I really want that to be true, I want the Internet to be a level playing field where Facebook is just another company; where "Facebook URLs" are a short-lived fad that people will crack jokes about in a few years time. And chances are that you're right! I've got my fingers crossed.
That said, you've got to admit that this is a different phenomena than AOL keywords.
I've seen plenty of brick-and-mortar businesses lately that have a sign up proudly declaring "become our fan at facebook.com/abc", and I'm not even located in the US! I've encountered these signs in Australia and New Zealand, for what it's worth.
In contrast, I don't recall ever seeing a sign up saying "Remember, our AOL keyword is 'abc'" or anything along those lines. The phenomenon is reminiscent but not comparable at all, in my opinion, if only because AOL was lacking the social aspect completely.
In the UK at least it feels very much AOL --> Facebook, and for what it's worth I've always assumed that in that aspect we are just mimicking America (without having bothered to confirm that assumption).
From (roughly, from memory) 2000 to only a couple of years ago I was regularly seeing "AOL Keyword: <blah>" in video more traditional (print/real-life) advertising. The biggest example that comes to mind is movie trailors, they ALWAYS promoted with AOL, but plenty of other brands were, too.
Possibly the reason I always assumed that it carried over from America was the fact that, at least in my corner of England, AOL were reasonably irrelevant. I mean, they weren't unknown, or even unused, but they didn't exactly seem like a big player. (Again, this was during the latter part of my childhood, so this is from memory of my experience, not from analysing businesses at the time.)
So The Fates have decided the outcome. The only thing left to do is see how long Facebook's demise will take.
It will be very interesting to see the outcome. I don't think Facebook will fade away, AOL style, however some form comparison will be useful to try and divine whether the factors that govern such sites have changed in the past few years - particularly since Facebook's users are more global than perhaps AOL's were.
Yes, but it was fairly short lived. What will be interesting to see is if the internet ebbs and tides between the open (early internet like usenet and bbs, and more or less current form of the internet), and closed (AOL, and possibly now facebook) or if this is a more permanent switch back to a comfort zone for people online.
However, AOL at its peak had 30 million subscribers. How many does Facebook have?
Since 2001 internet use has made the share of AOL much smaller and still everyone needed to connect. There are many users since who have never seen AOL services in use, including myself.
However, internet adoption in democratic non-banning societies is going to slow down (saturation) and Facebook is going to be even more integrated. And since we mostly communicate with people from the same country and even from the same city, growth in non-Facebook countries is not going to matter.
What I would like to happen is that Facebook becomes obsolete or too annoying (like MySpace).
I don't know how many customers Facebook has. Do you?
It's certainly less than the 30 million customers AOL had. (Customer defined as someone who pays for service).
Facebook has it's place for the people who like safe, controlled and easy. Like 30m AOL customers. MySpace was never safe, barely controlled and not really easy.
AOL lost out because its model was broken - most people found the winder web more interesting than it's curated pages. Facebook doesn't curate it's own pages. It's a microcosm of the web. It is not going to fail in the same way as AOL or MySpace.
I for one am happy for all this stuff to stay on Facebook, and for the wider web to contain the heavy-weight version.
1 - Figure out what tech the hardcore technorati snubs.
2 - Note the subset of this which has mainstream traction.
3 - Implement something with value (while the techie snobs
look on in disdain)
4 - Succeed
Who has used this strategy? YouTube. (Which is why I couldn't say "Profit.")
I would still like to have had the success of YouTube. And I bet if you look hard enough, you'll find some niche where someone has followed those steps, but with #4 - Profit!
I was one. Everyone who could've been YouTube, were it not for the fact that they disdained Flash Video and were looking at a "more elegant technology."
What sort of benefit could you get by "friending" your utility company? How bizarre. Maybe they want to deliver policy changes or energy saving tips more easily? That's the sort of thing I don't mind reading through snail-mail. (Email is too ephemeral, and FB... well, that's mostly noise).
Companies that put up facebook pages are just doing it because its easy and there is no cost associated with it. Nobody is depending on it and nobody will care much about it when the next big platform comes along.
I know plenty of people who never go online for anything other than email and Facebook. And Facebook is trying, at least, to take the email part for themselves.
I even know quite a few "techies" who never bothered to use RSS, but use Facebook as something like an RSS feed (by "liking" someone's page, you get the updated to your wall).
I have to say, I like company Facebook pages because it's much harder to make an awful Flash-heavy mystery-meat-navigation autoplay-music unselectable-text mess of a site within Facebook.
Calling this a fad isn't helpful. There's a reason why this is happening and if it's a fad, so be it, but it's one we all should understand and act upon.
What is the justification for believing this? What should we understand? I don't think anyone can really understand fads, its like why is one song so catchy and others not, quantifying that is very difficult. Why should facebook win out currently over the other social networks is an interesting study point,m but I fail to see why we should study facebook if that was your point.
Linkbait blogpost to stir the pot. The blogger writes about his experience watching the Doritos Super Bowl ad having a facebook link at the end and how it was an epiphany or something about Facebook being "the Internet." With only 3 short paragraphs and an embedded video with the ad in question.
Redirect people to your Facebook page, and since even dogs have Facebook profiles, the user will probably click the 'like' button, and may also share the page or invite a few friends.
Companies now are looking for more fans because it means for them more coverage. The news they publish on their page will show up on the user page. But what will happen if all of the companies that exist in earth and other parts of the universe advertise heavily on Facebook?
