Facebook is an advertisers’ wet dream . I doubt there will be anything like it for awhile.
photo from veer
Besides never being able to delete your profile ever: People readily give information about themselves such as their demographic (which we advertisers need), their likes and dislikes, movies they are into, products etc. I want to thank many of you for this because you, in fact, make my job a great deal easier. Not only that, I can search for you unless you restrict your privacy.
Everything else that has exploded after facebook (twitter, foursquare etc) has essentially found ways to work with facebook or included services like it. Even so, most of my time is spent there, not on twitter or foursquare, etc.
What will happen next?
There’s no other service like this site and the next big thing might be an offline service (surprise). Is there something to attract people who are anti-facebook (the service is so addictive that people who have deactivate their profiles sign back in to “check it out” again)? Can we create this obsession offline?
Interestingly enough, many people do not use mobile to the extent that we have adapted to social networking nor log into the site to take part of it. How do we reach those folks?
Those are some things to think about and as my friends attempt to create start-ups to become accidental billionaires like Mark Zuckerberg. I am sorry to crush your dreams but what are the chances of creating something using these open source apis to make billions or use as extensively as facebook. Mark cracked it and is milking it. We ought to think outside of the box.
Things that might work:
As traditional advertising goes, I believe it’s possible to attract focused demographics. Race; hobbies, location, job title, etc.
I am not saying there won’t be another social networking explosion. I just want to encourage others to do more than compete with facebook. Do something that you are passionate about without expecting billions. It can happen. I really do not need to have another social site to waste my time.
I’m very curious to hear your thoughts on this.
*Heads back to the incubator.*
