Facebook’s redesign continues to make news on a regular basis. With a whole lot of vociferous users making the 237 Ways To Get Free Publicity ir dislike quite clear, with the help of a layout poll, it was interesting to see that a lot of advice was given to Facebook to not just blindly give in to the crowd –Rex Hammock, Michael Arrington, to name a few. While I’m still not a fan of the new design, I agree with that advice, in fact this is exactly what I’d thought brands in social media should do, so no reason why Facebook shouldn’t apply the logic to itself.
But Facebook did address the concerns of the users, and made modifications without changing the core thoughts of the new design. Meanwhile it was interesting to note that a fair amount of users found their own Greasemonkey way of getting rid of those annoying quizzes. š (Check this out for more interesting scripts)
In spite of this excellent thought provoking post on Facebook’sĀ strategy and execution, and not discounting Twitter-envy, I reckon that Facebook sees at least a few elements of the new design as the fundamental way forward, the one that can contribute to revenue. Real time features, fan pages redesign all seem to be steps towards dollars. This is perhaps why Facebook has played a balancing act and ‘conceded a battle’, since it wants to pacify users as well as be on track for monetisation. (Facebook is also working on a virtual currency system) I actually wonder if this was just a testing of waters before they attempt some massive changes.
When I’d written about the Facebook redesign earlier, I’d mentioned that the ‘always on’ usage of Twitter was helped by the horde of applications that can be used from the desktop/browser to connect to Twitter. Well, there have been two developments. Seesmic released a dedicated Facebook application a few weeks back, and Tweetdeck, a popular Twitter app, released a new beta version which also integrates Facebook updates, and has already raised questions on the privacy of the Facebook network. You can check out a few more apps here.
Another interesting thing to note is Facebook pushing private groups for families. You can share things without it going to your public stream (except Events). This is bound to increase the base – a teen audience as well as the over 50 audience. While Facebook’s largest set of users is in the 18-25 age bracket, the maximum growth these days is coming from the >35 crowd. This age skew would have quite some influence in all the changes that Facebook plans to bring about in the future, and it makes me wonder whether there’ll be a much larger balancing act required between the largest segment of the user base and the monetisable user base. Will they be the same? Will the usage patterns on Facebook change a lot because of the influx of a different audience segment? How will that affect monetisation? What would be the levels of accuracy that advertisers would be able to get in such a diverse system? Will changes in design polarise the users? Will this then result in the rise of new networks? What do you think? Maybe the Masters in Social Media can answer that in some time. š
Meanwhile, with shrinking ad revenues and huge growth adding to costs, Facebook is attempting to raise capital this year. Going by this, Google should be interested. Interestingly Google values FB at $2 billion, and thats a far cry from its self worth of $15 billion.Ā š
until next time, ‘Like’ ? š
..and on the blog today, “The Facebook age” http://www.manuprasad.com/?p=2147