I’m no fan of Facebook, but I don’t agree with the premise of the article. The power of Facebook lies in its network effect: something on the order of 2 billion have active Facebook accounts. Whether or not people are spending more or less time on the platform doesn’t matter as much as people seem to think it does. What matters is the fact that they can associate web browsing actions (pages visited etc) with your Facebook account. Just having a Facebook account that you “don’t use” allows a massive amount of value (from an advertisers perspective) to be unlocked.
In my opinion no other network is going to be able to compete with the number of users on facebooks platform, and any that do, Facebook will buy or copy (Instagram and Snapchat respectively). Even if you don’t actively look at anything on Facebook, or even log in, the fact that you have a Facebook account allows advertisers to track and target you with ads on all sorts of platforms and websites that are available to Facebook advertisers through the audience network (ad placements on millions of websites and mobile apps). The crucial moat that Facebook has is simply the massive nimber of registered users (that correspond to people’s real identity) on the platform combined with sophisticated tools to reach those users both on and off Facebook.
I’d love to hear an opposing argument, but the way I see it Facebook is here to stay and will only get bigger and more profitable in the foreseeable future.
In my opinion no other network is going to be able to compete with the number of users on facebooks platform, and any that do, Facebook will buy or copy (Instagram and Snapchat respectively). Even if you don’t actively look at anything on Facebook, or even log in, the fact that you have a Facebook account allows advertisers to track and target you with ads on all sorts of platforms and websites that are available to Facebook advertisers through the audience network (ad placements on millions of websites and mobile apps). The crucial moat that Facebook has is simply the massive nimber of registered users (that correspond to people’s real identity) on the platform combined with sophisticated tools to reach those users both on and off Facebook.
I’d love to hear an opposing argument, but the way I see it Facebook is here to stay and will only get bigger and more profitable in the foreseeable future.