Facebook Goes Beyond College, High School Markets

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1. TheWeb20Dev
   

   April 26th, 2006 at 7:00 pm

   Interesting move, but a good one. This move pits MySpace head on with Facebook. MySpace has evolved into something else entirely with its music labels etc. But facebook is true to its purely social networking aspect lending only minor functionality outside sending messages and commenting on pictures. Interesting to see what develops.

2. Don Wilson
   

   April 26th, 2006 at 7:28 pm

   My god, genious move.

3. Saul Weiner
   

   April 26th, 2006 at 7:32 pm

   The corporate space is a funny one. Companies get touchy about employees just doing what they want freely using their work details. I’m not sure this will catch on as much as they hope.

4. Blaze
   

   April 26th, 2006 at 7:34 pm

   Yeah, they most likely will get bought near their asking price but what they are doing at the moment seems to be expanding into more of MySpace’s territory just to justify that price.

5. eric
   

   April 26th, 2006 at 7:37 pm

   Did I call this or what…

   http://www.zealivityfive.com/?.....amp;id=190

6. michael
   

   April 26th, 2006 at 7:38 pm

   what a wonderfully genious move for them! this will certainly make the 2B much more appropriate.

7. me
   

   April 26th, 2006 at 7:39 pm

   Do kids want to be able to connect with corporate employees?
   Or are users invsible from one network to another?

8. Jonas
   

   April 26th, 2006 at 7:47 pm

   Ummm… This move was made by Microsoft first. Check out Expo Live where they group people by email into circles of trust. Good old M$. Finding a good idea and expanding on it.

9. Ashish
   

   April 26th, 2006 at 8:00 pm

   A genius move? College kids don’t want to connect with older folks in this medium - they’ll use LinkedIn for that. Facebook is almost entirely social, a professional atmosphere will ruin it.

   I think they should be concerned with increasing their revenue margins on their current audience, since they do such a poor job of it.

10. BK
    

    April 26th, 2006 at 8:27 pm

    I for one think this is a great move by FB assuming the corporate network is separate from the college/highschool crowd. This also brings in another possible revenue source for facebook: job postings. Sooner or later, approved companies will be able to post job offers on the site for a fee, much like monster and craigslist. Facebook will crush Linkedin with this feature.

11. Richard Dean
    

    April 26th, 2006 at 8:42 pm

    This makes sense to me. Like it or not, the workplace is a very active social environment. This allows facebook to “grow” with their users. It’s been said before, the exclusive domain-based envirnoment facebook is based on, is a major competative advantage for them. Features, widgets, and “technology” that a lot of social networks are pushing as why they are better than myspace will quickly become a commodity that anyone can/and will offer.

12. Ari Mir
    

    April 26th, 2006 at 8:47 pm

    this is a great move

    BUT i have noticed with users that have an undergrad and grad account facebook forces 2 profiles…i may be wrong about this but i am pretty sure…this would make it 3 accounts…if facebook can make it so that u have 1 account that shows your undergrad, grad, and work info that would be awesome because the reality is most people switch jobs on average every 2 years

    i can see facebook evolving into an identity 2.0 company…which makes a lot of sense…an online identity can only truly be verified through social networks

13. BrianS
    

    April 26th, 2006 at 9:24 pm

    “i may be wrong about this but i am pretty sure…this would make it 3 accounts…”

    This used to be how the Facebook worked but as of very recently there is now the ability to join another network within Facebook as long as you verify an email address with that school/company as well. This gets rid of the problem of creating multiple accoutns per individual.

14. Ari Mir
    

    April 26th, 2006 at 9:28 pm

    BrianS,

    awesome…yeah i figured it would be pretty idiotic of them to not permit such a thing…ill have to do that…thanks

15. Decipho
    

    April 26th, 2006 at 10:01 pm

    Good move for them, interested to see how this will work for them.

16. Ben
    

    April 26th, 2006 at 10:13 pm

    I think that it’s a great move. All of the folks who work @ corporations want to score on those college kids. Cross-community dating.

