Facebook receives over 6 Million page views per minute. Its easy to see why brands and companies are flocking to create pages and engage with consumers. When these companies jump on the social media marketing bandwagon without a strategy or any idea of how to properly leverage social networks for their marketing goals, they ruin it for everyone. For instance, the other day some life insurance company asked me to be their friend on Facebook. From what I remember, I don’t have a friend named “Life Insurance”. If I did, I would take them down to the courthouse immediately for a name change. That is what friends do.
Nevertheless, this influx of marketers attempting to connect with Facebook’s 350 million users was bound to happen. The brands that get it, like Starbucks or H&M with their useful apps and pages, realize that social networks are not sales tools. They see that they actually have to add to the conversation, not distract from it. I do believe it was a good choice for Facebook to open up their platform for anyone to join and I don’t blame Facebook for “Life Insurance” wanting to be my friend. Instead, I blame marketers that just don’t get it trying to jump on the social media bandwagon.
So what happens when social networks like Facebook let everyone join? Take a look at Myspace, who is still spending more time defending their market position rather than saving it. Like Facebook, Myspace was able to get leverage by targeting a niche. For Myspace this was bands. For Facebook it was college students. The only people that could get a Facebook account had to have email addresses with a “.edu”. When they opened up the platform to everyone, it was only a matter of time before people like me were getting friend requests from people named “Life Insurance.”
So, is Facebook just a Fad? Is it loosing its cool? Will it follow the same steps as Myspace or is it smarter than that? A lot of investors in social media applications and network think the two are completely different animals. They see Myspace as more of a media sharing space and Facebook as more of a platform. I heard one Venture Capitalist the other day compare Facebook to Windows in that both are platforms with very large user bases. They are ecosystems in themselves. Anyone creating software, must enable it to run on Windows. Likewise, anyone creating an app must create it to run on
Facebook if they want it to gain users quickly. I haven’t even gotten started with mobile….I’ll save that for another post.
My Prediction? Facebook is not the next Myspace, but they still have to be careful. When Facebook allowed everyone into their social ecosystem, they made themselves vulnerable to many things including the possibility of their new users scaring away their niche. True, you can report these people but the last thing I want is bad social media karma. Perhaps they did the proper research and saw that they wouldn’t lose too much of their niche opening itself up- I mean, I’m still here and what is Facebook without people like us?
Without its users, Facebook would be nothing. In fact, it wouldn’t exist and it wouldn’t have any value. Users are the currency of social networks. The more users, the more valuable you are to the social media space.
Nevertheless, Facebook is here to stay, and so are it’s marketers- the bad and the good. Its capacity to leverage its applications and 350 Million users (who half apparently visit at least once a day) is extremely valuable and sustainable.
Moreover, Facebook every day is becoming less of a network and more of a platform for so much. In fact, one day the may even become a big competitor to Google as search becomes more social and less reliant on the engines.
For tips on social media optimization, please bookmark the Social-Capitalist or subscribe.
