The Future of Facebook

Unless you have been living under a rock for the past couple years you have heard of the social monster known only as Facebook. It is coming more apparent that Facebook is clearly the social site of the future but with its incredible growth the site and company is still in its infancy and has yet to seen any major challenges. With these factors in mind it does make some of us wonder, what is the future of Facebook?

It is debatable by many but in my opinion Facebook is going to be increasing its online market share for years to come. Many say that Facebook is going to be the next Google as it eliminates the need for searching, by allowing users to rely on associate’s recommendations. Personally I think this is quite ridiculous and I never see Facebook actually stealing any of Google’s market share. On the other hand I do see Facebook replacing the need to many instant messenger services provided by such companies as AOL, Yahoo, and Microsoft. That is not debatable because in roughly a week Facebook is launching a real time messenger service built into the site interface that is going to allow users to communicate just like users do with AOL’s popular aim service. You can view a video of the beta version below.

In addition to this chat feature I also see Facebook one day including features like voice and integrated email. Facebook’s main mission is all about communication and user control with integrated voice services and email this would allow Facebook to offer its users more features and there for help it gain a larger market share.

Now that I have talked about what I think the future of Facebook will include, what about emerging competition for Facebook, after all a new social giant emerges roughly every year and a half. As for competition for Facebook many look at myspace and say that they are competition while I take a look at myspace and say definitely not, if you have been in the web industry for long you can tell that myspace looks like a washed up site from the nineties and not only that is loaded with spam, not to mention it has totally failed to evolve and innovate to changing markets and users. So what about new sites popping up to compete with Facebook, in my opinion Facebook is young and still in its infancy. With a young and willing CEO they are changing and are going to stay on the edge there for keeping out new social sites.

The last point I would like to make about Facebook is the monetization of the site and the industries surrounding it. As I said Facebook is still in its infancy and so are the monetization methods of the site. Right now there is a struggle on how to bring in corporate sponsors and corporate dollars to the site as there are limited ways to monetize it. Several major financial institutions are investing in the potential by dropping $50 million for a stake just under 10% in Slide inc. which specializes in producing applications for Facebook and now many other social sites. While Facebook is incredibly big right now membership is relatively low compared to other social sites like myspace and relative to the population of the world that has access to computers, my point being here is that there is just tremendous opportunity for Facebook to grow and reach larger markets. My advice now is to get into the Facebook market; Facebook is on the clime and is only going to grow. Facebook applications are still open to small time developers right now, when corporate dollars come in I see large companies like slide and rockyous squeezing the small guy out. If you have ever wanted to get onto something before it blew up and make a fortune, get into Facebook you will not lose.

Contributor :  Cody Low