Facebook turns 10 today! Birthed as a Harvard students only social network it grew into a social media force that is still one of today's biggest movers and shakers in social media. Yesterday Facebook released Paper, a Flipboard style app that allows users to view their personal feed as well as various news feeds. Unfortunately for some Facebook fans, Paper is only available for iPhones, with no plans for an Android version, or for an international release.
Will Facebook be able to continue going strong? As seen in this timeline by brandnetworks, Facebook has had a history of innovation first taking the world by storm in 2006 when it allowed anyone with online access to have an account. Shortly after Myspace faded into obscurity. On the other hand, Facebook has seen a massive drop in younger users, many of whom have fled to more youth-oriented and privacy focused social networks. For the moment, Facebook's older users are happy to remain.
On the marketing front, the frequent change in algorithms leave marketers struggling to keep up. The moment one algorithm is mastered, it's changed to something else. Understandably Facebook is working to weed out page posts that provide little in terms of useful information. Unfortunately between Facebook making visibility more competitive, as well as line-bypassing for paid content, many pages have seen a dramatic drop in engagement despite any tips Facebook gives for page maintainers. Small business in particular have been feeling the burn. I've even found in my own experiences that it has become more difficult to create and retain engagement on the pages I run, especially since they're for organizations with no budget for online marketing. To make matters more difficult, as of late the insights pages seem to be stuck in a perpetual load state, at least for me anyways.
Then there's the Princeton study, predicting an 80% drop in users in one to three years based on data used to track disease outbreaks. In essence, our minds will grow immune to the idea of a network like Facebook, leaving it to fade from memory.
It's hard to tell what Facebook's next ten years will be like, if it lives to see another ten. Facebook has been crucial in the development aspect, having become one of the first social media platforms that could be used as a marketing tool (something Myspace had originally intended with music). Facebook is a mobile technology pioneer from its first mobile app to Paper, and they have solidified their place in mobile significance with the purchase of Instagram in 2012. In terms of userbase and marketing, Facebook can do better. Its algorithms frustrate marketers, and its spotty privacy drives away younger users. Only time will tell what's in store for Facebook.
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