17. Trey Reasonover
    

    April 26th, 2006 at 10:20 pm

    http://www.doostang.com has been around for a while, and pretty much does the same thing, except only with the more “exclusive” schools and corporations… A high-end Facebookv2?

18. Andrew Fife
    

    April 26th, 2006 at 10:20 pm

    “Facebook will crush Linkedin with this feature”

    I highly doubt this as Greylock Partners David Sze has invested in both of Facebook and LinkedIn. At some point all of these social networking sites will need to consolidate and LinkedIn as a part of Facebook might make sense but no VC would invest in a competitor of an existing portfolio company.

19. Doug Sherrets
    

    April 26th, 2006 at 10:35 pm

    Hi Michael,

    This is very exciting to see come to fruition. I wrote on August 31, 2005 that corporate facebooks offered the potential for serious growth for facebook. In short, a corporate facebook works off the same principles that made facebook so successful in colleges. You can read my complete analysis from August 31 here:

    http://www.minorityrapport.com.....or_al.html

    Here is an excerpt from my post:

    “Facebook usage numbers speak for themselves: users love the site. I think some of that love will be lost as people become alums, but it does not have to be: migrating alums into corporate facebooks would leverage the same powerful ideas that have driven facebook’s growth thus far: email/identity confirmation and a community with both cyber and physical boundaries. Companies have that.

    “Plus there is a powerful idea within corporate facebooks that university facebooks do not have: there’s no competitive reason why students at one school do not want to share information with students at another school, but that is certainly critical at companies. By playing to that and making a closed corporate facebooks, trust could be fostered and encourage employees to share the necessary information (past projects worked on, expertise, current projects, colleagues at work, etc) for the betterment of the companies. Certainly any person could start offering this service, but no company is better positioned than the facebook to roll this out on a national level.”

    Thank you,

    Doug Sherrets

    http://www.minorityrapport.com

20. Sar Medoff
    

    April 26th, 2006 at 11:43 pm

    As a current college freshman, I have to say that I don’t like this current trend in facebook. While it may be a good for business in the short run, I think they are running a good chance of alienating the college student that the whole company was built on originally. The entire appeal of facebook as opposed to myspace or friendster was that it was exclusive. College students and alum only. Now with high school and the corporate branches, it feels less and less exclusive and loses its “must have” appeal for college students. Again, obviously a good short term business move, but I do worry about them losing touch with that university student that is still the backbone of the company.

21. AhmedF
    

    April 27th, 2006 at 12:05 am

    I keep hearing this 85% number - where is the proof?

22. Justin SMith
    

    April 27th, 2006 at 1:18 am

    Mike,

    I’ve listed the 10 companies that Facebook has limited the corporate rollout to on the Inside Facebook blog, along with some thoughts on the move…

    -Justin

23. Razvan
    

    April 27th, 2006 at 1:53 am

    85% of US college students use it. There is land after the oceans too

24. Friendly Guy
    

    April 27th, 2006 at 3:37 am

    Hey Mike,

    It would be nice if like every other website on the planet, you could separate your comments and your trackback. Thanks!

25. Patrick Dodd
    

    April 27th, 2006 at 4:02 am

    Being in my late 30’s, I really havent had much use for FaceBook. However, I thought I would register for the highschool portion of the website simply to drive another stake in the horribly web 1.0 company called Classmates.com. Unfortunately, it said I was too old. WTF?

26. Eli
    

    April 27th, 2006 at 5:04 am

    I hope they don’t show student’s profiles to business. That would definitely put people off. I have friends that put all their info there, because they feel secure, if they do allow business to access that info then they’re fried really. Facebook has fallen behind Myspace just because it’s not open to everyone. It used to be that my friends had facebook profiles and spent their time there. Now they have the facebook profile but in the part where it says website it’s all: http://profile.myspace(…)
    Facebook is to like make yourself known that you are in the same university, myspace is for hanging out with your friends.

