolutionary tool that has changed the way that we communicate, but the more and more you view the site with its ads (and if you use the mobile app, more is on its way), newfangled features, the more you realize the social network that we have come to love is lost. In other words, they too understand that the Internet is finally bored.
Don’t get me wrong however: Facebook has come a very long way in the past 8 years from the dormitory of Mark Zuckerberg post-female rejection to a site that has as many people as 16 percent of the planet. From the point of a view of a product, there has been great success, but from the point of business even though the company has had the luxury of being on top, there have been many cracks. The $1 billion purchase of Instagram and subsequent releasing of its own app, for example, shows that Facebook is scared of what might be. The bringing back of college roots to its communities after it left the very concept 5 years ago is yet another example of a company that isn’t sure what to do, but codes for the sake of coding, with the anticipation that something fun and useful might come out of it - like Facebook chat.
The other aspect of the company that is particularly frustrating for users is the usability in general. Recently as I have typed to people, I’ve gotten the notification that I might be typing spam. In fact, after congratulating Zuckerberg on becoming married to his wife Priscilla Chan, I was banned from posting a comment on pages I subscribe to for a week. It is however, not as bad as many individuals I know who hit networking caps and cannot go over 5,000 friends despite literally knowing everyone they meet and adding value to their lives. With engineers running a company who don’t socialize (and hey, what is the point when you make hundreds of thousands anyway?) creating a company whose sole point is to socialize, this creates a conundrum, and one that I find is very troubling.
The next few months are going to be interesting. For the industry, the end of Q3 should be a rather poignant look at where Facebook is in regards to advertising and its revenues. Will people pay $2 to get their status updates featured? Will more people click on advertising? Will the company try to change up the interface again to make things look more streamlined?
Time will tell. Come back soon and we’ll analyze it!
The Yellow Pages are Done: It’s All in Social Media
A couple of months ago I walked into a shopping center and saw a pay phone. It seemed awkwardly out of place, like a relic in the wrong era. In a day where our mobile phones can play games, pay for items and buy coupons on Yelp, this pay phone could only push numbers and call people.
Attached to this pay phone was a copy of the yellow pages. The yellow pages hung off the phone booth, lonely as ever and the pages fluttered in the wind.
Truly obsolete.
In this day and age of social media, Yelp and Google search, searching through the Yellow Pages is a dirty process, right down to the ink on your fingers at the end. In the time it takes for anyone who can type on a keyboard to find a business, Yellow Page users are still flipping through the alphabet to see if their business is under a letter or a particular category.
In just a few short years, social media has:
- Made the Yellow Pages search an inefficient one, compared to social media
- Consumed excessive amounts of paper, even recycled - Millions of pages are printed each year to be put on the steps of households that never even look at them, but turn them into high chairs for little kids instead.
- Given businesses and consumers a chance to engage in real time on social channels. On the Yellow Pages, you cannot Tweet or share the business you found unless you physically clip out the ad. Do you have time for that?
- Lowered the barrier of entry for advertising. If you advertise in the Yellow Pages, the costs are crazy. A one inch spaced listing can range from $252 to $2,500 depending on location, and there is no guarantee that someone could see that small text when glossing for businesses. A larger page listing can run you anywhere from $10,000 to $90,000 depending on your location, and you don’t even get the chance to change the content displayed. A Facebook page is free and you have the opportunity to add content of your own from photos to videos as well as partner with other businesses over social media. Can your Yellow Pages do that? Imagine what an investment of $10,000 could do for your social media presence and bring in more business. The gains would be substantial.
- Created viral brand campaigns that really, really allow for more reach. Neither you nor I may ever visit Chuck Testa in Ojai Valley to have anything taxidermized, but we know about his services through the viral video he created with the help of Rhett and Link and the help of Reddit. Yellow Pages are static. Social media moves mountains.
Don’t be that business that advertises in the Yellow Pages. Join the future of marketing and customer engagement. Let me know how I can help you transition into the future of marketing, content management, video production and social media.
Albert Qian writes for Albert Qian: The Social Media Dude and has not used the Yellow Pages seriously in 10 years or more. Join him and move your business forward today.
Thoughts on the Facebook IPO (Take Two)
It was quite a week for Mark Zuckerberg. He had a birthday, got married, and oh - his company went public at a valuation of $104 billion dollars.
The debut of Facebook was rather interesting. Depending on how you think about it, the introduction of Facebook on the NASDAQ was either a dud or perfectly timed. Closing up 23 cents can be viewed either as a perfect valuation or signaling that social media is a bubble or that there were external factors affecting the stock price, such as the debt crisis in the European Union that currently has the overall stock market on a tumble. I think in nicer times, Facebook might have seen the 10% uptick that most were expecting.
