Making people share more has always been the core strategy of Facebook. More sharing means more content on the platform, therefore more reasons to visit, & more advertising revenue. It works – this is what I called, in a previous blog post: the law of gravity. The more content you share, the more often people will visit, prompting to share even more, both by people & brands.
With the release of the ‘open graph’, about 1.5 years ago, Facebook slightly departed from that. By enabling easy, social buttons to be quickly implemented on any website, Facebook reduced the need for website & brand owners to massively put ALL their content on Facebook directly, hoping to gain more viral impact. Of course, the content still grew massively on the platform, since those social buttons had an impact on Facebook’s user newsfeed – but the contents & links were driving people away from the platform. The hope was (and still is) that by helping making the whole Web go social, Facebook would become more of the ‘Web’, because at least it would have more content shared, & more information about the users, which would in turn enable better targeting, and why not, social search – using this intelligence to drive you first to content you’re looking for “approved by friends”.
Now, Facebook has released a new version of the ‘open graph’, which is actually less open. Brands (medias, consumer brands, etc…) can now create immersive experiences which will not require any click to have a viral impact. For instance, you will be sharing to your network the music you are listening too, the article you’re reading, the product you’re browsing, by simply opening that song, that article, seeing that product. This will require though that you go through a ‘Facebook app’ and grant initial authorization to that app.
As someone put on Twitter: “Facebook changed its status update: it now wants to be an entertainment hub”. Well, I think it definitely wants to drive back more experiences within Facebook and is trying to craft a new value proposition for those brands willing to embark. But it will need as well to convince people to sign in! That’s the key trick: will people grant access to those apps who are passively sharing information about what they do ? Some will. But many people never use apps in the first place, so I don’t expect a majority of users to do so.
On the other hand, it is secretly preparing a full Ad Network (à la Ad Sense), which will serve you Ads based on what you ‘did’ on the social network, and even other Websites you’ve visited. Actually it’s only a secret for people who don’t look since you can read the patent application in this post. This will be the ultimate Ad server. Of course, it’s patented & based on their immense reach & information: not only what millions of people do in Facebook but as well all nice Websites who kindly implemented Facebook social plugins - handing over tons of information in the process.
If it succeeds, this could make it move to an entirely new category, eating even more share of attention and the online ad market. It now is the fastest growing ‘attention eater’ to the US audience (which is still a few percent of share of attention). Tomorrow it could simply be the company with the biggest share of attention & dominating the display ad market….Hold a minute. One year ago, I mentioned the actual target was the most lucrative Search advertising dominated by Google (cfr my earlier blog post). I still believe it, with as main evidence the recent launch of Google Plus. Ok, so it will be the online advertising business (both display & search). Hold again. Didn’t I mention earlier Facebook is eating attention away from traditional media like TV, by becoming more of an entertainment hub ?Actually, the untold story of f8 is that Facebook is tackling the entire USD600 Billions advertising industry, brilliantly. Unless people start thinking Facebook’s been a bridge too far.
alexvdm
