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July 17, 2007
Time to ASK Yourself: What is YOUR Facebook Strategy?
“What is your Facebook Strategy?” is a question I asked of 19 different early stage hi-tech startups during meetings that I had last week in Tel Aviv. For the exception of two of them, none of the startups had one. And none of the other more established companies that I met with had a go-to-market Facebook strategy either.
The feeling was similar to conversations that I had years ago with companies in the Communications space when VoIP was becoming of age and those companies had to address how they were going to best leverage that technology for themselves.
I was a little surprised that the transition of Facebook from being a Social Networking application to an Internet Platform had not been noticed by a good number of my friends who are involved in Israeli Hi-Tech. This will change.
While not every company I met will end up with a presence inside of Facebook, we spoke about the merits of community building and the phenomena of the conversation moving from our blogs and our portals to other places including Groups inside of Facebook. And that at the end of the day, as long as people are talking about us, it shouldn’t matter so much that the conversations were taking place, in effect, “off-site.” But it would be a mistake not to go where the conversation is moving to and be actively engaged rather than be just a passive bystander.
And as far as how to best leverage Facebook, for some of these startups there are great opportunities TODAY to build their own Facebook application and use it to build awareness for their brand and/or their service. As long as their application has all the characteristics needed to “go viral” there is a chance it can and it will. At the moment there seems to be an unlimited number of opportunities for developers to take their vision to Facebook and see what happens. Yes, it is true that Facebook may not be for everyone, but I believe that with an open mind, just about everyone can find their place inside of the emerging Facebook ecosystem.
So now would be a great time to take a minute and think about what YOUR Facebook Strategy should be and then take the time and figure out how to best implement it. In many cases the only cost is the time you need to invest to watch your vision to unfold.
For an example of an “overnight-success” in Facebook, ask Chris Brogan about his Grasshoppers group.
Facebook IS the internet portal of 2007. And it is where you will find me.
Tags: Israel, Facebook, Chris Brogan, Jeff Pulver
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Posted by jeff on July 17, 2007 07:35 AM | Permalink
Additional resources: Watch PrimeTime TV Shows | Watch the Jeff Pulver Show | Jeff's Qik Videos
Comments
Admission and retention is down at my community College for computer
studies programmes. Admissions to one major programme have already
been suspended. The College thinks the answer is to try to rework its
computer curriculum to better match the needs of local industry and make
the programmes more relevant. The problem is - local industry is also
having problems attracting and keeping computer studies employees.
Our College is attempting to align itself with the methods of an industry
that just isn't attractive to students. Like industry, we aren't going
to attract students unless we do something different.
What if instead of looking to industry, we looked to the students - the
Facebook generation - and geared the curriculum and school environment
to match their learning styles. Alas, this may mean content has to be on
YouTube, not in textbooks, discussion on Facebook, not in the classroom,
and all those old-school teaching methods and schedules just won't work
any more.
The graduates of such a curriculum won't fit in old-school industry
jobs, either. They will want their Facebook and YouTube and iPod and
cell phones in their work environment, or else they just won't go there.
Posted by: Ian! D. Allen at July 18, 2007 03:47 PM
I agree with Jeff. Facebook is providing a lot of opportunities for people to leverage their platform with unique applications.
I believe Facebook is Mashing-up with LignUp to deliver voice content. For example, users will be able to voice annotate their photos, create find-me-follow-me rules to get in touch with people, etc. Check it out at the link below. It was featured on a recent release of Business Wire:
Posted by: Sean at July 17, 2007 01:57 PM
What I like inside Facebook is that there's a mass of people there, and they have given me a tool to reach that mass, should they be so inclined. The Grasshopper group as of 1PM Tuesday (the 17th) has 614 members all trying to figure out how to contribute to a project goal of being helpful. That's been a neat experiment so far.
But as Dan York and William (who makes it hard to comment on his blog) point out: it's really ludicrous that I can't get data OUT of facebook and into my own products. That makes Facebook a Web 1.0 play. Truly. AJAX all you want, but if you're not enabling data to move through the net, you're not playing well with others.
The value here is immense. Scoble knows it. Lots of people are writing about it. But in the same vein of thinking as "and I want a pony!", let me say that Facebook has to open up.
Mr. Zuckerberg, TEAR DOWN YOUR WALLS!
Posted by: Chris Brogan... at July 17, 2007 01:50 PM
I am with Chris Penn here.
It was very important for me to create a hub for vloggers - to meet new people and to help people in the industry interact.
I've opened the vloggers group (you can find it here - http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2459571148 ) 3 weeks ago and we have more than 200 members - most of them content creators.