I reviewed my thoughts on the Facebook IPO earlier in February of this year when they first announced that they would go public. I did not purchase any stock Friday, but I do have some new thoughts since that have come off the IPO.
- Social media has arrived - Not that it hadn’t before, but Facebook’s day one trading volume certainly shows that its here. Whether to stay is another thing.
- Social media is already on our minds - Of the 19 Social Media IPOs in 2011, 82.4% of those stocks (16 stocks) are trading below their opening day value. And because of that, investors are wary.
- A Maturation of Time Past, But Still Lots to be Done - I would argue that the IPO was a maturation of what Facebook has done for itself over the past 8 years. There are some wonderfully rich folks out in Menlo Park now, and the effort is certainly deserved with the money made. Facebook Pre-IPO has served as a great place for information, news and political gathering, but post-IPO sees a different world in the need to monetize through advertising. 44% already don’t click on Sponsored Stories, General Motors just dropped a $10 million dollar ad campaign and 46% think its a passing fad. We also thought video games were a passing fad too, in the 1980s, by the way - and look where that went.
- Monetization - A Question of How - It’s going to be argued how Facebook will monetize off the rest of us. As much as Zuckerberg and his team of engineers can tell us, the end users, that they will focus on shipping good code and making a good user experience, shareholders are going to ask for more. And when a product is based upon the efforts of its users, Facebook is going to ask for more clicks on advertising, the buying of $2 status update features and possibly even ads on its mobile platform. Will users click? Will the user experience suffer? Will we see a defiant CEO push back and as a result, see stock price drop in favor of what the engineering crowd sees as optimal? A curious quandary indeed, and it should be interesting to see play out.
These are some of the initial thoughts that I have on the IPO. Going forward towards the end of Q2, Q3 and Q4 we’ll see more numbers on Facebook earnings calls that will tell us if users truly respond positively or if its the beginning of something else. I’ll share my thoughts then.
In the mean time, tell me what you think. Did you buy stock? Let me know in the comments below or on Twitter @albertqian.
Albert Qian is the writer for Albert Qian: The Social Media Dude.
Instagram, Facebook and Internet Boredom
The dust has finally settled on the Facebook/Instagram merger. A week later, many are still asking why this acquisition ever happened, and the answers number in the many. Whether you believe its the competition from Pinterest, the defense against Google or just Zuckerberg being Zuckerberg and hustling as CEO, the reasons could be endless. All I know is that there’s a party cooking in this valley, and boy, the cooking is better than ever - Almost like you’d think its 1999 all over again.
The Internet has become an interesting place in the last 20 years. Since Tim Berners-Lee launched what we call the Internet revolution, the landscape has gone from rotating GIFs and Geocities pages with poor design to a more mature area. We bank online, shop online, message others online and find the love of our life online. With the advent of Facebook, we now make friends online, stalk past lovers online and see how others embarrass themselves. Everything that you came to know in High School in reality, is now plastered all over your Facebook timeline as well as your news feed.
As Facebook prepares on its eve of going public next month, its important to consider what the Internet has become and where its going. The purchase of Instagram is not as much Facebook’s show of power that $1 billion dollars is a drop in the bucket, but more so that the Internet is Facebook as much as Facebook has become the Internet and our reliance and our fourth need in today’s world, beyond food, water and sleep. Most major sites that you go to now give the option for Facebook login for commenting, account creation as well as Liking. Two have become one.
But as much as two become one and the Like button becomes a part of our personal ecosystem of habits on the Internet, the Instagram acquisition by Facebook points to a larger picture: Facebook relevance. Much as we talk about Yahoo! and Google in the natural lexicon of day to day conversation, both have become engrained in our heads. There is nothing special anymore about the two, besides the fact that you can get your email on both, use both to search, get your news and watch the occasional happy video featuring kittens and some home furnishings.
That’s right - I’m implying that Facebook has officially become boring.
The Instagram acquisition for Facebook points to the fact that the Menlo Park company wants to remain cool, and wants to retain the image of being the thing you should talk about everyday, all day. Whether you believe that the move was to circumvent Pinterest’s rising popularity, Google’s potential purchase or just because Zuckerberg felt like it, the ultimate point is that Facebook is again showing why it wants to be Facebook, and not MySpace, Google, Yahoo, Cisco or any other major Silicon Valley tech giant that has faded into everything else. When the core product is watching what others do online and connecting each other to be closer, you can only go so far. Humans after all, no matter how social, do get tired of each other. As one person told me today, “Facebook is boring now”.
