Last week I read a pretty thought provoking post by Mass based Social Media Rockstar, Chris Brogan in which he answers answered the question “What Does Facebook actually DO for Me?“.
The answer, it turns out is “not that much”.
(Side note: if you find anything I write remotely interesting, you should also probably visit his site regularly - actually, you should stop reading my blog now and just go read his instead. Admittedly: he’s much better at all this than I am.)
I found the comments to his post equally interesting to his original question. Scroll through them and you’ll find that very few people are actually that happy with Facebook these days, nor do they find it incredibly useful.
Similarly, last week another Boston based blogger wrote about the (all too common) comparison between Facebook and AOL- claiming that “Facebook is a fad” (read that post too, he comes to a pretty similar conclusion that I might eventually get to). The point is: the novelty is gone and the functionality is disappearing. Because no, I don’t want to buy a virtual item. And no, I don’t want to throw a digital sheep at someone.
And that’s the thing: I don’t really “get” Facebook right now. In its current state, Facebook is stuck in a state of preadolescence. Stemming into high schools, but still trying to be the cool thing for college students, and now branching into the professional world of office networks, job searching, and parents. In its attempt to impress too many people at once, Facebook is like an awkward middle-schooler, trying to run but stumbling over its recently lengthened legs. See, Facebook isn’t dying, it just no longer fits into its old clothes. (Hopefully you’re still with me on this puberty analogy, because it’s going to continue…)
If you remember, one day Facebook woke up and had an application platform. This growth-spurt made it looks really silly because just because there’s an API doesn’t mean people knew what to do with it. Of course the early apps were stupid - that’s just Facebook growing up. Maybe that whole zombie thing was just a voice-crack on Facebook’s path to becoming a man.
Do I think Zuckerberg has the idea of how to fix this? Actually, no - he’s dealing with his own development right now (note: I just pulled a Zuckerberg/puberty joke- it was way too lowbrow…). But if he keeps poaching Googlers then chances are the little $15,000,000,000 company might grow up and serve a real purpose after all.
As more developers have more time with the Facebook API, I can only assume something functional and interesting will come along. Right now it might be a gawky teenager, but with its strong financial backing and talented internal development staff, Facebook has the potential to grow into a fully functional member of our society.
The larger question, to which I’d love an answer, is: What does an adult Facebook do? And how does it make money? But that’s a topic for another day…
So during this awkward adolescence, what do I use Facebook for? Blog post material. And not much else.
