I agree with Sam Gustin when he says that yesterday’s Facebook Developer Conference in San Francisco was in the end a snoozer, but not because CEO Mark Zuckerberg failed on stage.
First of all, saying the event itself was sleep-inducing is just factually incorrect. Before and after the keynote they played music so loud that a deaf person would complain. I was alarmed and somewhat panicked by the noise, but certainly not sleepy. And on a more serious note, Zuckerberg himself was much more at ease and charismatic on stage than I’ve ever seen him previously. He’s no Steve Jobs yet, but he’s no slouch, either.
I left the event feeling fairly upbeat about Facebook. They sent a clear message to developers that they need to build compelling apps and learn to play nice. And they created a clear reward and punishment system to deal with both ends of the spectrum.
But I’ve learned that I need period of reflection after these super-shows before I can really digest what happened. And after reflecting, I’m feeling more than a little let down by Facebook’s product focus and ability to execute.
Snatching Mediocrity From The Jaws Of Victory
A year ago Facebook set the Internet on fire with the launch of Facebook Platform. Competitors rushed to respond, and since then Facebook has been on a tear.
Facebook has all the momentum as the worlds largest social network (if not the most valuable), and they’ve always been willing to launch bold and controversial new products that change the way people perceive the company (News Feeds, Platform, Beacon).
Everyone looks to them to see what comes next. When rumors surfaced in May that they were going to announce Facebook Connect, a way for third party sites to integrate their services with Facebook profile data, Google and MySpace rushed to announce their own versions of the product, with nearly identical features and, in the case of Google (Friend Connect), a suspiciously similar name.
But today they were not bold, and they did not act like thought leaders. There was no controversial but exciting new product experiment unleashed on a gushing audience. Instead, there were minor tweaks to a platform that needs a major overhaul.
Facebook Connect, the most exciting new product on the agenda, is still vaporware. A parade of partners came out on stage to talk about all the great things they’ll do when it eventually launches this Fall. Meanwhile, Google’s product is in working alpha, and MySpace has fully launched Data Availability.
The new three tier ranking system for apps, which we first wrote about in March, addresses the problem of black hat developers, but it may create more pain than it’s worth. Developers have long complained that Facebook plays favorites.
More disappointing is what Facebook didn’t announce today. No payments platform, even though developers are begging for a way to make money beyond pitifully-low (and falling) CPM ads.
Nor did Facebook address their now quaint and basically unusable messaging system, even though MySpace paved the way for them by implementing Gears nearly two months ago.
Facebook also didn’t take the opportunity today to make amends with Google and cross-integrate their products. Competition is fine, but users are best served with interoperable products. In effect, Facebook is continuing to tell their users exactly what they can and cannot do with their own data.
Finally, Facebook chastised developers who build slow applications, telling them that they need to speed things up and think about scaling. But user complaints about the slowness of Facebook in general are on the upswing. Perhaps its time for the company to listen to its own advice.
Suddenly Facebook is acting more like a company with lots to lose (and therefore defend) rather than a scrappy young underdog startup looking to shake things up, capture our imagination and change the world. It’s time for them to be audacious again, and take some risk. Otherwise, they risk becoming simply boring. And that’s the fast lane to mediocrity.
I kind of get the feeling more and more each day that Facebook is going to be the site that loses everything. For some reason I wouldn’t be surprised to see everyone move to other sites, because to be honest, facebook in general is just boring anymore. I think it is one of the few dynamic sites in this world that seem to be extremely static and bland.
Who knows though…
I really wish TC would stop talking about a Facebook payments platform.
And please stop the iPhones app store analogy too.
The case for a Facebook app store based on the iPhone analogy is severely flawed. Nobody would pay for a Facebook application.
1) iPhone users pay a small fortune to buy and use their devices. This selects for people with relatively high disposable income. Facebook profiles are free.
2) The iPhone is a platform in a way that is analogous with a computer. Facebook isn’t. (e.g. there is a Facebook application for the iPhone. There is no iPhone application for Facebook).
http://www.snuzu.com
I promise to stop complaining about the need for a payments platform when Facebook launches their payments platform. And I didn’t make an iPhone App Store analogy, although its a good one.
Sorry, I should’ve been more clere. This is where you make that analogy.
http://www.snuzu.com
err….I meant “clear”
Danny, I completely agree with you. I’ve been a Facebook user for sometime now and know a lot of people who are too and when I first read the payment platform rumor here on TC I cannot stop thinking of how ridiculous this could be, everyone I’ve discussed this with had the same reaction. People use Facebook because it’s a good place to interact. I believe the majority of users who use Facebook applications do so because it’s free, easy, and fun. You just select an application click two buttons and start using it… If Facebook starts charging for this stuff people will think twice before paying any sum of money, and if using FunWall becomes a question of whether I am willing to pay for it or not then I’ll probably save my money and stick with the regular Facebook wall…
Oh and I agree with your article Micheal, Facebook is becoming tremendously boring day after day…
Speaking as a Facebook app developer, if there were an integrated payments system available I would not use it to charge access to my apps ala the iPhone store. I would use it to charge access to premium parts of my apps. In my opinion, the freemium model will do VERY well on Facebook.
It’s true that most of the throw-away apps have nothing that anyone would want to buy. But believe it or not, there are some applications that have passionate user bases with real perceived value and community. When you paint every Facebook developer and application with the same “useless distraction” brush, you do developers like myself a disservice.
To give you a concrete example, I run one of the largest sports applications (Hockey Pool, 350k users, 40-70k daily active users last hockey season). I focus on creating a great experience for the participants, rather than maximizing my pageviews and eCPM yield. Since the season ended in early June I’ve received more than 1000 emails and messages thanking me for the application, telling me how much fun it was, and volunteering time to help organize next season’s contests. I think many of my users would happily pay for an upgrade to a premium service.
Bottom line: having an integrated payment system in Facebook would encourage the development of high-quality apps.
Ben
Danny you forget about a proof of concept with payments on FB and that is the Gifts. Millions of those things have been sent around at $1 with little or no cost to deliver them.
Dario, that’s because FB offered 1 free gift for everyone to give when the service launched. Then poeople stopped.
Mike,
Go to sleep you nutcase!
( V good post)
Huge yawn! I’m glad I didn’t make the trip. Why no payment platform? Why no changes to a bunk chat function? And why no announcement of location-based messaging? Loopt has to of let go one huge sigh of relief!
I mean did Facebook really say anything @ f8? It seems to me like they spent entirely too much time blasting outsider developers - when they, the mighty “Facebook” share to blame with many of my complaints of said outside developers.
If f8 were a movie premiere - it just bombed…
Great summary Michael. Now Facebook is acting like a giant although they are not. They want to rule the system like microsoft. And they are boring as much as Microsoft.
MySpace did this before and they learned how to behave now. Their platform is on the rise and generate more ad revenue for developers because their user base is valuable.
Loved the concept of staying a young underdog.
Suddenly Facebook is acting more like a company with lots to lose (and therefore defend) rather than a scrappy young underdog startup looking to shake things up, capture our imagination and change the world. It’s time for them to be audacious again, and take some risk. Otherwise, they risk becoming simply boring. And that’s the fast lane to mediocrity.
As a Facebook user, not developer, I’d choose a “boring”, payment free social network I can use over an exciting one I (and my friends) need to pay for. I’m sure that is bad news for software companies but charging fees reduces the number of people who will use a service and I want to keep as wide a social network as possible. The more expensive=the fewer people=less likely I’ll want to be a member. I know people think exclusivity is a draw but not in the case of social networking.
“As a Facebook user, not developer, I’d choose a “boring”, payment free social network I can use over an exciting one I (and my friends) need to pay for.”
That’s the problem with all social networks…no wants to pay anything for what is apparently a very useful service and as a result ads are plastered everywhere. Once the “hype” of a new site like Facebook starts to die down, however, investors start to wonder if it’ll be profitable…and display ads just aren’t going to cut it.
All ads will do is turn away the hardcore users (they’ll grow tired of being bombarded by ads everywhere) and they’ll move onto the next thing. The only way to make people happy is charge for a premium service (maybe like $10/yr.) and have no ads on a site. You’ll probably lose 2/3 of your users but oh well…it’s not like those users were going to give you $$$ anyway.
I don’t mind ads, they don’t bother me as much as paying subscription fees. I just wish ad revenues weren’t going down.
my question is: why isn’t Paypal working seriously to be THE payment utility of FB?
Because PayPal isn’t working.
http://www.snuzu.com
because the founder of paypal is busy spamming the hell out of facebook users, not creating a payment system
Though boring, Facebook is the increasing Social Networking site of choice among my demo - lets just say, somewhere in my 30s and leave it at that. Very quickly, my friends who got into social media have migrated away from MySpace, because, well, the stigma is that MySpace is for rock bands and kids. Not that that’s a bad thing, just, well, we gen X-ers like to grow up a little sometime. In any case, perhaps Facebook is happy with their position in social networking for now and instead of making huge mistakes like they did before with that advertising fiasco a few months back, they’d like to develop slowly. Or they’re just boring and stupid and we’ll all be using Orkut like the Brazilians. I hear India likes Orkut too and with the rise in Asia, perhaps there is omething to be said about that. Well, you can still find me on MySpace, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, etc. What is popular and active for me depends on where my friends and the people I like to follow are active. I might be filling out an Orkut account real soon!
When you exist on the internet…Safe is Risky. Not adapting or creating new solutions Facebook will become extinct.
Here is an interesting story with my encounter with Facebook. I am with a large retailer looking to develop advertising in their space. I reached out to Facebook for some advice as to best spend my ad dollars. Initially, either your digital agency has a relationship with Facebook, or you are forced to reach out their site where they ask you point blank what your ad budget for the campaign will run. Being that we wanted to test initially, I placed a budget of 50k. This resulted in a generic email with some suggestions. Being persistent, I tried the same approach with a larger budget in hopes of getting someone on the phone. After about 1 week and several back and forth emails from the second approach, I was put on the phone with a novice requesting a minimum of 50k per month to even have a relationship with the site (unless I wanted to buy ads with a credit card).
Bottom line…Being that the only revenue driver (that I know of) is advertising, any organization that is unable to work with advertisers is facing some severe issues.
Are theirs stats anyplace on the which demographic is growing? I have a nephew in college and he and all his friends are looking for the next thing because facebook is full of people not in that demographic now and they use it less and less now.
I’m in college, and everyone I know uses Facebook. There are few people who are more excited about MySpace, but not many. At The University of Arizona, at least, Facebook is still the hot thing for undergrads and grad students alike. A whole flood of new freshman join every year, and I don’t see that stopping any time soon, especially with cool upperclassmen already on Facebook to connect with.
yawn… like I told Jeremiah O, thanks for going
to this thing, Michael, so we didn’t have to
FB, a lesson to learn from Apple: don’t hold an
event unless you know how to light people up
Graeme
http://www.doapps.com
I think you are showing yourself to be a little out of touch here Mike.
Everyday Facebook users don’t care about a payment platform, or Google Gears.
They’ve made announcements about bringing location into the mix and a cocoa framework for the iPhone. Those are pretty big deals that will have a real effect on how its users communicate with each other.
You’re right on the payment platform , but wrong on Gears. Mike wasn’t saying that Gears was important, he said that Facebook’s messaging platform is seriously behind where it needs to be.
Offline access (becoming less important) for example. But how about just being able to attach a frikking picture or something to a Facebook email? Fail.
it just ok~
Once Google buys Digg Facebook will have to play nice with Google or else lose their biggest partner of Facebook Connect.
Hah, I never thought of it that way. Now, why Google may be buying Digg is much more clear. I thought it was just a show-off type of deal. Nevermind then.
On the article, no user in their right mind will be willing to pay for apps, especially users like myself, who don’t care much for apps, save a few such as: causes, myFlickr, movies, pandora, and maybe a few others. Although paying would be a plus for developers. However, without users, there would be no developers, right? All the same, this speculation may come true. But if people are paying for apps, they’d better be worth paying for, not simply the ones that are most popular. For, if that’s the case, many will just quit using those, I believe. And if the payment things get out of hand, we just may witness another migration. From Friendster/Bebo to Myspace to Facebook to ???
good news~
They may want to focus on profitability so they can stay in business a little longer. I have to laugh at a company that has a conference but cannot get to profitability. Huh!
Agree completely, Jenkins. At this point, FB needs to worry about making a dollar, not making a splash.
For as much time as I spend on Facebook, they could spice things up by actually telling users the tricks that they employ when you’re on other people’s profiles.
For instance, when you visit a friends profile, and in their list of 6 friends it actually will show you the people that have clicked your profile or searched for you in their list of friends.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been completely freaked out that somebody I see but don’t actually know pop up in my friend’s lists.
Or they could just explain to people that the “People You May Know” are actually the “People That Are Cyber-Stalking” you.
Maybe that will make things more interesting.
FB Connect will be the big one. A payments system is a waste of time until they put something on there worth paying for.
1) event was a bit overhyped, but
2) FB Connect is for real, & very valuable
3) Payments will be in your stocking before Xmas mike
with luck, payments will also help align developer community incentives with Facebook, and maybe even make them some money.
if so then they’ll be as scrappy as ever.
A market leader should not take too much risks, a step back by them would be step back for whole human kind in that segment. New profile they taken all good steps when it comes to fb core functionalities, if not in case of apps. I simply dont agree Zuck’s theory saying feed is better than profile box.
But facebook connect is indeed leak in their income. If apps shift to own websites, fb will lose ad revenue which it gets for serving third party api calls. fb knows it, but still went ahead for gud of all, they may later start charging for api server load.
‘A step back for whole human kind’? I’m not sure, I think humanity may survive the demise of FB. It would be a struggle, but we’d manage it.
“A market leader should not take too much risks,”
Thats how market leaders die at some point. They become too careful or think they can’t be beat so sit back then some one else swoops in and by then its hard to catch up again.
Thanks for the great coverage - with all the blog/press options out there, it’s hard to get a reliable, compelling balance of press release, coverage, and insightful opinion but Mike always delivers.
I’m not impressed with f8 but then again, I wasn’t expecting to - just interested in knowing where Zuck thinks FB is going and how he’s going to lead them there. What I tend to cite most that troubles me about FB’s overvaluation is that there’s no highly compelling business value to this model of social network. LinkedIn has always had more of that opp. and in the past year has started to make moves in that direction. The largest value to FB is that it feels like a living HS Yearbook online - that’s about it. When was the last time you looked at the ads in the back of a Yearbook and bought something?
The app free-for-all in the past year has proved that the model is most interesting for people who want to play games but they’ve really straddled a weak place in the market for the opportunity to really compel game developers to sell their warez on FB (when payments are available). I’m sure the new effort + partnerships with highly visible sites like Digg will help some but in the end, how is this not going to look like a 2008 reskin of the Portal concept?
In fact, the “reskin” doesn’t mean much for 95% of FB users - to them, you can sum it up in 3 words - Curves, Tabs, & Width. It’s still just as “portalishly busy” and in fact you can get roughly the same “window” with iGoogle or myYahoo w/o worrying about alerting your “friends” - (add Twitter and FB gadgets and you’ve covered 90% of the compelling value of FB).
Blah blah… Facebook will lose users etc etc
I think the fact Facebook managed to achieve huge growth DURING the last year is proof it will continue to do so. Many of the issues over that period of time such as annoying apps, spam etc have now been resolved.
Perhaps for now Facebook didnt need to do something big to upset everything again, the new facebook design is fantastic and has made the service much more useful to me.
And considering the huge user base of Facebook… don’t you think there will always be some people willing to pay for a decent app? There will always be free apps anyway, why do people care so much if someone else wanted to pay for an app?
They can pay - if you want to buy an app knock yourself out. I’m just saying most people won’t pay. Look at causes - 12m users and $2.5m donated to causes people actually support. 21c per user per year tells the story there.
We think Facebook is boring too. We even think that Facebook is pretty much useless for now, given that the fact that we’re hyperconnected doesn’t help us do what social networks should do: help us see our friends more often.
For that reason, we’re currently working on an application that will leverage the social graph to make it easier to meet up with your friends.
From Facebook, your desktop, your start page or your iPhone, you’ll soon be able to use Countme.in to share your plans with your friends, and keep up with theirs.
Fore more info please check out http://countme.in/blog/about-2/ or the Countme.in Facebook group.
Cedric
The only people that find Facebook boring, and yawn at it, are those without any REAL friends. By real friends, I don’t mean people you’ve only talked to via e-mail…
Arrington, im not sure if you are familiar with the issue, i dont agree with Zuck that feed is more important than more static profile boxes. They suppressed profile boxes a lot in their new “facebook” revision, that they are not added to profile by default.
“Facebook Connect, the most exciting new product on the agenda, is still vaporware.”
Not true. As a launch partner Red Bull had functioning implementations of Facebook Connect to show at the event. Working examples spanned four Red Bull sites, including one that was done entirely in Flash. I can confirm this because we built it :). Facebook Connect works. These implementations could launch tomorrow if the platform were available to the public.
Facebook Connect didn’t launch to the public yesterday, but with these working implementations and it’s availability to developers you could easily consider an Alpha release.
Yeah, as someone who, erm, actually develops software, I can confirm that it is tangible and available for developers. But, when has our boy Mike ever let facts get in the way of a good zinger?
That was a very good post!
And now I go to see Obama. Greetings from Berlin.
“Suddenly Facebook is acting more like a company with lots to lose (and therefore defend) rather than a scrappy young underdog startup looking to shake things up, capture our imagination and change the world.”
Change the world? Good Lord, its a social networking site, not a research project finding alternative, free energy…
“Change the world? Good Lord, its a social networking site, not a research project finding alternative, free energy…”
What did they raise? 496 Million? I’d say that’s enough to change the world.
Thats a drop in the bucket. Change some shareholder’s world maybe.
To me the only boring thing at the Facebook developer conference was the Seesmic booth. The rest of the conference was great.
What do you guys expect? Innovation doesn’t always happen on schedule (unless you’re Apple).
Anyhow, I think maybe the Facebook paradigm has run its course, and anything else is risking jumping the shark.
Well, since Facebook is growing exponentially, their users seem to be okay with things as they are, boring though they might seem to some.
It’s funny how they use to be THE social networking success story in the press and now they are called “boring”. I guess they are no longer new and shiny.
Now I understand What Mr. Ballmer meant when he said FAD - Facebook Application Developer. Facebook should make the return on investment clear for developers for investing their time and energy in a FADing platform.
FB is growing but we don’t know into which direction. Giving a service for free without selection can’t work, there is no campaign placed against the total population. Zuck looked a little bit lost, overselling his pitch to an audience waiting for a big wow. Hopefully Microsoft takes over asap and gives a direction to the service, upselling windows xp users to vista for example.
There are many of us who already think FB is boring.
1) my mom is on facebook, and yours is probably too (readers) so that makes it definitely not scrappy, young
2) they have 40+ year olds doing demos wearing the blue shirt and khaki pants uniform. I mean, you don’t get more boring than that. And they are hiring all these serious corporate types who talk corporate speak and have no idea what they’re talking about half the time.
3) the applications on there drive serious working people nuts, so they don’t use it, and thus the app is boring to them
4) I for one am not a fan of google or fb’s UIs being so boringly plain - I *like* design, I like to be “wow’ed” by UIs, I like innovation (not saying MySpace isn’t a mess, but I still feel it has more unique characteristics, and more importantly individualism- I meet more interesting people on MySpace than I do FB - FB Is just about people i know. I was already linked to most of them thru LinkedIn so what do I really care about it.
5) do they just not remember Friendster? I mean talk coming from some of them about “eyeballs now, revenue later” makes me think that they don’t realize that once the cool kids start to leave, others will follow. They can’t just rest easy during their time on top - they have competition and can be de-throned so laziness and arrogance aren’t the way to go
6) FB has a serious monetization problem; they should be focusing on solving this, not making enemies of developers/partners and making up tons of obtuse rules
Yes, blue and white boxes, more boring than Windows 3.1
But it looks crisp, and not nearly as tacky or trashy as MySpace. I’ll taking boring blue and white any day.
Facebook Connect is vaporware? It’s already usable, right here: http://www.somethingtoputhere.com/therunaround/
being a boring billionaire is not bad??
funny how all billionaires are boring.
Facebook should have gone public in 2007. I too am getting bored with the site. I started using the site within 2 months of its birth back in 2004 and I can say….as its size got bigger, the allure got smaller. I remember the best feature was the poke, you only had one picture, and there were no applications.
Michael, I don’t think you and most of the industry have sufficiently thought through the implications of Facebook Connect. The impact of the social networks sprawling out to the web and to mobile applications will transformative.
be
Facebook is going to start slowing down and that is going to leave room for others to step in. Just the other day i found a website called humanbook (www.humanbook.com) and it is an online living address book but it promises to have live video feed within the year that could put facebook out of business.
LOL humanbook.com will put facebook out of business??? LMFAO what a POS site!!
Facebook out of business?. Don´t talk as if they weren´t a dynamic company.
That conference sucked. It was hotter than hell, I thought I was going to die from techno inhiliation, and those seats were too uncomfortable to sit in for a long, awkward, pause for laugh ‘here’, forced clapping keynote.
The hackathon was impossible, and only a few people ended up staying there. A. because there was a giant speaker pumping trance 5 feet from any couch in the room and B. they had 6 power strips in the entire place.
I did learn two things though. Over and over and over again.
The conference was sponsored by the words ECOSYSTEM and MISSION. Which every employee made sure to drop in every other sentence that came out of their mouths.
I also found this funny…the whole web isn’t about facebook, so we looked at the bigger picture with facebook connect…which in the end actually makes the whole web a lot more like facebook.
Mike:
One of your TechCrunch50 candidates is payments in Facebook! And it’s working, right now.
Have you seen the Facebook+Slide demo?
On Monday we will show Loic the Facebook+Seesmic demo.
I miss the days when facebook kept all the riff-raff out … when it was still an east coast elite college group.
Wow Mike, get out of the valley and join the real world. This post is so filled with mis-information it’s really scary.
It’s easy to complain about the missing payments system, but frankly, I think that you’re desperately underestimating the complexity of such a system. Unless they’re just building a giant Paypal plug-in (which they’re not), they have a very complex problem on their hands.
Facebook has a huge international market, it’s not like they can just hook-up a credit card provider and start processing. They need to work in multiple currencies, likely with multiple payment providers. They need to adhere to various privacy laws (US, California, Canada, EU, UK, just to name a few, lots of Turkish users too). And it’s not like they’re just taking in money, they’re also paying it out. So now they need to keep in mind the various tax laws for the inhabitants of the countries they’re paying out to.
The legal issues alone are likely a multi-month journey and it’s not like you can re-create Paypal overnight. If they get it out by the end of the year, that’s a technical accomplishment.
This statement is basically unsupported: Instead, there were minor tweaks to a platform that needs a major overhaul. So I’m not even going to argue with it.
As mentioned above, Facebook Connect is not Vaporware.
Your problems with the Messaging platform are very unique and shared with a very small number of people. I can safely say that 99%+ of the population do not have your issues.
I just got back from a high school reunion organized via Facebook (and a party). I talked about Facebook, I even talked about the conference. These “normal” users are not bored with Facebook, they’re not champing at the bit for integrated payment systems. Honestly, their biggest annoyance is “stupid apps” and FB just launched programs to help deal with that.
Arrington, I think that you have to understand that Facebook has now been globally embraced and it’s really doing exactly what it needs to do for the vast majority of its users.
There was no controversial but exciting new product experiment unleashed on a gushing audience.
What do you call Facebook Connect? This sounds pretty exciting (SSO has been a long-time developer wet-dream) and controversial (privacy guys were asking questions that even FB didn’t have good answers to). Honestly, FB connect is way more important to FB’s near future than payments. In fact FB Connect makes payments that much better when it does roll out.
the facebook phenom is insane. EVERYONE is on there and it just keeps on growing and growing.
A free place to meet friends… WOW, who would of thought that. Classmates lets you look, but not chat. Then charges you to continue after you find the friend. Myspace is too cluttered with B$, music that suck$ plays when not wanted. most of the garbage people write on thier pages are lies. Frienster… well that just flat scares me…
I have finally found some long lost friends and was able to communicate with them no hassles. Oh and the apps, some are stupid, some have fine print that charges your cell phone bill if you do not scroll down the page and see the fine print. Some are fun to play. Tension breakers.
But if anyone is going to sit at thier computers and complain about the hard work another person or organization has put together…. AND ITS FREE!!! Then why don’t you cry babies go and design your own community website that has millions of registered users who do not complain, but enjoy the hard work that has been done.
Go get a life. Go outside the studio apartment you have and notice that life does not revolve around you!