Facebook has evolved a fair bit
It initially started off as a photo sharing/commenting tool started by Zuckerberg (another Harvad Univ grad). Story goes he was dumped by some girl & created this coz he wanted to get her off his mind. It became like an online student directory for Harvard with photos etc. It gradually spread and went on to add more colleges , schools and then went on to become the soc networking tool that it is today.
In India, orkut had a headstart-it largely helped people get in touch with long lost friends, school mates etc. But as orkut stagnated, facebook became all of this plus an exciting front-end allowing various things like status updates & several custom apps. The viral nature of social netowrking caught on much more with facebook and it kept adding users. Today, I guess college kids types use it for the apps etc whilst the older bunch use it to keep others informed on what they r upto (a bit of a show-off site from time to time !!"Awesome view frm the top of the Himalayas types!":))
What next? I get the feeling that they are looking to:
1. Charge for membership and/or
2. Create a forum where transactions happen on facebook (friends getting togethter and doing stuff etc etc)
Am not sure either of the above will ever become very huge or popular. Creating a network and then milking it for transactions seems intiutive. The issue is that most people in this kind of a network are in the 3rd or 4th degree!! Your 1st or 2nd degree network are the ones with whom you will make plans, transactions etc and for that you wont need facebook.com.
My take is:
1. It will remain an average networking site
2. People will get fed up of putting up global, glowing status updates & pics and move on or reduce their usage
3. Transactions etc will not really take off
4. The site will stagnate by 2015
Lets see...Could be proven wrong but unlikely !:)
Dude.. FB makes a ton of money by hostiing gaming apps. And there are gaming app companies like Zenga which are minting money off facebook.
ReplyDeleteAlso I doubt people will stop wanting to talk about what they did and what they think. I think FB will emerge as the ONLY substantial soc net site by 2015.
400 million and counting..
Hmm..fair point ..and the mind is inclined to go with your view that FB will be the only one surviving and hence do well. Somehow, I get the sense that it is either gonna be dead or some other such fad will take over ..hence, my bearishness
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