So as we move into the middle parts of 2012, we’ll undoubtedly see one of the greatest IPOs ever to come across Wall Street. In the cocktail parties afterwards, people will discuss how Facebook has officially made it, and that social media is here. Our news networks will replay the story of the boy who dropped out of Harvard, struck it gold and invested with Sean Parker, all while inspiring an Oscar winning biopic. The problem however, lies deeper and beyond the billions that will be invested and the nice Yachts purchased - all that is about the now and the present and what happens in 2013, 2014, and so forth. Beyond what growth and power social media has - and that is here to stay - the networks that we engage upon with for social media will change. The battle for that change however, will go to the company that promises to change the game with attention and spice, rather than defensive and luxury acquisitions.
And that fight for attention, brings us to this new era. Let’s make it a good one.
The Agony and the Ecstasy of Social Media
The market for social media valuation is hot in Silicon Valley these days. Instagram, the photo sharing app that everyone came to love, just sold for $1 billion dollars to Facebook despite having zero revenue and zero monetization. My buddy Robert Caruso talks more about the photo aspect of this over on his blog, and looks at the acquisition of Instagram from a competition perspective with Pinterest.
While some company founders are now very, very rich and flush with cash - and probably moving on with their lives to their next project, the rest of the social media world is left to wonder why. Reactions, all over the web, indicate that many users were pretty unhappy with the acquisition, and in many minds, wasthesellout of sellouts. The app that many were happy to snap up, become instant photographers and famous among their own friends for knowing how to apply a filter, became instant millionaires.
It is a constant agony, and constant ectasy.
The acquisition of Instagram is no doubt a game changer for the industry. For a platform that changes like the sun rising and falling, this will point yet again to more changes in your news feed and social experience. The Timeline release, already confusing and hated by many for its complex approach to fitting your profile in a scrapbook (See a quick primer), has been constantly complained about on my news feed to no end. Yet despite the fact that I like it, for every one person like me, there are about ten more who would rather have the Facebook they remember from 2004-2007.
The tech community would call these folks Luddites for not accepting new technology. From a business perspective, the better phrase to be used might just be “out of touch”.
What happened to the user?
Simpler Days
I remember Facebook back in its simpler days. Up until the appearance of the live feed where it was displayed every single activity you did on your profile, the social experience was relatively simple. Until today when Facebook released its new feature for colleges, Facebook was just that. You needed an email from your college to sign up, and the usage method of Facebook was to say hello to friends, upload a few photos, tell everyone where you were, and that was that. I even remember using Facebook and having cookie cutter status updates to choose from, like saying that you were home or at work.
Simpler days of course, gave away to business needs. Even though the company was receiving a ton of funding from venture capital firms, the basic point of any business is to make money. If you’re in it just to make friends, you’re in the wrong kind of arena. And so users saw the rise of advertising, the creation of brand pages, and now, when you log out, a goodbye message sponsored by a company. If you have a mobile phone, this will soon also have advertising. Imagine getting served an ad after writing a post on a friend’s wall, much like after you beat a level in Angry Birds - the experience will soon be no different.
The User Economy
Next month, Facebook will have its initial public offering on Wall Street. Zuckerberg and company will be on the trading floor ringing the opening bell, and FB will be traded on NASDAQ. It will probably be the biggest public offering in the history of all histories, and people will be made rich. National headlines will glorify the Harvard dropout who created Facebook at first to compare girls. People will point to the Aaron Sorkin film and talk about that as a watershed moment in human history where someone singlehandedly created a platform that has delivered news faster than the mainstream media, has helped the Arab World come out of its clutches and served importance in divorce cases.
As for the 800 million users? Thanks for logging in. While Zuckerberg and a lot of the early employees who held stock will be vacationing and enjoying the riches and luxuries of their new found wealth, the rich, will get richer. Beyond the users like me who use Facebook to promote business and promote others, the average person who logs in to check on their aunt, cultivate relationships with those farther than a car drive and hang out with friends will never see a single cent. And like the users who saw and loved their beloved app in Instagram, these users too will feel a slight ting of hurt, a hurt brought on by a love of business.
But still, they will stay.
The Agony and the Ecstasy
Yet despite the changes that everyone knows will come to Facebook, people will still likely stay on the platform. The Internet is still a part of daily life, and people will log in, even if Facebook begins to look like Geocities. The social need in itself, is now understandably inelastic, and even the folks who work on Google+ know this too, that no matter how many changes they make, people still might not use them beyond a simple Hangout. Like Ronald Reagan, Facebook has become the Teflon network, unfazed mostly by changes. While sites like Gawker see tremendous site traffic drops after changes in user interface, Facebook has somehow dodged the bullet, and rightly so. People after all, can get their tech, celebrity and life hacking news elsewhere, but there is nothing so quite like being able to chat with a long lost friend on Facebook.
