Apr
09

Facebook: ‘We Bought A Social Network’

by Feedback

The technology news out today is bigtime: Instagram is being bought by Facebook for $1 billion in cash and stock, the Big Man announced today. It’s a development that has people (including us) wincing at what could become of the fun and simple photo-sharing service for iPhone and, as of last week, Android.

We wince only because Facebook and big companies before it have consistently proven their wonderful ability to run the companies they buy into the ground or shut them down and integrate the technologies into their own platforms.

But should we expect the same this go-’round?

This acquisition is the most notable one in the world of social media since Google bought YouTube for $1.65 billion, and YouTube is still around much like it was before the acquisition: independent and potentially even better than before, just part of the Google family of products.

We’d hope (and it would seem) that the Facebook-Instagram deal mirrors that of Google-YouTube. According to the post on Zuckerberg’s page, the company understands that it can destroy Instagram if it’s not careful:

“…we need to be mindful about keeping and building on Instagram’s strengths and features rather than just trying to integrate everything into Facebook. That’s why we’re committed to building and growing Instagram independently. Millions of people around the world love the Instagram app and the brand associated with it, and our goal is to help spread this app and brand to even more people.”

So, to that end, some thoughts on what could become of both sides:

- Instagram isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. Facebook is well aware that it has the ability and power to stupidly ruin a good thing, and it doesn’t want to do that. Instagram founder Kevin Systrom reiterates this message, too.

- Facebook users will probably get Instagram filters and better editing features at some point, so prepare to see more pictures of your friend’s kids, only with various filters and blurry parts.

- This could mean the first real domino in Facebook rolling out tags for photos, giving the standardization of tagging huge legs for the future.

- You have to wonder if the Instagram “Heart” will become a Facebook “Thumbs up.”

- Facebook is already the No. 1 photo upload site on the Internet, and this purchase will only strengthen its position there over rivals such as Google+. This could potentially hurt Twitter, too, though Instagram allows for sharing on that site and will continue to do so. Too early to tell.

- It could also mean a death blow to Flickr, which, while popular with photographers, you hear less and less of over time. It’s just not as social and doesn’t have the traffic or mobile friendliness. (And there are other services besides Flickr, as well.)

- It’s likely any real significant development from this won’t be visible for a year or more, but you may see some early tweaks to image sharing on both sides in the first six months.

More than likely, the most notable change to Instagram will be for the founders themselves, who are joining Facebook under terms of the deal: After two years out on their own, they now have bosses.

Oct
19

Tabs on the Holidays

by Feedback

MediaPost, one of my favorite sites for trade-specific communications news, reports this from the National Retail Federation:

Smartphones and tablets will play a major part in shoppers’ holiday foraging, with 52.6 percent of smartphone owners using them to sniff out purchases. And those who own tablets are even more keen on shopper technology, with 70.5 percent of tablet owners planning to shop with them.

Note that this doesn’t say “buy.” Just forage. Which I believe means “to seek out.”

When it comes to tablet vs. smartphone use, one element I’ve found interesting is that while retailers and other companies are scrambling to build smartphone apps – Droid and iPhone versions only, let’s be serious – there’s not as high demand by firms to build tablet applications.

This isn’t to say tablets aren’t popular. They are.

But you don’t necessarily need, say, a banking or e-store app on a tablet, because the screen is large enough to accomodate to regular website. Yet banks and retailers are developing phone-specific applications (or at the very least, mobile-optimizing their websites), because they are easier to view on a tiny screen.

It’s easier to browse on a smartphone and buy on a tablet, which brings us to purchasing figures: only 14.1 percent of people plan to buy stuff on a smartphone this holiday season versus 33.8 percent – more than double – who will actually buy goods on a tablet.

Meanwhile, holiday spending – which rises every year, even in bad years, just by a different amount – will see a small increase of 2.8 percent this year. The average for the past decade has been around 2.6 percent.

- Jeff (@jephkelley)

Oct
20

Will Facebook Die?

by Feedback

Note: This is the first of many posts by the newest Feedbacker, Jeff Kelley.

