Facebook is experiencing technical difficulties. The site went down again yesterday for a few hours; Facebook was quick to blame a third-party internet provider for the outage. Which led me to think... should Facebook own and control more of the infrastructure on which it depends? And more broadly, where should the undisputed king of social networking go next?
On the first note, does Facebook have enough computing power to support its massive user base? How many moving parts and external entities does it rely on to deliver its service? Should more of these be brought in-house to ensure control and reliability? I was surprised to discover that Facebook has only 30,000 servers (compare that to Google's 1,000,000 servers). With people spending more time on Facebook than on Google, is this enough?
Speaking of Google, can/should Facebook challenge Google in unfamiliar territory? I think so. If people are spending so much time on Facebook, why not integrate search and email into the website? Is that Google's bread-and-butter? Yes. Is it inconceivable to think that Facebook could steal a significant share of that space in a matter of months? No.
Facebook could become the new go-to internet portal. Facebook could release a social networking-focused browser (good-bye Firefox); it could unveil a calendar feature (good-bye Google Calendar); it could expand its marketplace service (good-bye Craigslist). I truly believe Facebook could become a one-stop-shop for all online activity. What do you think?
You raise a lot of interesting questions. I agree with you that (not anytime soon) Facebook could realistically challenge Google, Craigslist, and Firefox. An internet browser, calendar, and listing feature comparable with Craigslist does not require a lot of physical resources or distribution network so I would argue that the barriers to entry are somewhat low.
ReplyDeleteAlso I think a "one stop" dashboard would be very appealing to the mass population. I think if facebook were to do this though they would have to find a healthy comprise between Google's layout and Yahoo's. If facebook begins to go into all of these additional services they run the risk of overwhelming users. Their dashboard could quickly become cluttered like Yahoo's and this could actually start turning some users away.
Facebook has to be careful about expanding into these new areas with out getting away from their core compentencies of social networking. With that said I think that email, calendar, and listing services are all small pieces of the larger "social network" idea that we are defining as users.
The new rivalry between Facebook and Google is clear and the questions you are raising are critical for both companies' future. It was surprising to me that in a recent WSJ interview Eric Schmidt said his primary competitor is Bing. I believe this is either a tactical statement from Schmidt rather than Google's vision; however, coming from the CEO it is a bold statement.
ReplyDeleteHere is the link to the interview: http://online.wsj.com/video/the-big-interview-with-eric-schmidt/635487A7-CE86-462E-8783-F1AF61BC988A.html
ReplyDeleteThis is an interesting perspective on how Facebook should challenge Google. I think Facebook should forge ahead with its focus on social networking and collecting data that is beyond search. It seems Google is concerned about its position in the data collection space. In an interview with Charlie Rose, Eric Schmidt stated the importance of social networking in getting the end user the information he cares about.
ReplyDeleteFurthermore Gartner predicts that social networking will replace email by 2015. I do not see why Facebook would want to be a 'me too' company with respect to search, which can be difficult (i.e. Microsoft) to get right.
Is it better for the consumer to be on a single platform or multiple platforms? Can these two behemoths work together?
Gartner Link: http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=1293114
Charlie Rose: http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_40/b4197039435964.htm?chan=magazine+channel_news+-+technology
Good ideas from everyone...it's certainly not hard to see Facebook continuing to take over certain internet activities...like email, gaming and search. But I think they have a lot of work to do internally to make the application more intuitive and easy to use. Trying to search is completely frustrating. Sending messages is also very clumsy relative to regular email. I think there is potential...but I really think they need to clean things up internally before they try to take over the world.
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