I noticed yesterday that I made Mini-Microsoft! OK, it was just a quote from Kip Kniskern at LiveSide.net, but still nice to be noticed. I think. In the same article, Mini goes on to grouse about whether Microsoft should buy FaceBook. Aside from FaceBook booting his pseudonym personality, he brings up the classic death trend of social networks past: boredom. Or perhaps resignation:
Chat with some senior leadership in the next week and ask them, “Hey, what do you think about Microsoft buying Facebook?” I’m curious if your experience will be like mine lately: usually, a calm comes over the face and the senior leader is quite articulate in explaining all the reasons why it would be dumb to buy Facebook, how it won’t happen, and how it’s so wonderful to partner with Facebook for ads and to also ensure we’re a great platform for people to develop Facebook applications on (along with being a platform for future social networking applications). Consensus and clarity seems to have been reached on high around this, a new page has been put in the strategy hymnal, and everyone is singing to it.
I can’t say whether FaceBook is worth several billions. However, some interesting points:
- I’ve been busy reconnecting with people from college I haven’t seen in a decade. Imagine if I never had to reconnect, but was able to keep track of people through high school, undergrad, and grad school.
- I still visit FaceBook at least every other day, and I love updating random status blurbs.
- Occasionally, I do accept an application request (I’ve ignored the Zombies, Ninjas, and similar things, but the NFL IQ is pretty fun!)
- I can’t imagine actively working with more than, oh, two social networks. And even that’s a stretch. I think there can only be one.
- I still stand by my comment that FaceBook is the only thing I’ve seen in a long, long time that has the potential to be a default home page. And that’s worth some scratch.
Now, this being said, FaceBook is facing a number of issues… dealing with scale, likely refactoring tons of crappy PHP into something managable, figuring out how to be insanely profitable (and I don’t know the numbers behind the Microsoft ad deal, but I can’t imagine display banner ads are making money!), and so on. And competition… Live Spaces now has a news feed, and Google is primed for a re-release of Orkut (this time, without stolen code!) But you know, I remember wondering why Amazon, Microsoft, and others decided to get into the auction game after eBay had won the day. A friend commented that Amazon wanted in before eBay controlled the market, and all I could think was, “um, dude… they already do!” A few years later, this was proven true when all the also-rans abandoned the field.
Now, will FaceBook be the one, or will it suffer the same fates of Friendster, Orkut, Yahoo 360, and so on? Personally, I think it’s gonna be the one. Applications will add the spice and freshness, they’ll fix their scale and coding issues, and they’ll figure out how to make some cash off of personalized something-or-other (like, oh, I dunno… personalized ads! or personalized search with personalized ads! or personalized product recommendations!). This being said, there’s still some big chances that FaceBook gets scooped by competition, but if it’s almost 2009 and FaceBook is still in the lead, well, Game Over.