The challenge is how to keep the groups active. I'd love to hear more about people's thought on this topic.
Posted by: Kfir Pravda at July 17, 2007 12:53 PM
Hi,
Nice reading! I think that you're definitly asking the right question here - "what is your facebook strategy?".
Even though I agree with previous posters about the risk of the walled garden - I think that the long-term strategy of Facebook is to open up more, just look at the indexing that's happening of the Facebook profiles in google now.
Our Facebook strategy is about applications right now and that's the way to go I think. Being able to find what unique value you can provide the users of facebook through putting parts (or the whole of) your service on Facebook I think you easily have the way to be visible to the users there.
We're also working with groups - but find them fairly limited and the conversation hard to achieve (for example - groups aren't apart of feeds/mini-feeds).
-Linus
Posted by: Linus Kendall at July 17, 2007 12:35 PM
Jeff, I continue to experiment with Facebook and continue to be intrigued by the possibilities. However, as Chris Brogan has recently been discovering, Facebook does a wonderful job sucking all the content *in* but then doesn't let you easily get that content back out into other sites. If you want to live your life within Facebook (and some people now do) and have that be your only lens through which you view everything else on the Internet... well, then it's great. But if you want to be able to have the content you create within Facebook also visible to those outside the walled garden of Facebook, you are out of luck, unless all you want is the RSS feed of your *friends* status updates. Today, anyway. Perhaps they will expand the "Facebook Platform" to allow more flow of content... but I somewhat doubt it. FB does seem to be all about being THE portal for everything you do. (I blogged more about Facebook as a walled garden over on http://www.disruptiveconversations.com/ a few weeks ago.)
I agree that companies should look seriously at Facebook and how they can potentially use it. But I also don't think the "portal wars" are over yet and we'll see how FB does in the long term. In the meantime, I will continue to experiment with Facebook, although not to do the degree that you are doing (I'm also still using LinkedIn), and will look forward to reading your own posts here on your continued work with Facebook.
Dan
Posted by: Dan York at July 17, 2007 11:52 AM
My Facebook strategy would be not to use it. Not to give any money or power to any person or company that creates lock in of members and application developer content and data.
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Le blog de william.dyson
Facebook is the new AOL/You can not fight the flow of the internet
Publié le 16/07/2007 à 14:30
Par william.dyson
Face Book is the new AOL/You can not fight the internet
Currently most Social Networking sites create closed silos of user information and content that cannot be easily shared, reused, or redistributed outside of the network. FaceBook is a closed Silo. Myspace is a closed Silo.A Facebook member cannot export their Profile to Myspace. A Myspace member cannot export their profile to FaceBook. This is not because their is no technical way to export member profiles; its because both companies want to lock users into the Myspace and Facebook silos.
The Facebook "Open" platform is not only a gimmick it is also an Orwellian attempt to hi jack and redefine the term "Open" I think that may "Open" source proponents would agree that "Open" when it refers to software applications at the very least means inter operable. FaceBook is not interpretable. Myspace is not inter operable. From today onwards it is my hope that those reporting on and covering FaceBook will no longer use the term "Open" to describe the FaceBook platform.
The Data and content that members own cannot be easily exported out, or used with many other existing internet applications. The flow of data and information is one way. The Open platform is in fact open for developers, but closed to the rest of the internet. A one way vacum of application development that can never expand to any users base other than Facebook. FaceBook is a "Closed" platform much the way that Microsoft is a closed Platform. Develop for Microsoft and your application will be dependent on Microsoft technology and will not easily port to any other platfrom. Develop for FaceBook and your application will not work on any other platform. By developing applications for either you have limited the possible amount of networks that can distribute and use your application.
AOL at one time was also the darling of the internet. A big fat closed platform that attempted to lock in users. While AOL had quit a run; it was only a matter of time before users understood that AOL was not the internet. That there were millions, and millions of other networks to participate in. Once the hole of reality was opened and members realized that they were free to go beyond the AOL wall; the flow of members leaving the silo could not be stopped. It will be the same for FaceBook.
The arrogance of attempting to redefine and close in that which cannot be defined or captured can only lead to a steady fall and ultimate humiliation.
Posted by: william at July 17, 2007 09:29 AM
My Facebook strategy revolves around the groups, specifically, the group for my podcast. Facebook's groups provide some nice features, including the ability to message everyone who joins.
The one thing I dislike about Facebook compared to MySpace is the lack of good research tools.
Posted by: Christopher Penn, Financial Aid Podcast at July 17, 2007 08:48 AM