Sun, 28 Dec 2014

Will Facebook Survive Another 10 Years?


After it rose to fame 10 years ago, Facebook became the most popular social networking site. It has addicting games and you can upload videos and pictures within seconds, wishing that it's going to trend.

Now, Facebook upgraded their features but they are starting to become complicated, at the same time, not working correctly. This site may be unstoppable but the thing about today's society is that people are now depending on their mobile phones.

Social networking sites such as Twitter, Instagram and Tumblr, just to name a few, are now upgrading to fit the mobile generation. Facebook is still best viewed on desktop or an iPad. It took a long time for Facebook to create a mobile app but it caught onto the trend. So the question still remains: will Facebook survive another 10 years? Maybe.

The reason is that "mobile" is not really in Facebook's "DNA". That's why they have no idea how Facebook will make money on mobile, which is going to be its downfall.


Fewer Ads, Lesser Money


Mobile has fewer ads which means, lesser money. The leading brand, General Motors, pulled the plug on their entire Facebook advertising budget, now there's definitely a problem. Another problem with Facebook is the privacy. When you click on those ads, you are giving the company power to get your personal information via Facebook. You are actually volunteering to get their hands on it to send you different emails on things that you do not need.

Threats are also starting to emerge, leaving Facebook under pressure to keep their users. Its number 1 threat is Twitter, that recently has more than 500 million users and it's growing over time. It is considered as the modern day newspaper. Current events, celebrity news and even sports news are now on Twitter. Even journalists and news anchors, uses this social media network to gather interesting news from around the globe. It is becoming what TV news networks wish they could be.

Before Twitter, Skype served as a major threat to Facebook because of its free video call. After a few tweaks here and there, Facebook also added video calls in its messenger. Once again, Facebook was faced with another threat when private and free messaging became a trend worldwide.

BlackBerry featured BBM services. It's free and it's very useful when it comes to private messaging. But after some time, BBM became a tool for violence and hacking. Since then, Facebook had another competition in the Instant Messenger apps - WhatsApp Messenger and SnapChat. Instagram also became a competition when it came to global following and sharing pictures.


Facebook Will Probably Survive


Facebook is for much intimate connection with friends and family, Twitter and Instagram are for following people that you have interest in (i.e. Celebrities); LinkedIn is an app and website that will help you land a job. Facebook may have millions of users but to maintain their popularity, they have to grow with the society. They have to tighten their security and privacy, remove the "poke" button, add more emotions or emoticons in the status update, revamp the News Feed and learn the tricks on how Twitter adapted to the evolution of social networking.

After dissecting every possibility of its future, will Facebook survive another 10 years? Yes, probably even more if they embrace the changes in social media and their users.



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