27. Justin Siegel
    

    April 27th, 2006 at 5:08 am

    To me this move smacks of desperation

28. Avery
    

    April 27th, 2006 at 5:34 am

    I love Facebook. I’m one of those addicted college students. I’m thrilled with the ability to be part of multiple networks, and can thus view several schools I belong to at once.

    The problem is, Facebook is so great because of its exclusivity. Kids (not myself!) post pictures of themselves partying with beers in hand, because they aren’t worried about authority figures seeing them. I don’t want my father joining Facebook and looking at my profile.

    While Facebook has good privacy features, it’s getting a little too big for me. I liked when only my classmates could see me, I don’t need my employer reading what I have on my “Wall.” I think that while it is good for Facebook to expand, I think it will, if anything, be viewed negatively by the current college users.

29. Joy
    

    April 27th, 2006 at 5:36 am

    Instead of creating a professional network, I’d rather have all the colleges and universities from other countries covered. I don’t think facebook provides the right feel for a “work” social network and there are several website that already provides that service like the prior comments mention..

    Facebook should stay a youth network, and keep adding features. I like the niche that it has in the market..

30. Chris
    

    April 27th, 2006 at 5:39 am

    Umm…why would a workplace need to have a social network online? This is how people get fired.Absolutely agree with the previous post. “smacks of desperation”. Facebook is an incredible idea as it stands. Complicating things will make it less appealing to college kids.

31. Brad Twohig
    

    April 27th, 2006 at 5:46 am

    Hmmm…1MM in revenue a week. Making it a run rate of 50MM a year with growth. That makes the valuation of 500MM atleast a little bit rational. As for their move, it is logical and expected. They already had kids putting in their work addresses. My take is that it is a way to keep the network somewhat closed. They can also ban accounts in effective ways that limits spam. Limiting spam is the key to keeping these networks healthy.

    LinkedIn should be concerned. As well as visiblepath and spoke. My guess is there will be a number of revenue models they will attack in and surrounding professional work environments. I already know of the perfect acquisition. Mark should give me a call.

32. JL
    

    April 27th, 2006 at 5:50 am

    This is a classic marketing blunder–line extension for its own sake, mistakenly thinking that your brand is ubiquitous.

    They should stick to their core market at Facebook and start a corporate site under a different brand (Workbook?).

33. Meredith
    

    April 27th, 2006 at 6:02 am

    Facebook apparently does the school thing really well - I wish they’d open it up to alumni. Classmates.com is currently the largest alumni network (as far as I know) but it’s a pay-for-play service, and it’s a bit of a dinosaur. The market is begging for a new alumni service - Friendster almost did it, MySpace does it but very badly, and Facebook is poised to make a killing in this field.

34. EF
    

    April 27th, 2006 at 6:04 am

    “I think that it’s a great move. All of the folks who work @ corporations want to score on those college kids. Cross-community dating.”

    Exaclty…

    Facebook is going to run into some issues trying to police sleazy businessmen from picking up drunken college girls ……Impossible!!!

35. shelley johnson
    

    April 27th, 2006 at 6:15 am

    I agree with the current college students (and users) that have posted (even though I am in my 30s). It seems that Facebook’s valued product is the exclusivity. . . a great thing. And they just killed their product -and instead now seem to be trying to reinvent the wheel of all the other social networks out there that are already successful. I don’t think it’s a genius idea. I wonder why they don’t pay attention to the valuable market that they already dominate…instead of seemingly dropping that market. Why not focus on expanding by keeping the current market in the future as “alumni”? Probably b/c that would take a few years of knuckle-biting patience. But like the others, I feel it seems that there is a Facebook desperation that wants the quick 2.0 buck through perceived “boom growth”.