As I observe this, my question is mostly, “Why?” I see and observe the agony and the ectasy of social media every day. For every fail whale, random notification and slight news feed tweak, there are cries for incompatibility, wails for new changes and threats to leave. But nobody does. The platform gets bigger, and we are willing to sell out for the platform that itself, will sell out, and starting in May, sell out quarter after quarter at the expense of the average user. I for one, won’t be going anywhere - this my career, but the customer who uses it for the social purposes will. And this, while making my life easier, is an interesting look at what has happened to the human psyche. That much like millennials won’t move to a new state to get better employment, people similarly, are unwilling to leave a social network because their friends are there. In the follower-leader world, we, for the most part, have become followers.
Where that leads us, is a mystery still. But I predict, that it might be pretty dark.
Will anyone ever wake up?
The Agony and the Ecstasy of Facebook EdgeRank
One of the oddities of using Facebook is the EdgeRank platform. For marketers, this is a welcome technology because it gives the ability for content to go viral. Even if something was posted last month, and there is a comment today, friends of the poster will be notified of the event happening, giving potential new life for content.
For individual users, the existence of EdgeRank can be an absolute pain. If you comment or say something on someone else’s posts, your posting can be seen across every one of your friend’s feeds, even if they aren’t friends with your friend. So if you have your significant other on Facebook, make sure not to go off and like everything they post, for it could get very, very awkward.
Albert Qian is the author of The Social Media Dude and has many odd run-ins with Facebook EdgeRank. Comment on his stuff on Facebook today and make your feed look awkward. Follow him at @albertqian.
Restaurants and Retailers - Pay Attention to Social Media
I found myself dining at a relatively well-known locale in Pasadena, California, several days back. As I am custom to do, I checked in on Foursquare to add to my total and to check whether the restaurant had any deals that I could also take part in. Like the few restaurants that do engage in deals, this one did.
When the waitress came back around to take our orders, I inquired regarding the discount that was offered to those for checking in. She was unsure about the particular deal, and went back to her colleagues to ask as well. Upon returning, she told me that neither her colleagues, nor the weekly email containing the information sent from corporate that waiters and servers needed to know, contained any information regarding the Foursquare deal.
The incident ended up going well (my table and I scored chocolate chip cookies), but underlies a solution that can build customer rapport and meaningful customer relationships. Luckily my friends and I received more food and enjoyed it, but not all businesses are that quick to engage social media/mobile phone wielding customers who check-in at their establishment. In the modern world of social media and mobile, this is something that is becoming more commonplace and if anything, mandatory.
Here are some things to consider if you are an establishment and have a social media presence:
1) Expect your customers to ask – As a heavy social media user, I take (some) pride in my mayorships and check-in points and love being able to jump over my friends in greater check-ins than them. In fact, more than once, I’ve asked employees about their social media specials, even if nothing is listed on their Foursquare page. I’m not expecting an entitlement for my patronage, but am more so curious about any benefits social media might bring.
2) Make the First Move – When people show up to restaurants, one of the first things they will do beyond checking is check their email or log in to Facebook to show off to their friends where they are or what they are doing. As a restaurant owner, one key objective to undertake is to notice these kind of people and pounce on the opportunity. Asking if they are following the Twitter or Facebook page might get more engaged customers, and show that the establishment is interested in what’s hip right now. It also gives an opportunity to…
3) Incentivize the Presence – Customers love feeling special. Whether it’s being able to win a rewards card for being loyal or showcase a new place down the street to their friends, customers love being able to talk about unique and special social occasions. Social media offers the opportunity to do just that – by making the first move, then incentivizing (“follow us right now, get 50% off your order”), you create the experience that is sure to land a tweet, Facebook status update or a positive recommendation on Yelp.
4) Advertise the Presence – Maybe it’s because I’m in the space, but I always like to look around at how a company advertises and brands itself. 10 years ago it would have been seeing if the establishment had a website, and today, its seeing if the establishment has anything pointing to a social media presence. Knowing that they do have one makes me think that they are more committed to building a brand, interested in reaching out to a community and potentially more responsive to customer service complaints.
Do you ask when you go out to an establishment about their social media presence and actively ask about deals found on social media? Share your comments below.
