Facebook came perilously close to missing the mobile boat a
few year ago, but it saw the light—aided, no doubt, by the glare coming from
investors—and embarked on a strong mobile strategy. Now the company appears
poised to live long and prosper, as long as it can avoid making any big
mistakes. The bigger they are, the harder they fall and all that.
In 2004, Harvard
undergrads become the first group to use Facebook – the social network launched
at the college. Fast –forward a decade and the company is a technology mammoth,
with1.23 million users and profit of US$1.5 Billion FOR 2013.
Facebook is by
most accounts a gargantuan success, and it is putting the pieces in place for
its next decade and beyond. Those pieces point to a mobile future.
Facebook was
somewhat late to the game with mobile. Before its 2012 acquisition of
instagram, it had neglected the rise of smartphones in favor of the PC. Now,
however , Facebook has switched focus to mobile and already is starting to see the benefits.
All about Advertising
Many investors were concerned Facebook was losing out on
advertising revenue as users shifted to mobile. Yet the company revealed in
fourth-quarter earning report that mobile advertising accounted for 53 percent
of the $2.34 billion total advertising revenue, up from 23 percent in the
year-ago period. Perhaps not coincidentally, Instagram started displaying ads
for the first time last quarter.
The focus on
mobile is set to be released by the company’s creative Labs division. The unit
allows small teams at the company to create standalone mobile apps outside of
the core Facebook experience.
“The financial result are an indication that Facebook has
been closer to understanding the mobile ads business and has attracted the
attention of corporate clients in trying out its mobile ad solutions,” said
Markos Zachariadis assistant professor of information systems at Warwick
Business School.
Both The
acquisition of Instagram and the development of paper show that Facebook is
making a move from its traditional web-based page towards mobile solutions that
will meet the demands of both its user-base and organizations that are looking
to reach out to consumers in a more dynamic way,” he said.
‘Good Direction’
“Predictions for the near future suggest that in 2017 nearly
4 billion people will access the internet through their smartphones,”
Zachariadis added. “ To put this into perspective, you need to compare with the
current figure of internet users—less then 3 billion from both mobile and
desktop devises.”
Facebook is
headed “in a good direction ,” he concluded.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg, meanwhile, hinted at some future plans
in an interview with Bloomberg. His three-year plan puts mobile at the
forefront – he declared at an all –hands meeting in early 2012 that Facebook
would be a mobile-first company from then on.
Facebook
may become a little more lax with its requirements for users to use their real
names, Zuckerberg suggested. That rule that has seen many would-be users in
countries with oppressive regimes turns to pseudonym –friendly Twitter to get
involved in the global conversation. Future Facebook apps may not require users
to log in with Facebook credentials.
Solving New Problems
Within the next five years, Facebook aims to become more
intuitive and help users solve problems they may not even have considered. When
users turn to their Facebook friends for advice on finding a great local dentist or restaurant, for
instance, Facebook should be doing better at using its trove of data to answer
those questions, Zuckerberg told Bloomberg .
Over the
next decade, Facebook will work to expand Internet access o the billions of
people who do not yet have it he said. Facebook has teamed up with technology
companies like Samsung and Qualcomm on Internet.org, a project that aims to
help users in developing countries get access to Web service, including
Facebook, through cheaper phones.
Facebook
still face many challenges in the years ahead.
Security, Cultural Concerns
“Challenges in security and privacy are two major concerns
(of) global social network, including interoganizational networks.” Said Warwick Business School ’s
Zachariadis.
“Also,
compliance with local and international laws and regulations is a matter that often emerges as part of the globalization
agenda. If Facebook’s target – as Mark Zuckerberg suggests -- is to socially connect the whole world,
these are issues that need to be addresses regardless … of the strategy the
company will chose to move forward.”
Elsewhere,
Facebook might have to work harder to maintain user interest.
‘Household Name’
“They’re going to have to continue to do thing that are
engaging people and getting people to share and drive traffic that regard,”
said Gordon Owens, digital marketing professional at GO Digital WSI.
“It’s a
household name now, no one thinks about it.
They need to keep doing thing that make people go back and say, “This
new thing Facebook’s doing is really cool and I've gotta go check it out.” he
said.
“With a massive
audience like that, they’re just one or two wrong moves away from losing a ton
of people,” Owens suggested. “If you have some massive security breach or
people find out that Facebook has been feeding all their data to the NSA – all
of sudden everyone stops using it. I think you sort of run utterly, drastically
wrong to not be able to continue to drive revenue into the future.”@
Sponsored
0 comments:
Post a Comment