36. Friendly Guy
    

    April 27th, 2006 at 6:44 am

    TOTALLY agree, it’s already creepy enough that potential employers check out students’ facebook profiles, but giving all companies access is a poor choice! stupid dot-coms and their weird plans…

37. Christopher
    

    April 27th, 2006 at 6:59 am

    I think this might be a good thing if they control it. Not a single smart college student worried about getting a job will leave there profile active while looking for a Job… employers are smart and they turn to FB to learn more about applicants. If they can keep it as two seperat worlds it will work. Let’s think of this from the business play… People in the business world have much deeper pockets and advertisiers will pay to reach them… Young proffesionals and college students are an advertisers dream because they are choosing the brands they are going to use for life.

38. evan
    

    April 27th, 2006 at 7:11 am

    regarding the comment above about this new feature being a “linkedin killer,” and direct competition to each other -

    sounds like linkedin is still the professional route to go, and the new facebook feature sounds more like the company watercooler. i think it’s a pretty decent move - but wonder how much it will catch on due to most company culture and policies.

39. Yanamandra
    

    April 27th, 2006 at 7:47 am

    Not sure how companies will view this. While each company has it’s own private space on facebook, do companies want their employees gossiping on facebook.

    Most large comapnies also have employee portals, directories, and bulletin boards, so I am not sure that this is needed.

    I can see this taking off with small companies that don’t have these capabilities.

40. Fred Stutzman
    

    April 27th, 2006 at 7:59 am

    Yanamandra - I think you’re absolutely right. I’ve posted my thoughts on the subject here. Sort of boils down to:

    - Corporations will primarily fear the same stuff college administrators fear - that Facebooking employees will make bad choices that will require disciplinary intervention.

    - Corporations will secondarily fear the information employees put into the Facebook. Meeting calendars, person-to-person messages, wall postings, event schedules: On campus, no one really cares to own this data. In the corporate world, this data is clearly owned by the corporation.

    Still - this move is solid and makes a lot of sense to me.

41. Daniele Levy
    

    April 27th, 2006 at 8:10 am

    They can also expand upwards from the core college audience - in many schools, there is a vibrant graduate and post-grad community as well in which they are just starting to make headways.

42. John
    

    April 27th, 2006 at 9:03 am

    I’m not sure if it’s a good idea to give high school students yet another way to post all about themselves…but it is safer then myspace.
    http://www.FreeTrialOfferGuide.com

43. Jnetty
    

    April 27th, 2006 at 9:07 am

    I liked Facebook because it was College Students only, no childish High School students. Then they added that feature. Now Corporate…I dont like it.
    I hope they don’t start allowing the editing of your profile background and such. I hate teenie bopper myspace profiles..

44. Dave
    

    April 27th, 2006 at 10:10 am

    At my previous company, I knew some people who would go to Friendster out of curiosity after they interviewed a “younger” candidate. Some of the stuff that was discovered made them raise their eyebrows…I really think college students who are serious about their future careers should be very concerned about this move by Facebook.

    It almost seems like Facebook is saying, “Hey, express yourself…Oops, now it’s going to screw you if you want a job with any of the companies listed here.”

45. Kevin Berk
    

    April 27th, 2006 at 10:14 am

    Corporate alumni networking is one of the most underutilized recruiting tools around. LinkedIn already has LinkedIn for groups and there are many organic Yahoo groups that have sprung up. It will be interesting to see how the facebook community will morph as companies are added.

    My company, YorZ, already offers corporate alumni groups for scores of companies as well as a way to connect and recruit within each. We are adding features all the time. You can check it out at: http://groups.yorz.com/groupsDirectory.htm

46. The Entrepreneurial Endeavor
    

    April 27th, 2006 at 10:17 am

    I think you are easily going to see grumbles from the college crowd on this move. The question is, will they drastically change their visiting behavior on the site? Probably not.

    However I think this dangerously enters a territory that I have mentioned before where the more access corporations get to students facebook profiles, the more it could affect things such as hiring…something that obviously shouldn’t be happening.