Albert Qian is the author of Albert Qian: The Social Media Dude. You will find him dining at food joints where social media is accepted as widely as Visa or Mastercard. Find him on Twitter @albertqian or Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/albert.qian
Thoughts on the Facebook IPO
Last week was a big week for Facebook. On Wednesday, they filed their papers for an Initial Public Offering slated for May, and predicted to be one of the biggest technology IPOs ever. On Saturday, the company celebrated 8 years in business.
The story of Facebook is a pretty folksy one, having been told once by founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg himself, and again in an Oscar-winning film, “The Social Network”. Regardless of whether the tool was born from a rejection by a woman (as the movie seems to take the viewpoint of), the network has gained almost 800 million people, and about half of those log in daily.
The journey here has been a tumultuous one, but also one of great success. When the company started in 2004, MySpace was gaining traction, Friendster and Bebo were on the market, and the term “social media” had yet to be coined. Blogging was the term of the day, and that’s how most companies and people managed to maintain a level of “sociality”. Beyond that, everyone still used email.
The first few years of Facebook were mostly limited. To gain an account, you had to initially have had an email with a college. Then the network opened up to high schoolers, and then eventually to people with a regional affiliation, then to anyone who had an email account. Opening it up to everyone invited the concept of spammers, but in this day and age, if you want to be big, there are some things that you simply have to put aside - spam is one of them, unfortunately.
I touched Facebook for the first time in the Fall of 2005. It was late September, and I finally snagged an account. I was exploring MySpace at the time, but did not find much of it - my fears mostly came from design-stupid people who would either fill their profiles with mundane items, upload schizophrenic inducing backgrounds or play music when I landed on their page. I instantly fell in love with Facebook at the time because it was simple, sleek and it made sense. I didn’t know that it would become a crucial part of my career some day.
Fast Forward
Fast forward to February 1st, 2012, when Facebook decides to file its IPO papers. The papers claim that the company will try for a $5 billion dollar IPO, and the company is estimated at $94 billion dollars, with 12% of its money coming from Zynga and the majority from advertising.
My initial thoughts are of great interest. I have yet to review the S-1 in great detail, but the world of social media is about to change. From the definitive entrance of Wall Street and shareholders to potentially charging Facebook Page owners to peddle their brands and wares, social media, the tool best known these days for taking down Egypt, perpetuating the Occupy Protests, and being faster than reputable news sites, the nostalgia and the nuances feel to be pretty much over. My account, to a shareholder, is potentially not just another number, but an advertising unit. Someone to deliver advertising to in pushy ways, clouding the experience that was once enjoyed. Though Facebook claims that it will just continue to make products without bending to the pressures and wills of the investors, the pressure will be there. And it will be strong.
In all, however, the IPO shows that social media is now a permanent part of our lives. Zynga and Groupon’s IPOs merely showed us that social potential was gearing up, but Facebook’s addition into that will put a stamp on something that social marketers have always known, and corporate clickies have always feared: social media is here, here to stay, and there is absolutely nothing you can do about it. Businesses, knowing that Facebook has finally decided to go public, will now have to grapple with the fact that engaging with an audience, producing content and being meaningful to customers at all times is not just an optional job you hand to an intern, but a position you give to someone higher in the organization.
In Closing
Another one of my earliest memories of using Facebook for potential was in the Fall of 2008. I was in Hong Kong, a world away from the United States, studying abroad. It was early November, and it was election day. I sat on the floor of my apartment, my laptop to my right and the television tuned to CNN to hear the latest breaking news.
As the clock struck noon local time, all polls had closed out on the West Coast, and my Facebook feed, then a self updating automated feed, went into overdrive. Barack Obama had won the election, and as he was walking up to the podium, my feed exploded with joy, activity, and raw emotion. Nevermind that the Bush era had come to its close, but rather that social media had for me, fulfilled a potential then - a potential to be used as a communications tool far beyond what the Wall Street Journal, the AP, or any newspaper could offer - that even though news sources could provide me news, my friends could provide commentary, beyond the news, and into an era of relationship based marketing and information.
Come May, this all changes, again.
What are your thoughts on the Facebook IPO? Comment below, send me a tweet @albertqian or email me!
Facebook Timeline: 5 Simple Things to Get Started
For those of us who adopted early back in September, Facebook Timeline has become a normal part of our social media lives. Its sleek look, historical approach and cover photo feature has made for really cool and creative looks to our social media presences.
This coming week looks to be a big one for Facebook. In addition to its highly anticipated IPO filing, also comes the rollout of Timeline. Read on for your simple guide to understanding how Facebook Timeline works in your social life.
