Facebook's killer app is here. No, it's Not places.

http://blog.eyesandfeet.com/2010/08/facebooks-killer-app-is-here-no-its-not.html

by luxative • 16 years ago

74 64 16 years ago

blog.eyesandfeet.com

Scary. That's centralization to a degree I hardly imagine. I hope this will fail.

sz2• 16 years ago

I don't think this is really centralization. Just another avenue for advertising. For example, even if (less mainstream) bands generally use a Myspace URL as their web presence, Myspace doesn't necessarily control the music industry.

I find the Facebook-controlled universal login much more unsettling, personally.

angstrom• 16 years ago

I wouldn't expect failure unless people are extolling the almost certain exponential growth of user base. Where are the numbers on stagnant users? I have 4 very close friends that I would rather update via email or IM simply because I don't really care for the opinions of some people on my friends list and keeping track of that is a waste of time.

mortenjorck• 16 years ago

What Apple has become to mobile software, Facebook is becoming to business web presence.

For better or worse.

heinel• 16 years ago

Old news. Though if fan pages really took off with places like suggested then time is really running out for Google Me. Unless there's some super cool feature that really blows Facebook out of the water, but it is hard to imagine how anything could be.

dlsspy• 16 years ago

I've been noticing this trend as well. I commented to a friend recently, “Remember when there was more than one web page?”

chunkyslink• 16 years ago

Yea me too. As someone who doesn't have a Facebook account I notice it a lot.

I have actually started removing sites from my favourites list that are peppered with Facebook widgets. I just don't visit them anymore. There is still plenty of choice out there but stuff is slowly morphing into Facebook.

alttab• 16 years ago

I've seen plenty of commercials with: facebook.com/myproduct as their URL. Crazy shit.

johns3• 16 years ago

This is just the latest revision of AOL Keywords. How did that work out for them?

Supermighty• 16 years ago

This is just the latest revision of MySpace pages too.

city412• 16 years ago

Except a major difference is Facebook has proven they are very talented and capable of making really well designed, easy to use and relatively bug free apps. Myspace could not even come close to pulling that off.

iamelgringo• 16 years ago

20 years after they were a startup, they made $400M in profit on revenue of $3.2B last year. I'm not saying those are sexy numnbers, but they're not exactly shabby, either.

johns3• 16 years ago

They don't control the web though. So it's significant, but not as dire as the article implies it will be.

rfugger• 16 years ago

I personally don't see the appeal of Facebook pages. The only function I can see of "liking" any of these pages is to give Facebook more information so they can try to sell you more stuff.

sz2• 16 years ago

The appeal to businesses is clear.

The appeal to users could be social ("What brands do I associate myself with?") or promotion-related ("Become our 1,000,000th fan and get this free thing!", "Facebook-exclusive discount!"). Also I don't think Facebook lets you put in bio information (favorite movies, etc.) anymore without it linking to a page.

edanm4• 16 years ago

The contest-related stuff is a big reason, I suspect - I'm in a contest now with a team of people, where the team with the most "likes" clicked through them on to a company website is given an Ipad each (8 members). Believe me, we're doing a good job advertising the company for them :)

nanairo3• 16 years ago

I've actually heard that it's also used by smaller businesses as a way to communicate with their target audience. So, for example, if you are a chain of cinemas, you can let everyone keep up with when/where you are going to release the next films. If you are a retailer, you can advertise when the new products are in.

A bit like they did in the past with email newsletters. (Though a lot better: for a start, it doesn't spam your inbox, which can remain for more important matters).

kristiandupont• 16 years ago

Not only that, but when people 'like' your product, they automatically market it to all of their friends.

patrickk4• 16 years ago

Facebook's increasing focus on business customers will be at the detriment of regular users, who will be demoted to the rank of mere 'consumers'. It's a subtle - but important - distinction.

Facebook's decision-making will increasingly be driven by thinking like "how can we monetize all this wealth of consumer data" or "how can we introduce tiered fanpage packages to business customers as a revenue stream" rather than focusing on what makes a great user experience.