    More about that here:

    http://www.brianbalfour.com/?p=25

    -Brian

47. Ben
    

    April 27th, 2006 at 10:24 am

    Two important points:
    1) I’ve a read a few times now that with 85% penetration in universities, Facebook needs to figure out other ways to maintain its growth. I am not so sure I agree with this. You can register for facebook with an alumni account (as I have). With that in mind, you have a new influx of freshman every year (on the range of 2 million per year) AND you dont loose the 2 million or so outgoing seniors. So while its true the speed of growth levels off, there is still plenty of room for the # of new users to grow.

    2) One issue that might hinder corporate adoption: the corporate firewall. Now I am sure many companies allows their employees full access to sites, but many large players don’t I, for one, cannot access facebook from work.

48. Geoff
    

    April 27th, 2006 at 10:50 am

    Ben, even though you will be getting ” new influx of freshman every year,” the percentage increase will not be the same as the total number of users goes up.

49. Eugene F
    

    April 27th, 2006 at 10:58 am

    soon, facebook will take over everything, perhaps a merger of facebook and google??

50. Frankie
    

    April 27th, 2006 at 1:28 pm

    I think facebook is selling out. What made it special was that it was exclusive and somewhat safe compared to myspace and other ones. I already dont like the fact that high schoolers now have access. I think it will lose a lot of college students by expanding but if it catches on in the business world, I guess it would be worth it for facebook. Its all about the $$$ anyway

51. atomix
    

    April 27th, 2006 at 2:58 pm

    I don’t understand how companies like Facebook generate so much revenue. Like take Digg for example apparantly they’re expanding and making a lot of money, but where does it come from. Their service is free, they only have a few ads (hardly enough for income of several people) and they spend money on servers and domains

52. 'ju:femaiz
    

    April 27th, 2006 at 4:05 pm

    @atomix:

    further to that, I don’t understand how Google can have a valuation of more than GM + Ford combined…

    I wonder if the web is setting itself up for another bubble/depression-style-recession…

53. Chuck
    

    April 27th, 2006 at 4:21 pm

    Hi Michael -

    Did you mean that 85% of Facebook’s users are college students or that 85% of college students use Facebook? 85% of ALL college students seems like a lot of folks and would likely make them the Holy Grail of aquisitions with demographics like that.

    Could you clarify?

54. 'ju:femaiz
    

    April 27th, 2006 at 4:34 pm

    @chuck+michael

    Just wonder how they clarify the proportion too. Do they have access to private records of all Universities/Colleges?

55. Tim Johnson
    

    April 27th, 2006 at 4:34 pm

    Chuck -

    It’s 85% of College students in the US are FaceBook users. yeah, there’s alot of them. People use it like crack.

56. Avery
    

    April 27th, 2006 at 5:41 pm

    “People use it like crack.”

    True that.

57. Ryan Wagner
    

    April 27th, 2006 at 6:02 pm

    Yeah, here at Iowa State University it is probably closer to 95% of students use it. I think it is worse than a crack addiction. People probably spend more time using Facebook than they do sleeping in a day

58. Paul Williams - ceo - iKarma.com
    

    April 27th, 2006 at 9:01 pm

    Smart move. But wouldn’t it made more sense to create a WorkBook.com and just give kids an easy upgrade path? Better yet, they should invest some of those sweet millions in iKarma.com so I can post my mug on RetiredBook.com.

59. Justin Siegel
    

    April 28th, 2006 at 7:07 am

    I do agree with the earlier poster that valuations seem to be getting out of hand, and I question the staying power of some of these sites at current levels, ie I think they’ll enjoy a lot of traffic for a long time, but whether they’re remain in the Top 10 I don’t know.

    I also agree with Paul, if they want to go mobile, Facebook should invest in MocoSpace.com so I can hang my pic next to his on retiredbook

60. Terry
    

    April 28th, 2006 at 9:15 am

    I’ve got a HUGE complaint against Facebook.

