Facebook in Flux
March 6, 2009
The Financial Times’ Chris Nuttall wrote “Facebook’s Identify Crisis” here. I agree in general that Facebook is reacting to Twitter and other rivals. I think Facebook is a walled garden; that is, a proprietary space. Most software and online service companies are walled gardens or want to be. The principal difference among these different organizations is how many gates there are to the walled garden and what one has to do get inside. The article missed an important point; namely, Facebook is a sector leader, but it has to deal with the likes of Google and Twitter. This is a tough competitive sandwich to choke down. Google is not a Facebook, but Google wants to be Facebooky enough to snag the ad revenue, the eyeballs, the clicks, and the data. Twitter, on the other hand, is the leader in real time search and it can morph in several directions serially or just do a number of things in parallel. Facebook, therefore, has an increasingly traditional competitor that wants to move in to the Facebook market space. And Facebook has to figure out how to deal with the real time, microblogging content catnip that sets Twitter apart. I don’t think one can fault Facebook for looking confused. Compare its efforts to innovate with those of the Financial Times. Facebook looks innovative and much more aware of where the information and financial action is than most traditional information companies in general and the newspapers like the Financial Times more particularly.
Stephen Arnold, March 6, 2009
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