On Sep 21, 2008, at 9:09 AM, David Malouf wrote:
So no one has still convinced me that FB is obsolete.
I don't think Facebook is obsolete. (I don't even know what obsolete
means in this context. Is eBay obsolete? Amazon?)
I do think that Facebook has yet to produce a meaningful business
model. And this is a huge problem.
Sure, it gets a ton of traffic (http://tinyurl.com/3nqov6) and has
high average stays (http://tinyurl.com/3nqov6). But few of those 41m
people a month actually produce any revenue for the site.
Until the site has a mechanism to pay for the servers, the rent, and
the almost 1000 employees, I really don't think they have long term
prospects. Eventually, the investors will want the 10x returns on
their investments. Where is that money coming from?
This is where it becomes relevant to IxD, in my mind. Every time
Facebook has tried to change the design to open a space for revenue
generating functionality, the users have borked. The users have made
it clear they don't want ads in their feeds. They don't want Facebook
using them as a sales reference ("Your buddy, Jared, just bought shoes
at Amazon -- you should too!"). They want to stay connected, but not
pay for that privilege.
(Twitter, btw, has the same issue.)
So, I don't think they are obsolete. But I don't think they'll make it
beyond the next 10 years. Which makes them a passing fad, in my opinion.
Jared
Jared M. Spool
User Interface Engineering
510 Turnpike St., Suite 102, North Andover, MA 01845
e: [EMAIL PROTECTED] p: +1 978 327 5561
http://uie.com Blog: http://uie.com/brainsparks
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