The typical user will have then a subscription to more than 1 thousand page and he'll probably end up watching what his friends are sharing. This is exactly what happened to Twitter, when web masters started to accumulate followers, but in the end it didn't work out. You can have 20K followers and barely 10 users read your tweet.
And this is not only linked to Facebook, imagine you are watching a movie and get a break with 320 ads, will you remember any of them? What the conversion ratio will be?
> Companies now are looking for more fans because it means for them more coverage. The news they publish on their page will show up on the user page. But what will happen if all of the companies that exist in earth and other parts of the universe advertise heavily on Facebook?
Users will get sick of being stuffed like a goose. Fast.
What utility do these Facebook pages of companies offer, other than allowing me to become a fan?
I am not even sure if I want to have news feeds of my favorite products. Quite the other way round: I like products that have a high quality and last for a very long time. This implies that once I buy it, I don't need a news stream about it for a very long time anymore, either. The product should stay out of my way and do what it is designed to do.
Also, it would embarrass me to advertise stuff to my friends.
I am a fan of a number of consumer brands on Facebook, and occasionally I'll experiment with Liking them just to see if they are doing a lot of branding and interaction with customers.
But I notice that I don't get much value from these Fan pages. Most of them don't offer me any incentive to come back, and don't tell me much more than what I already know about the product. I think it's smart to promote a brand or B2C company there because of the numbers, but I wonder if the conversions created are all that big.
The most powerful utility is being able to message your fans. It's like getting them on your email list, but even more powerful because sharing and commenting are viral and easy.
Hooray! If all the advertising / marketing types can move to Facebook I can successfully ignore them just like I used to successfully ignore AOL keywords.
I think this is far more true if your business is B2C (Business to Consumer) than if it's B2B (Business to Business). It might now be the internet for individuals, but I don't think it's there yet for companies.
I use Facebook (when I do) in a very personal space. Brands whose pages I have liked are all personal - Get Into London Theatre, my work, my favourite film. I don't connect with any of my clients, or my corporate suppliers, on there. And I've had limited success promoting my business through FB, as opposed to LinkedIn (which I use in a very business space).
(Obviously, what we've done with FB is not very good. That's not the logic behind my argument here, just another data point.)
I do see an opportunity for businesses in the B2B space to use it better. It might now be the internet for individuals, not companies, but that doesn't mean my business shouldn't have a presence.
New media outlets are always abused blatantly before they are used properly. As a site about a phone, the Xperia Play "site" (it's only a facebook fan page) gets an F. No photos, no technical specs... if you are looking for information about the phone, about the only thing it does is get in your way. You have to like the page just to see it's only video. It's as if Best Buy made me call a friend just to look around the store. To hang around long term, these brand pages will have to start offering genuine utility of some kind--and that's the same challenge for every site or trend on the internet.
"Love it or hate it, I guess I was right when I said you need to jump back into Facebook. As Web Professionals, we need to pay attention to this fundamental shift and act accordingly."
Just because someone else is doing something does not mean that I need to do the same thing.
If you see an advantage in using Facebook then do it. But think for yourself and don't just follow the other Lemmings.
The author does seem to miss the point that this is really only about brand engagement.
I do not know anyone who would even consider /buying/ doritos from facebook (or online at all I suppose), but may have an interest in letting others know how much they like it. This is what a majority of product based companies are looking for in their website, so a low cost website with incredible traffic potential is an easy choice over creating a completely unique site.
Unless facebook releases a vending front, like amazon marketplace, that would allow small companies to easily sell goods through facebook itself.
It's not. Some people are holdouts. Foregoing a website in favour of a Facebook page means excluding these people. I don't see that replacing yourbrand.com with a redirect to facebook.com/yourbrand is a good idea.
"Love it or hate it, I guess I was right when I said you need to jump back into Facebook." Well I guess he was wrong twice.
"so they re-direct the .com to Facebook. Scary." How is this scary? They will never do this. Branding is very important for large companies. You cannot afford letting people think about Facebook when instead they should think about Doritos. They just use Facebook so people can easily find there corporate website. But as csomar points out: it will only last a minute.
Never say never. If potential firehose of traffic available on FB will far surpass what most companies can generate for their stand-alone sites. Once they realize they only have enough budget to put towards one area online, then they might choose their Facebook page, as it's yielding more results.
Wasn't this same claim made by Wired, albeit with different reasons for their conclusion? I remember John Gruber and several others denounced the story at the time, but I can only find the DF link
I can remember a few years ago companies were just saying "Google <our brand>" instead of giving out the URL. I think it's all just a way to make it easier for people to find their sites. People are very used to using Google and Facebook so why not give out information in terms of those services?
This is some truth to this. FB is a walled, semi-curated, subset of the internet. It has inertia and, for all those who don't want the general hassles associated with the internet at large, may be a perfect 5-minute solution.
The local red-neck bar has a FB page. Think about that.
Marketing is about reaching the most people, now ask yourself which way reaches more people, Facebook which has millions of users already or some web site your company threw together?
If its any mystery to you then you probably fail to understand the point of advertising.
I'll probably only visit their website once, but if I 'like' them on facebook, they can push stuff at me, any time they want, promotions, new products etc.
This has happened before, in 2000 every one was directing you to their myspace page. In the mid 90's it was a AOL keyword, late 90's is was their website. Next will be twitter.
It's been that for quite a while; my brother in law was living in Canada last year, and in order to watch soccer games that could only be found on French Canal+ he tuned in to Justin TV...