    Out of curiosity, I tried to sign-up on Facebook 2 days ago with my corporate e-mail, an address I NEVER use for anything except internal communications. Let me repeat that: I have NEVER used it for ANYTHING, EVER, except internally. The next day after I tried to sign-up with Facebook (and was denied) I got my first e-mail that’s ever been quarantined by the corporate servers as “Spam”. The header: “from unknown (HELO rxfsu.zd) (82.3.147.185)by leic-cache-1.server.ntli.net” —- and the IP resolves to http://ntl.com

    Considering how the Facebook signup was the first and only time I’ve ever used my corporate e-mail outside the company, I can only assume that THEY harvested my e-mail and sold it off… and I wasn’t even allowed to be registered for the service.

    Has anyone else had this happen?

61. Terry
    

    April 28th, 2006 at 9:18 am

    addendum: I forgot to mention, since then, I’ve received 5 more e-mails that were flagged as spam.

62. Wen-Wen Lam
    

    April 28th, 2006 at 2:05 pm

    Personally, and not just because I am *slightly* biased, but I think that this was a bad move on facebook’s part. While people like networking, I think they’d like to keep their personal lives seperate from the work environment - I know that my facebook profile in college and my LinkedIn profile are two completely profiles and I use them for different purposes. I assume that anyone who interviews me is looking at my facebook profile - but it is NOT what I want to be sending to my employer.

63. mk
    

    April 28th, 2006 at 11:01 pm

    We had something similar at Yahoo many years ago. It contained only our contact info and photos, but it served the same purpose - how many hours we spent on that thing attempting to find anyone datable.

64. Brent
    

    April 29th, 2006 at 7:32 pm

    Everyone that is complaining about the coporates or parents looking in at your pictures or profile doesn’t know much about the site itself.

    For someone to look at your pictures and wall, or even profile itself, they HAVE to be friends with you. And guess what, you get to choose if they are friends with your or not.

    I think its a smart idea letting other networks in, it’s the only way to expand.

    They’ll get their 2 billion some how.

65. Andrew Helenes
    

    April 30th, 2006 at 7:56 am

    Zuckerberg is an idiot. Alright, frankly I think this is the dumbest thing facebook has every done. If you read the history, Zucker is a programmer, and it looks like he stole the idea from connectu. HE IS NOT AN ENTREPRENEUR, just a programmer, and those guys from linked in and spoke are just living their failed dream through mark facebook. I love what you done, but keep it simple facebook.

66. Judah Wilson, CEO Top20Network.com
    

    April 30th, 2006 at 9:45 am

    One word: Branding. The reason it won’t work in Corporate America is becuase the branding for the site was solidified when they chose to go for high school students rather than corporate America. The first wave of seniors that graduated after Facebook became popular (May of last year) was the market Facebook had to get. Facebook was hot, and a large portion of their users were heading to the corporate world. Facebook missed it, and as soon as privacy issues surfaced, the important students that sparked the original movement (students at top 20 schools) stopped using the site.

67. Rusty
    

    May 4th, 2006 at 7:01 am

    I liked the speciality of being in the corporate world but having a facebook account. I dont think I want my work colleagues involved with the knowledge that I still associate with college kids.

68. Rachel
    

    May 10th, 2006 at 11:34 pm

    Interesting move by Facebook. You should check out ifbyphone’s Voplace, at http://ifbyphone.com, a brand new social network by voice through the phone. This may attract a broader audience than Facebook, because it can be accessed anywhere, from a simple telephone. And ifbyphone offers other features and applications like news, email, rss feeds that would attract professionals too.

69. toni
    

    August 27th, 2006 at 5:40 pm

    i feel kind of left out of the whole facebook thing because i am attending community college and most of my friends are going off to 4 year colleges/universitys. i think it would be cool if facebook also had a branch for community colleges because a lot of students start off their college careers at community colleges.

70. EMILY
    

    December 26th, 2006 at 11:56 am

    I think they should create a level for middle school students! i believe this network could be streched to the next level.

71. bow me
    

    February 27th, 2007 at 9:25 am

    wow you guys are all faggots. myspace and facebook are for fags so blow me btiches brap