Will Facebook die? It’s a question I get a lot. Perhaps because I’m a blogger and have a Twitter account and know cool techy tricks like how to turn off Google SafeSearch and I work for a company that makes its living doing work online, and therefore I’m supposed to know these things. Quite honestly, you’d be better off asking me if I’d one day like to own a grenade launcher, as I could give you a definitive answer: “Absolutely.”

Instagram is like Twitter for photos. Available on the iPhone.

But I do not possess such a weapon yet, and regarding Facebook’s death, all I have is an opinion. And my opinion is that Facebook will go away, and probably sometime in the next few years. But what will be left behind are the communities, concepts and connections that Facebook has created (all FarmVille farms will perish, though, hopefully by plague).

The problem for Facebook is that its best features – the features that are most widely used – are being copied and made better by other developers. You can go to places besides Facebook to talk to old friends, meet new ones, find upcoming events, discover new links, look at photos of folks, and – most importantly – stalk people you think are attractive. You just have to use multiple services to do it. Facebook is really the only place that people are going to do all that stuff in one place.

Tumblr, which many people don't realize has a very social backend.

We are fast approaching an era when people will be able to customize their online experience with a variety of social networking services instead of just one big one. To put it one way: You can shop at Walmart for everything, or take an extra few minutes and visit a bunch of cooler, smaller shops.

At Feedback, we’re already seeing signs of Facebook’s great unraveling. Know when bands become “too” popular? Even the original fans start to pull away. We’re looking at you, Dave Matthews Band.

If you cut past the movie reviews and privacy issues and research what’s being said about Facebook on a grassroots level, you’ll hear from serious web users who balk at Facebook for being too mainstream. That there are too many people on it. That there are an array of better services to use to network online. That there’s too much noise on Facebook. Complaints about grammar. About too much information. And enough with the baby pictures or photos of that giant new engagement ring.

RSVPhere is a cool events site that merges hard copy invites with the online world. It's also Richmond based.

Many people, while still keeping their Facebook accounts as a sort of abandoned online home (think MySpace three years ago), are turning to less-mainstream networking services such as Twitter, Tumblr or a mix of other apps and tools found on iPhones or Droids or BlackBerrys. Games made popular on Facebook because of the social aspects can now also be played on increasingly faster and better mobile devices, and with other people. Facebook’s Events feature (which has largely become an annoyance: “Come to my DJ party 12 states away!”) are made more personal and less obnoxious through Eventbrite or RSVPHere.com, the latter of which essentially allows you to create, for free, a little microblog for your event. People can RSVP through the site, and events stay a bit more private than they would on Facebook. Plus, it’s easy to use.

Paper.li turns links from your Twitter feed into a newspaper/blog-like format

You can share links and articles through a cool newspaper-like service called Paper.Li. A neat photo-sharing app for iPhone called Instagram is basically Twitter with pictures. Tumblr is the latest social media media darling. You can even add the location where you took the photo.

There are hundreds of these types of services. Many will fail. Some will not. And those are the ones that you will combine together as you desire, eventually bringing Facebook to its knees. That sentence was way too overly dramatic.

Facebook is already failing in some of its offerings. It may be too soon to call its Places location feature a dud, but Foursquare is doing a much better job of alerting burglars to empty homes.

You've probably gotten an invite from here before. of these invites before.

Now, enough hate on Facebook. Let’s be real: It’s a great thing. It’s fun. It has enormous use in the business world. It connects people to companies and brands to the masses. It’s a lead generator for everything to music to movies to news articles or those neat-o things on the Internet. Facebook has a long time to go before it’s gone, even by technology standards.

Whether Facebook is here to stay depends on how well it can respond to the growing market of individual services that can do the same things it does, and how people will use those services to create their own experiences. If that’s the case, Facebook may be to social media to what the Model-T was for the automobile.

-Jeff (@jeffkelleyrva, or @jephkelley for the lighter side)