The Future Of Facebook

1. The Future Of Facebook Wayne Radinsky 2011-06-25

2. Surpassed Classmates.com, SixDegrees, Tickle, Club Nexus, Ryze, Friendster, Collegester, Myspace, Tribe, ConnectU, Orkut, Hi5, and others!

3. Size Facebook: 640 million Qzone (mainland China): 480 million Habbo: 200 million Twitter: 175 million Windows Live Spaces: 120 million Bebo: 117 million Vkontakte (Russia): 110 million

4. Growth PC's expected to grow from 1 billion to 2 billion between 2008 and 2015 2 billion people currently have internet access, either by PC or mobile phone 12% of population has smartphones, but growth is 14%/year. Everyone in the developed world, and ½ the world's population will have internet access by 2020.

5. Facebook vs Google Early internet had a “portal” model Google broke the “portal” model by making an exponentially better search Facebook may try to return to the “portal” model, keeping people on Facebook Google's “social graph” is PageRank, but Facebooks's profiles & social graph may prove superior for determining content quality

6. Advertising $450 billion/year global market Online advertising is $34.5 billion Google makes $10.5 billion, or 30.4% of the online advertising market. Facebook currently makes $1.19 billion, or 3.5%.

7. Google's fear of Facebook Google in Feb. 2010 launched Buzz, as an aggressive opt-out add-on to Gmail. A broad privacy backlash resulted, and Buzz today has only a few million users. Google's Facebook clone, called either Google Me or Google +1, has experienced a lot of internal conflict, due to Buzz's failure, and huge cost and time overruns

8. Google vs Facebook Google still has many valuable “social” technologies: Android, Google Docs, Youtube, etc Might acquire Twitter – Google Tweets? Groupon rejected a $6 billion offer from Google Facebook has responded with Facebook Deals

9. Facebook Photos 50 billion photos, more than any other site Facebook's face recognition system received a lot of backlash Facebook's photo system is lacking most of the tools of competitors like Flickr and Picasa

10. Facebook Places Ability to find friends nearby, with their permission. Facebook's service hasn't caught up with competitors like Foursquare.

11. Facebook Lists Not very easy to use. Should algorithmically figure out whether a new friend is a “Friend”, “Acquaintance”, or “Professional relationship” based on others they are connected to, and default to the proper list. Keep lists isolated for privacy – separate news feeds, etc

12. Facebook Neighbors? Facebook Neighbors – find people in your neighborhood by entering your street address. Facebook could become a competitor for Meetup.com and dating websites. Facebook Local Friends/Local Parents, etc Facebook Shareables Facebook Dating Etc

13. Facebook Family? FrameChannel is a hosted service that allows every family member to email pictures, from their phones or PCs, to a website that will automatically update internet or wi-fi equipped electronic picture frames from various companies. Facebook could incorporate the same functionality into Facebook

14. Facebook Virtual Events? Teleconferencing system, with a permanent space for saving photos, videos, maps, profiles pages, and other data, for holidays, birthdays, or other social events

15. Facebook Genealogies? Link together data of parents, grandparents, great-grandparents Could incorporate data from DNA testing, such as from 23AndMe

16. Facebook Ratings? Facebook could partner with, or acquire, Netflix, Yelp, TripAdvisor, or Amazon.com. Facebook could become the market-leading ratings site for all products and services

17. Facebook 140 Character Messages? Ideal for mobile users Should have a “public” option that makes messages viewable by the whole world (not just friends or friends-of-friends) Public messages should have no limit to the number of subscribers (like Facebook Pages today)

18. Facebook Club Card? A replacement for every supermarket club card In the world Facebook will be able to match up grocery store purchasing behavior with online behavior and get more accurate profiles of people for advertising

19. Facebook Data Lockers? A place to keep your medical data, with privacy controls Health care data must eventually go online Facebook could get immense brand loyalty if they do this first and do the privacy controls well.

20. Potential disruptor: Mobile Facebook is not integrated with in-car navigation systems With voice recognition, you could say “Directions to Pete's house”, and Facebook could find him on your friend list, find his address, and provide to to your car's GPS system to give you driving directions.

21. Potential disruptor: Teleconferencing Realtime video is becoming affordable throughout the developed world “Always On” video connections could create an “office-like” environment for people working from home. Explosion of virtual meetings and travel could displace expensive and slow physical travel An alternate platform could threaten Facebook

22. Potential disruptor: internet TV 1 Mbps broadband is ubiquitous in Scandinavia today and it is estimated that 100 Mbps will be ubiquitous in Scandinavia by 2015. Scandinavia will probably lead the world in internet TV Facebook would be the ideal platform for TV recommendations and ratings, but... Facebook does not own Youtube or have strong links with any traditional TV producers

23. Potential disruptor: Symbiont Networks The growth of mobile networks will allow the rise of highly connected, highly productive groups of people, or “symbionts”, who will outcompete isolated, disconnected individuals, in schools, in jobs, and in life. Always-on wearable video and audio devices will create extremely intimate connections between people in a “symbiont” group.

24. Potential disruptor: the conversational interface The “conversational interface” is when computers can understand spoken language and respond to the meaning of commands rather than literal words IBM's “Watson” is a preview John Smart expects the conversational interface won't arrive until about 2019.

25. Potential disruptor: Cybertwin A cybertwin is a digital agent that knows exactly what you're interested in and scours the internet looking for things that fit your interests, preferences, and values. Facebook is the leading collector of personal interests, but if another company jumps ahead with AI technology, they could create cybertwins and take the lead

26. Merging with the “real world” Facebook will become a “wearable” social network. Facebook will become society's law enforcement system, or “immune” system, as crimes will be hard to commit by highly connected individuals with high levels of transparency.

27. Facebook microcurrency Facebook Credits could evolve into a micropayment system that complements the main currencies such as the US dollar and Euro. Facebook Credits is currently used in Facebook games, e.g. Farmville.

28. Facebook transparency Facebook Connect/Facebook Single Sign On extends Facebook's non-anonymous “real name” system to the rest of the internet. Facebook Groups non-anonymously identifies members of political groups Facebook's push for transparency and lack of anonymity can both threaten and empower political activist groups

29. Closing thoughts OkCupid has a very clever system where anyone can create and answer questions about themselves, and see other people's answers. Facebook could incorporate a similar system. This would help people understand each other. Facebook could provide ways for professional therapists to work with juvenile offenders, mentally ill, addicts, isolated elderly, or others seeking emotional support or behavior change.

30. Closing thoughts (cont'd) The average US internet user spends 14 minutes/day on Facebook, more than Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Youtube, Wikipedia, and Amazon combined. 40% of youth age 8-18 are on Facebook