‘Facebook is everything to us’: How Little Things grew to 50M users in 3 years
digiday.com
digiday.com
I can see why they're successful, but have to say I was surprised by the $50 million revenue. Fascinating.
You have no mail there. Certainly not one message. They're blatantly lying to users in an attempt to get emails.
In other words, they know what they're doing.
As long as they understand this and don't jeopardize the position Facebook should be around in this minimum capacity for a long time to come. In the short term I think they are doing the best they can do to position themselves for newer and longer technologies.
I wish them all the best and hope to see some real, concrete innovation from them in the next few years.
Additionally, Facebook isn't doing so well in emerging markets, which have by far more volume in terms of number of users and purchasing power.
It could be done, but at what cost, at what point in time, and from how do people buy in.
Facebook spanned generations, spanned social classes, spanned continents, and mingled everyone in the process. People have deviated from that main network in the subsequent years, but every now and then, those that 'left' for other pastures always come back to facebook to see 'whatsup' see 'how's the old crowd doing' and see 'how is so and so doing'.
No one else can do that, no one else has that power. The social tree always recurses back to facebook. What that means for markets, new prospects etc, i don't know. But behaviorally speaking facebook is far, far from out of the public mind, and as the years grow longer, while it may exist at a lower level in our day-to-day lives than some hip platforms, it persists as strong as ever.
Whatsapp replicated this growth and captured an even wider net. Especially outside of the US.
Agree that Facebook is far from irrelevant, but I'd keep an open eye on the hip new platforms. In the attention marketplace, the past is irrelevant. All that matters is the present, and the now. The network that captures the highest level of engagement wins, and amongst certain demographics, Facebook is certainly losing its relevance.
Recently, I've asked my high school aged sister and colleged aged brother about how many of their friends and peers use FB nowadays.
Brother -- He and his friends uses it sometimes. But most of their social activities are shared on Instagram or Snapchat and occasionally twitter.
Sister -- Barely at all. FB is seen as uncool and old school by her and her friends. She and most of her friends share their social activities on instagram and snapchat.
Ironically, my mom (in her 50's) uses FB fairly regularly, both for sharing updates and checking up on her friends/acquaintance.
This is why acquisitions happen and why buying Instagram when FB did may go down as one of the best buys. Missing Snapchat may be one of the biggest misses.
It's great for teens and early adults, with tight knit social circles and the undivided attention to look at fast-disappearing posts, but that's not much of the population. Lots of people don't even understand how it works, while Facebook and Instagram are pretty intuitive.
My bet is the current audience will age out of Snapchat, gradually seeing it as something for kids, and the next group of kids will use something else entirely.
Of course, I could be wrong--I wouldn't have predicted Snapchat would get as big as it has, so more power to them if they can keep it going.
The first time was when I first heard of it, "that'll never take off what a dumb fad app."
The second time was when they turned down the $40MM offer from facebook.
The third time was when they turned down the $3B offer from facebook.
They're now valued at $16B. I don't bash snapchat anymore.
Turns out snapchat isn't just for messaging anymore, a lot of people watch the channels on it as if it was any other form of TV, and advertisers absolutely love it.
I'm sure it will be disrupted at some point, but I've stopped trying to "call it."
Most of our cultural output (books, films etc) works like that already.
BUT even if they did, this is why investing in acquisitions makes sense. Theoretically everyone could stop using Facebook itself but it wouldn't matter as long as FB owned the platforms where everyone had migrated.
BUT I still check it out every couple of days. Sometimes out of habit, sometimes because I want to see what others in my family are up to.
It's not much about friends any longer. It's just the default "living room" for my extended family
Post something and give everyone else the tiny joy you get when you see someone else's update.
I don't get why they insist on curating what I see. I wouldn't have done what I did if they just left the news feed at reverse chronological order with most recent on top.