Currently, knowing that my friend has achieved another 'badge' in Mafia Wars adds zero value to my life. It only gets worse as Facebook focuses more and more on business brands. What do I care if my friend 'likes' Apple or Nike? How does that improve my relationship with that person? People I am really friends with in real life don't care what brands I like, or what isotonic sports drink I drink. The like me because of me. Much as businesses would like to think that people define their lives by the products they buy (this is like the opening scenes in 'Fight Club' where Edward Norton's character tries to pick out stuff from an Ikea catalogue that defines himself) that's not a basis for a relationship. And Facebook used to be all about relationships. Now I look at my Live Stream...and it's got all this random flotsam floating downstream. I care about none of it.

The reason I love HN, incidentally, is because it's the polar opposite of MySpace and what Facebook is gradually becoming. Real people, that I share a lot in common with, expressing their real opinions, no auto-generated crap, and zero bling.

You see comments like "What could cause FB to die?" here on HN. They're so big at this stage, with the power of network effects and lock-in, that external competition is no threat to them realistically. The only way they will die is if they continue exactly the way they are now, making people's experience ever-more spam choked, till people realize "hey this experience is actually quite shit, even if I do have 500 online friends" and start looking for alternatives. We're not quite there yet though.

gaius2• 16 years ago

The other day I got half-price cupcakes because I was following my supermarket on FB. So now the internet knows I'm a cupcake-eater... So long as there's some value in it for both parties, it can work.

dpatru• 16 years ago

The ability to "like" people and businesses can be used as a trust network. it's standard practice for people to ask their friends for recommendations when choosing a doctor, lawyer, or other service providers. None of the people I know who have small businesses advertise. They rely on "word-of-mouth" to get new clients. Facebook "liking" and future derivatives (perhaps unlike, recommend, and complain-about) is the Internet equivalent of "asking your friends."

sprout2• 16 years ago

Most people have 'likes' that years ago were groups that were silently transmuted into pages by the group owners, and since then silently turned into public 'likes' by Facebook.

In other words, it's a very poor trust network, because no one is using it that way. Most people 'like' a lot of stuff in a casual or even joking manner.

Unlike, recommend, and complain might be useful, but Facebook is an advertising platform, not a recommendation engine. I doubt they'll make that transition, because it would cut in on their revenue to let people clearly mark advertisers as unwanted.

mambodog2• 16 years ago

For a long time people have psuedo-individualised themselves through the products they associate with. Facebook makes this as easy as clicking 'Like'.

edanm4• 16 years ago

Personally, I think Facebook's killer app is that it fixed email.

For a huge population, email never worked very well, mostly since they had to find out someone else's email to talk to them. Facebook fixes this completely for any personal email use - all your real-life friends are friends on Facebook.

I'm guessing a huge percentage of personal mail has moved from email to Facebook messages - does anyone have any data about this by any chance?

nanairo3• 16 years ago

Sad but I've got the same impression. The scariest bit for me is that people with whom I was exchanging emails, are now sending me FB messages instead.

That is to say they already have my email address, it's there probably memorised in their email app, and yet they use FB.

That's one scary power FB got there. Suddenly email is not open anymore. (Though I don't blame FB for it: they did business, didn't force it down anyone's throat).

sprout2• 16 years ago

What scares me is the other week I sent a Facebook message that should have been an email, largely because a different friend in the same social circle had sent me a Facebook message on a similar subject.

It's really hard to use Facebook without it taking total control of your social interaction.

luxative6• 16 years ago

An interesting link in the context of your point: http://www.aweber.com/blog/email-marketing/email-and-faceboo...

Note 1: check out the embedded video Note 2: take the rest of the content with a pinch of salt; this is an email marketing vendor's blog!

gaius2• 16 years ago

Another thing FB effectively fixed, app invites notwithstanding, was spam.

Probably lots of kids these days don't even know this, but there was once a time when your (probably only) email address was supplied by your university or employer. If two people moved, it was easy for them to lose contact with each other until a "chance" encounter (e.g. seeing them post on Usenet or whatever). Facebook solved that problem by making everyone's address book self-updating.

chc• 16 years ago

That was already fixed by the time Facebook came around. Hotmail was offering addresses that weren't tied to your uni or employer in 1996.

notahacker• 16 years ago

It also fixed event invitations extremely well. Events is Facebook's killer app it barely realises it has...

asdfer• 16 years ago

This is the main reason I always hear that people are 'forced' to stay on FB, even if they don't like it: so they can still get invited to parties.

jasonlbaptiste• 16 years ago

Hmm, facebook mail is absolutely horrid. It's a combination of spam messages and just contact that I will never read. I have 1000+ unread messages.

I actually read a fb message in my normal email box and if it's something actually valuable, ill then respond on FB.

almost• 16 years ago

> I actually read a fb message in my normal email box and if it's something actually valuable, ill then respond on FB

And that's the important bit, people seem to either check FB mail directly or read it in there own email. Either way you've got more chance of getting through to them soon if you send via Facebook... I don't like it either though, it makes me rather uncofortable to have more comunication going through FB.

mambodog2• 16 years ago

Facebook didn't fix email with its Facebook 'mail', it did it with wall posts, comment conversations, and events.

christonog• 16 years ago

I don't think it's changed e-mail as much as it is changing mobile messaging (SMS). With notifications on mobile FB apps, you can easily bypass SMS to communicate with other friends either at their computer or on their phone.

There are still other e-mail features FB private messages don't offer: forwarding message threads, attachments, email subscriptions, etc.)

whakojacko• 16 years ago

Those can all be fixed easily enough. When (not if) facebook finally launches a full-featured email service, it will probably dominate gmail/yahoo/microsoft. You would get a address @fbmail.com or whatever so you could still use it as your "normal" free email client. But you then also get easy communication with all your friends, since facebook already knows how to contact them and can do so bypassing traditional email alltogether (since the messages stay entirely within facebook's data centers). Not to mention tying in to their existing products-If you got an event invitation (sent to your fbmail since you no longer check your gmail) it could show you all the details (no reason it couldn't do that right now) and which of your friends are going etc right in the email.

DougBTX• 16 years ago

Facebook, the most visited site in the US, has only just now found it's killer app?

nanairo3• 16 years ago

Did you read the article? The whole point is that they had already found it (or so claims the author). It's the author that just now realised.

InACloud• 16 years ago

FACT CHECK: 500 million users is over 25% of the world's online population.

Actually, the last time I checked http://www.census.gov/main/www/popclock.html shows the world population at 6.8billion. So 500 million would only be 7% of the worlds population. Impressive, but nowhere near 25%.

dagw• 16 years ago

Not everybody in the world is online, and thus not part of the worlds online population.

dhimes• 16 years ago

Don't forget the word "online" in the original statement.

luxative6• 16 years ago

Online population: http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm (approx 2 billion)

kasunh• 16 years ago

All true only if organizational default url becomes their fb fan page and that is not likely to happen

chrisbaglieri• 16 years ago

When combined with Places, Pages becomes a significantly more compelling platform. For business owners it becomes a more vibrant and useful set of data. For consumers, it becomes more real time and as a result more social. For developers, it becomes a more interesting data set to build upon. This excerpt from GigaOM (http://gigaom.com/2010/08/20/facebook-places-the-real-target...) was telling:

We’re hearing that Facebook is pouring resources into pitching the Places feature as a tool for local businesses in dozens of markets, by approaching individual store-owners and business people and selling them on the idea of setting up a Places page for their location. According to Facebook’s description of the new feature, anyone can create a page for a place, but businesses can claim their page — by responding to a phone call from a Facebook representative, or by uploading some kind of official documentation that proves they have the right to that location.

jonknee• 16 years ago

MySpace band pages were the rage a few years ago. Times change. The MySpace pages at least provided value for both sides--you could hear the music and the bands could let you know about shows. Most business pages I've seen on Facebook are one sided in that the fan gets nothing out of it other than letting all their friends know what corporation they are a "fan" of.

city412• 16 years ago

That's not really true. Bands can, and do, use Facebook pages as effectively as they used Myspace pages. You can include audio, tour dates, etc on Facebook pages quite easily. In fact it's my sole means of finding out when/where my favorite bands are touring now.

Facebook pages are even better, because this can apply to anything, not just bands. I also get informed of the latest Abstruse Goose, updates to favorite iPhone apps, etc, all through Facebook. It's just up to the owner of the page to use it effectively.

masterj• 16 years ago

It really depends on the business. There are a couple of local businesses here that I follow: a liquor store, a crepe cart, a coffee shop, etc. They all regularly post with specials, events, new dishes/type of coffee/beer, etc. YMMV, but knowing that I can pick up grilled fig, honey and goat cheese crepes on the way to work tomorrow is pretty cool in my book.

Though I imagine most pages are not quite so well utilized. These are all small, local businesses.

Facebook's killer app is here. No, it's Not places.

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