Facebook – Does it have a limit?
I highly doubt you’ve noticed but I’ve been missing recently, not anything exciting just super busy. Between touring around the United States and coordinating new online advertising strategies, I’ve been non-stop, not unlike Facebook.
If you follow this incomparable source of social media news, you won’t have missed a beat, but if you, like myself have been busy, let me catch you up.
I once read an article, don’t ask for the reference, which compared the Internet’s rapid expansion to a plague like infection. I believe this concept to be less than antiquated when likened to Facebook’s most recent introductions.
For the purpose of this article I’d like to focus on two of their most recent announcements. Facebook Deals & Facebook Messenger for iPhone.
Let’s start at Facebook Deals. The service for the first time places Facebook in direct competition with Four Square. Although the company has denounced the idea that Facebook Places has had any impact on its service, I find it very hard to believe. That said, Four Square has made enormous progress in their field. Earlier this year they announced their 6 millionth member, and growth of more than 3400% in 2010. Impressive, but enough to battle a turf war with Facebook?
I personally know how lazy I am, and in turn why I’d rather use only one social media platform. Additionally, the shear power based on Facebooks member base will surely attract more substantive deals from larger and wider reaching companies. It seems to me that Facebook is about to cannibalize the niche market that Four Square has until now dominated.
Secondly, Facebook Messenger. Again, the expansion of the Facebook lineup will decimate the user-base of a wide variety of applications which do exactly what Facebook Messenger will do, except without the benefit of all your friends already being members. Is it only a short time before they go after voice messages and destroy Heytell?
However, the thought of a few hundred guys in their parents basements losing their clients won’t exactly demand front page coverage. On the other hand, companies such as AT&T in the US and Vodafone, Telstra & Optus in Australia certainly will. Any iPhone owner knows that with a combination of Heytell & Skype you need not have phone calls in your monthly cap and now you can cancel your TXT allowance, just make sure you up your data allowance. Is it only a matter of time until a competitor comes up against the big Telcos offering only data heavy plans? Or will Facebook simply pick up the slack in that department as well?
There’s no knowing what their plan is, or if they even have one for the long term, but at this stage it’s a ball that we simply can’t stop rolling. I still haven’t decided whether I’d rather be in on executive meetings at Facebook HQ or similar meetings at Foursquare and with the big Telco’s.