Is Facebook trying to become the Internet?

Companies are up taking FB as a marketing strategy, yes, but the real question is if they’re getting a return. It’s all hype and fad now. I don’t see many stories on how FB has changed business. If there’s no ROI it will just go away.

One site cannot be the Internet!

It is just a Fad. The same goes with Twitter, as someone in this thread mentioned. Everyone jumps on the bandwagon, the company I work for has as well.

Their are a few things that are very predictable in todays society:
People are Lemmings
People are easily influenced - sometimes realizing the choice the made after it’s done especially if negative.
People are shallow.

Off Topic:

some people I know personally like shallow people, ie people who act as if they are the elite

Not exactly. Marketing, but not Advertising. Advertising is a specific subset of Marketing, which relates to “above the line” marketing techniques that focus on campaigns of unidirectional communications to improve consumer brand awareness and perception (billboards, commercials, banner ads, direct marketing, etc.).

Social Network Marketing, being an “interactive” form of marketing, is much more along the lines of “below the line” marketing, which is primarily ruled by incentive marketing techniques, but also including any and all improvement in communications and understanding of employees, sales channels, and consumers, via feedback surveys, forums, and today, even social networks. :slight_smile:

While the two types of efforts are similar “in objective,” below the line efforts also include the ability to collect information that can be used to improve the business at various levels, whereas above the line efforts are “deaf”. Social network marketing is very much “engaging the community” while at the same time, indeed very much a marketing effort.

Bang on. I don’t debate the fact that I am a brand manager, and from that angle there is no question that there is a marketing aspect, but as you say - there is no advertising involved.

Having said that, I promote FB as an avenue for advertising, as per my original post. We did run a FB advertising campaign a while back and it was hugely successful.

advertising, marketing… whatev

that still doesn’t turn facebook into teh interwebs

and it does nothing to overcome the monstrous issues that facebook has

just sayin’

:smiley:

I agree with you, Rudy, that FB needs lots of improvement if it wants to become the internet. Not sure if they want to. It is incredibly successful without becoming the internet. But I guess there would be so much more money if they were… I don’t particularly like facebook although I do enjoy one or two games and, of course, getting to know how things go to people that I don’t talk to everyday.

Like what improvements? I know they have a lot of problems with spammed links - profile viewer and things like that.

Facebook, is no wonder the most popular social media site. When it comes to being an SE,I guess it’s far from what they want. Though being one,wouldn’t be impossible!

Facebook is consider as top 1 social media nowadays, but I think to become search engine like google is too far compare of top the top3 SE we are using now…:slight_smile:

facebook is already a primary route to the wider ‘internet’ for most people and does nothing different from other mediums before it, … even back to ye-old days of directories. It cannot become THE INTERNET, but a building block of the sociality of it all, certainly that’s proven already? Control over the personal data collected via social media usage is the real hot potato…

I saw a group of youngsters discussing about how one of them was going to open a Super-Market.
It caught my attention when one of the guy said " To Promote a Business. you don’t need a Website anymore, all you need is a Facebook".
This thing got me thinking about “The End of Websites”. Do you guys think that facebook is the end of websites ?
Thanks.

Merged two similar threads into one…

I’ll tell you what I think… Facebook is becoming AOL from 1999.

They’ll slowly add features and bloat to the user experience, trying to be everything to everyone, until the concept of “Facebook” becomes overwhelming to the average user, and the top-heavy behemoth capsizes a la Vasa. This is the way of business when intricately tied into human culture. The only thing that might save them is the Connect API, which could artificially support them on the coat tails of other smaller websites, similarly to how the US dollar is supported by China et al. Of course, the long term play on that is acceptance of a lower level of symbiotic integration into the world landscape (possibly a #2 spot).

If this all goes down, though, there will be a period between FB’s IPO and topple, when you’ll be able to make a killing on the stock (every new feature they announce will be a new high)… and once they topple, you should have a sticky downward, which will be an amazing short opportunity with a decent time period where you can spot the avalanche ahead of time and ride the wave all the way down! :slight_smile: Steve’s stock pick of the day lol.

In its current guise, Facebook isn’t going to take over from real websites as a business’ online presence. Facebook offers very limited content, customisability or functionality for pages, and for anything beyond the most trivial of companies, that isn’t going to be enough for them to effectively market themselves.

A savvy business, particularly one targeting a younger audience, will have a website, a Facebook page, a Twit feed … and will use them all differently, finding the strengths of each one. It does seem that there are a lot of businesses jumping on the Facebook bandwagon just because it’s a bandwagon, without really having the faintest idea what they want to achieve or how being on FB will help them.

Maybe that will change. Maybe Facebook will develop proper mini-sites where business have more control over the content, structure and presentation. Maybe Facebook will fall from grace. Whatever happens, as more and more of the world goes online, I don’t see ‘proper’ websites dying out any time soon.

Me either. If facebook will really kill the use of “proper” websites then it should have already happened years ago. Companies venture on facebook of course because its where they can get a lot of people to know they exist, that they have a web presence but on their fb pages you can see links to their site, don’t you? and it’s always been the case.

Facebook will destroy many sites but not the hole internet, it will be cool for 2 or 3 years after that…how many pictures can u add… everybody will grow tired of that stupidity

Maybe, because there’s a lot of people or considered as consumer as well who uses facebook, that’s why many business minded uses this website to promote their businesses online.

Ya but don’t you think because of facebook, people promote their business only through facebook. And slowly people are now least interested in making his/her own websites.

It can’t have happened years ago… it can’t happen today. It can only happen when Facebook increases the amount of tools available to business pages (including more powerful search) that will make “proper websites” an obsolete. unnecessary expense for most.

That day will come… Facebook is not decreasing the amount of tools they provide to the world. It’s only a matter of time before they introduce a more powerful search bar for business, more powerful business pages with increased functionality, e-commerce for business pages (FB Commerce?), possibly a paypal competitor for FB Commerce (FB Pay?), and on, and on, and on, until it all becomes too overwhelming and the world must decide to either become mindless FB Minions or collectively move on.

Yeah you are right, nowadays, some people are now least interested to make their own websites. But, you also think of this, why people make a websites? because they have a business to promote right? So, in my opinion why they bother making a websites if they have an option and that is facebook. :slight_smile: