By Simon Wright – Follow
me on Twitter @Siwri88
A decade ago,
the word social media was almost non-existent. It certainly wasn’t a very
common word. If you wanted to interact with friends online, it used to be
through sites like Friends Reunited or through internet forums/chatrooms.
Nowadays,
without social media – the majority of us would struggle to live without it in
some form of capacity. There are so many things we can do with this power. We
can upload videos in seconds and hope they become the next worldwide sensation.
We can express our feelings in 140 characters and use the popular hashtag to
see if it trends. We can keep in touch with friends and family, play addicting
games and still have the ability to poke one another #notcoolanymore.
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| Facebook has reached 10 - but is under pressure to keep its audience |
The facts are
that without this communication, you would be lost in today’s technological
planet. Recently, Facebook celebrated its 10th anniversary. The
question is, can it survive another decade?
Facebook’s early power
When Marc
Zuckerberg launched Facebook in February 2004, it happened fairly quietly. In
fact I don't even remember it. The background to it was documented in the
lengthy and slightly tedious movie The Social Network.
It came at a
time when Facebook could take supreme control of the social media audience. Its
main rival at the time was MySpace and they simply couldn’t compete on the same
level as what Zuckerberg could produce with his network. MySpace has since
faded into complete obscurity and similar sites like Friends Reunited and Bebo
have gone the same way.
I was invited
and joined Facebook in July 2007, so that was three years after it was
launched. The only use for it in its early days was to organise events and post
the occasional status update. In fact when I went to Milton Keynes College
after sixth form for two years, I was one of only three students on my media
production course to have Facebook. Everyone before that connected and
communicated on MySpace. I did have a MySpace profile shortly afterwards but it
was so limited. While it wasn’t my ultimate mission to convert everyone, I knew
Facebook was the social media channel to have and by the time I left in 2009
for University, all but two had switched platforms.
You could see
Facebook’s persuasive power. Certain games have got people occasionally hooked.
Others would rather just poke people. Seriously, one of the most annoying
e-mail messages you can receive is ‘You have been poked’ on Facebook. I find
that really irritating!
Facebook does
have its downsides and I expressed some of my own personal problems with the
site in a piece I did on social media in general last year.
However it
did create a lot of early power and could get really addictive to use at the
same time.
New threats
Zuckerberg
might have made his money and has continued to evolve Facebook over the years. The
simple early days of a News Feed and your Homepage have been replaced with
expansive graphics. That sometimes hasn’t always worked and I know the current ‘Timeline’
concept wasn’t greeted with that much enthusiasm to begin with.
As it went
through its own trough, the new threats began to arrive. Video calling
technology from Skype started to develop. Facebook’s power though was soon about to be
targeted by its biggest threat to date. The introduction of Twitter into our
world in 2006 was again met with little in terms of immediate impact.
Slowly but
surely, Twitter started to take on a vast audience as celebrities/famous people
started to use it and get followed by fans or slightly obsessive normal members
of the general public. If a famous face doesn’t have Twitter, it is
quite surprising. I know the current motorsport king Sebastian Vettel doesn’t
have Twitter, nor does the UK’s former PM Tony Blair but you would be hard
pressed to find people who don’t have official feeds now.
Popstars,
sports professionals, the leading journalists, club associations, actors and
actresses; the list goes on. Twitter’s audience continues to grow and that has caused a serious
threat and dent to Facebook’s popularity.
The days
where Zuckerberg could control the social media audience reach are gone and he
has had to adapt to the competition.
Personally, I
prefer Twitter and made it into a professional account, moving Facebook into
the personal spectrum. I joined Twitter in my first year at University in
October 2009 – initially only as it was required for a journalism assignment.
Over 3,300 tweets later and I use it now as a source to find out links to news
stories as well as to comment on some of the main worldwide topics, especially
in sport, television and occasionally political issues – despite not showing
huge interest in this field.
Facebook’s
power has been hurt also by the rise in private and free messaging tools on
smartphones. Whilst the UK riots in the summer of 2011 brought BlackBerry
virtually to its knees, the BBM service became a free and useful way to have a
private conversation. It was just a shame that it soon became a tool to organise
violence and hooliganism. Since then, other services such as WhatsApp Messenger
and SnapChat (I only have the former) have taken over from BBM to provide stiff
competition in the Instant Messaging market. Not forgetting Instagram, another
application that has done very well in recent years to attract a global following.
With all that
in mind, Facebook has done well to continue appealing to its market. It has had
to adapt because if it hadn’t, it would have gone the way MySpace did - into oblivion.
The future
While
Facebook has to be congratulated on reaching the 10th anniversary of
its launch, does it need to do more to keep its audience?
In my view,
it does. New emotions and buttons for status updates can be added; security
certainly could do with tightened reviews. The ‘Poke’ button needs to be
removed and the News Feed could do with another revamp, perhaps in splitting it
between your friends and family communication and the likes you have of
hobbies/people/interests. For example if I want to see how my friends are doing, I don’t want my newsfeed clustered
with updates from Walkers Crisps, The Chemical Brothers and UEFA.com.
While it is
important to come up with radical and new ideas to keep the network afresh,
Zuckerberg might need to incorporate some of Twitter’s successes to keep him
active in a sector that continues to evolve.
I think
Facebook will be around for another decade and probably longer than that.
However it will need to continue to embrace change to stay fresh and different
from its competition. A lack of change in this environment will see it start to
struggle to stay near the forefront of social media interaction.
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