What’s next for Facebook?
Much has been made of the challenges facing Facebook in the next 12 months. Here Benji Hall gives his view on the path we can expect to see the social media giant go down.
In recent weeks, months and years, we’ve all become used to hearing predictions on the demise of Facebook. Most of us in the marketing world realise the death of the social network is still a long way off.
However, it is true Facebook faces some big challenges, which are forcing the company to look down new, and potentially lucrative, avenues.Research shows less young people – those in their teens and early twenties – are logging on. The social network has struggled to compete with challenger apps like Kik and Snapchat, which are attracting a younger audience by giving people more control over their content. This is something that Facebook has struggled to do, particularly as it tries to balance monetisation of the site to advertisers with its offering to its users.
As a result, I expect post-education young professionals – 22- to 35-year-olds – to follow the lead of the younger generation and increasingly embrace the benefits of greater control by moving away and spending time on other networks that put them in the driving seat. These include anonymous networks, such as mobile app Secret, as people experiment with different forms of social sharing.
Facebook isn’t dying. It’s just changing
Some of its recent acquisitions point to where Facebook may be headed. Not only has it made forays into money transfers, but it has also either acquired or developed its own expertise in healthcare, the office, fitness, virtual and augmented reality and speech recognition.
This all points to the fact Facebook is looking to become an aggregator of content from multiple different apps and networks. The mass market breakthrough of wearables like the Apple Watch in 2015 and the growth of apps that run everything from our diets to our training programmes is generating vast amounts of data that brands can use to create highly targeted services.
If Facebook can position itself at the centre, aggregating all of this social content, it would carve out a powerful new role for itself as a services ecosystem that joins the dots of our increasingly digitised world.
So, as Facebook looks to expand its horizons in 2015, what will be its next big acquisition? One thing that wouldn’t surprise me is if it tries to buy Tinder. Why wouldn’t it?Facebook needs the youth market, and this is one of the most sure-fire ways to get it. Integrated status changes and Tinder could bring another realm to dating, particularly as the social aggregation features of Facebook would give you a much broader glimpse into someone’s life to help find a match.
The social game
Whilst every year sees multiple new acquisitions by Facebook, we can still expect it to be in the social game for some time to come.
In fact, you can’t argue that Facebook has not made efforts to keep up with what’s happening in the social media marketplace. For example, they have made two clever moves in purchasing WhatsApp and Instagram. WhatsApp’s growth curve means it is set to outstrip Facebook in daily active users and, in the video battle, Instagram Hyperlapse will trump Vine and take a big chunk out of YouTube.
I expect more brands to successfully engage with consumers via Instagram in 2015 using both images and short form video. There are also rumours Facebook is developing an app that will allow its users anonymity. This could help bring back the younger demographic, so watch this space.
Clearly, there’s plenty of life left in Facebook, but in the long term, it will likely lose the younger demographic and with it a “social” focus. My bet is social experiences and tools will continue to splinter this year. Facebook will counter this by being an aggressive acquirer of new networks and apps, whilst constantly looking to position itself at the centre of our connected world.
- Benji Hall is director of APAC at global marketing engagement platform EngageSciences
Benji, would this bring a new age of paid advertising to an otherwise clean app like Tinder?
I’m swiping left on that!
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*Sponsored swipes*
Interesting thought Benji. For the sake of the Tindr community I’m hoping not! Then again, imagine the potential of a Tindr and (Facebook owned) Occulus Rift collab.
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Once condescending corporates get all over any model, they generally turn to sh1t for the user.
Trust disappears when sold out. There are no pre roll adverts on Facey when it comes to Video……. Is there a model right there?
Rewarding the channel / page owner would be a way to compete with YouTube… Give something back Facebook.
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Facebook acquisitions fall in to one of two categories: diversification and competition. Both are clever (and Facebook is copying Google’s playbook here).
Oculus was a diversification acquisition, Whatsapp and Instagram were competition acquisitions.
It’s hard to see where Tinder would fit in that strategy – it’s not even close to the right scale (10million DAU’s), and importantly it’s actually built on top of Facebook technology (which, as Twitter once found out, it can switch off at any moment).
An interesting argument against Facebook acquiring mobile apps is that a huge proportion of Facebook’s advertising revenue is driven by VC money. These VC funded startups (like Tinder) run ads on Facebook to get users to download and install their apps. Acquiring those companies then is actually going to kill advertising revenue for Facebook (some estimates have that VC revenue to be around 70% of all mobile FB advertising).
Given Facebook’s recent strategic pitch to become the video platform of choice for the world, I’d actually bet that some of the biggest acquisitions this year will be content related companies, and a huge swag of content creators (most of them poached from YouTube).
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@Avid Tinder Fan @Matt Sim: We’re already seeing some paid ‘premium’ Tindr account options. I wonder whether we’ll see the day when Tindr will recommend ‘bars near your date’??
@Same Old- I definitely like the idea of page owners being rewarded for users watching pre-rolls on their videos. But like you say, will user trust and experience be grossly affected as they see even more ads on Facebook? Facebook always like to ‘test’ new scenarios and apologise later, but this seems a risky move in the short term.
@NH- Would a Tindr advanced subscription model offer higher quality matches based on Facebook profile data? Definitely some interesting points around the acquisition of content related companies.
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@Benji – Tinder are offering a subscription model, launching in the next few weeks (http://venturebeat.com/2015/02.....-in-march/). But it focuses on travel and an undo feature, not better matching.
Getting a bit OT, but many studies have found that doing ‘better matches’ using computers is nigh on impossible, despite what the big data snake oil bottle might say. OK Cupid actually did an experiment telling couples who were ‘poorly matched’ that they were actually good matches – and people responded accordingly (http://blog.okcupid.com/index......an-beings/).
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Another interesting direction is content production. Last week, Facebook announced plans to create a studio for the production of VR films on the Oculus Rift platform.
VR is going to be a game changer and Facebook has very shrewdly positioned itself at the centre. VR is the ideal vehicle for Facebook to re-build with the yoof!
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is facebook just full of marketing types marketing to each other now?
honest question, dunno anyone who uses it anymore.
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