Facebook - Can it survive another 10 years?

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.

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 10^th 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 10^th 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. 

Categories: BBM, Facebook, February, Internet, Marc Zuckerberg, MySpace, Skype, Social Media, Technology, Twitter

Skins - All good things have to end

By Simon Wright

I can speak for the majority of people who follow a television programme closely, so much so that they want to know everything about it – from transmission dates to filming behind the scenes and cast interviews.

It doesn’t matter if that might be TOWIE, Big Brother, Shameless, even Coronation Street or Deal or No Deal – we all have prime favourites.

One of mine of recent years has been the E4 teen drama series Skins.  On July 1, the seventh series of this gripping phenomenon will begin.  However, it is the last series to be aired – which is a sad feeling, but also the right decision.

But why has Skins had a core audience, and is a final flourish the right way to go out on?

Core audience

When Skins burst onto the television screens back in February 2007, the show was completely different from your normal brand of drama.  This wasn’t a predictable series of classic actors playing stereotypical characters in a plotline that can often get quite repetitive. 

Admittedly, I never really liked the first generation and only saw the odd clip of the first two series, but that all changed with series three in 2009.

Skins started off with an audience which has now grown up.  For example, those who first watched it six years ago probably weren’t following it so much when the final full series ended around Easter last year, but that is a good thing.  It has a specific core audience range of around 16-22, and I would be concerned if a 50-year-old individual listed it among their favourite programmes.  After all, it is about teenagers and life at college, and that’s as far as it goes.

The second generation of Skins characters were my favourites

Audience figures have generally been impressive, always just under the one million mark.  In fact, the series four opener which began with the death of a mysterious stranger in a nightclub attracted 1.5m combined on E4 & E4+1.  Even the final major generation still were receiving decent figures, despite the decline in writing ability and storylines.

I was a religious watcher of series three, four and five, and watched occasional episodes from series six, mainly if a character’s episode had been impressive in the fifth series (Mini and Franky) as examples.  

Although my interest in the show waned towards the end of series five and into series six, I will be tuning into series seven and see how things have progressed for the cast of the past.

Giving youngsters a chance

I should know this more than anyone, but in David Cameron’s Britain of today, the chances for youngsters are predominately thin.  Things could be better in terms of job prospects, or choices of what we can do.

One thing that has impressed me with Skins is the determination to give young actors and actresses a real chance.  The talent that has come through with Skins has been impressive, and often, the acting really does shine through, especially if a storyline is weak (series four was a prime example of this).

Dev Patel and Nicholas Hoult had the best success out of the first generation.  Patel went on to star in the award-winning sensation Slumdog Millionaire, whilst Hoult has gone into major roles in film, especially in the X-Men trilogy.  

In generation two, Jack O’Connell has come on leaps and bounds.  He has had roles in film and two powerful TV dramas, Dive and United.  Fellow lead cast member of this generation Kaya Scodelario has appeared in a host of music videos for the artist Plan B, whilst Ollie Barbieri, Lily Loveless and Kathryn Prescott have also had a host of different roles since Skins ended.  

Dakota Blue Richards was one of the stars of the third generation, and recently had a lead role in the ITV five-part drama Lightfields and Freya Mavor is currently starring in the gripping BBC thriller The White Queen. 

For the majority of these actors, these opportunities would never have come about had it not been for the successful breakthrough of Skins and the producers must take great credit for this.

Of course, that doesn’t mean to say that famous faces never appeared in Skins – far from it.  

There were plenty of guest characters playing minor roles, from comedians and impressionists, to presenters and normal actors.  Among fans favourites were Harry Enfield, Sally Phillips, John Bishop, Ronni Ancona, Pauline Quirke, the late Geoffrey Hughes, and Scott Mills.

And its success has been recognised.  Skins won the Audience Award at the 2009 BAFTAs, and Best TV Show at the 2011 NME Awards, as well as various other high-profile nominations and critical acclaim.

What happened to the movie?

In 2010, the green light was given to Skins: The Movie, as indicated on my first blogging website.  However, this never happened.  Ultimately, it was probably a good thing.

Unlike shows like The Inbetweeners, it would have been mighty difficult for Skins to have had major success at the box office, just because of the way things get portrayed in the TV series.

Consequently, work shifted more onto series five and six, and the doomed American remake, which turned into a complete failure and was axed after one highly controversial series.

Whilst there was disappointment that the movie dream didn’t quite happen for Skins, a final TV series is a better way to go out.

There has been some powerful storylines, and that is ignoring the drugs, drink and sex that is part of the teenagers’ lives in every series.  Having watched three full series, my favourite storylines were Katie Fitch (played by Megan Prescott) having to deal with the bombshell news that she wasn’t able to have kids in series four, and at the same time, attempt to keep the very popular Fitch family together as the recession starts to destroy their happy lives.  

Other favourites were the storylines that came through in Mini McGuinness' (Freya Mavor) episodes when she had to deal with an unexpected pregnancy and attempting to revive a relationship with her father, who simply didn’t care about her, and the successful pairing of Naomi (Lily Loveless) and Emily (Kathryn Prescott) as a lesbian couple in series three and four.  'Naomily,' as avid fans titled them, broke down new barriers and also proved that despite a lot of heartache, happy endings do exist in television drama.

The final fling

Last year, it was decided that there would be no more full series’ of Skins.  That might have disappointed budding actors and actresses who would have seen the open auditions as a great opportunity to get their name out there.  However, it is the right decision.

One of Effy Stonem’s lines in series four sticks with me: “Nothing’s ever perfect.”  That’s very true, and all good things at some point need to come to an end.  Last year’s series started to see some slow decline with the show, and another two years would have been a mistake, and left a mark on the legacy of Skins.

Some shows drag on and on, don’t reach a natural conclusion and then become so unbelievable, you just stop watching them.  American shows are particularly guilty of this, whilst the saucy Footballers Wives and fictional Sky football drama Dream Team both attracted huge followings, but probably went on at least one more year past their natural sell-by-date.

Kaya Scodelario returns as Effy in Skins Fire, the first of the final mini-series

The producers of Skins and Channel 4 have done the right thing, and by coming back with a mini-series over the summer is the perfect farewell.  Three classic characters in Effy (Kaya Scodelario), Cassie (Hannah Murray) and Cook (Jack O’Connell) will reprise their roles for two separate episodes each which shows how their characters have developed as they’ve left the crazy teenage world and entered the new adult planet, and how much they have changed.

Effy’s story is first, titled Skins Fire.  Effy gets a job in the city, and when she learns too much about a dodgy financial deal and has an affair with the boss of the company she works for, it puts friendships and people in grave danger.  Fans of ‘Naomily’ will be delighted to know that Naomi and Emily will return to their roles in a cameo backdrop, with Emily known to be studying a photography internship in New York, and Naomi living with Effy in London.  A trailer has been released by E4 for a sneak peak at what’s to come in Skins Fire, and that can be seen below.

Cassie’s story is next and is also set in London.  She is aged 23, two years older than the other returning main characters as she was part of generation one.  ‘Skins Pure’ will be edgy watching involving following people and the forming of a strange friendship.

In ‘Skins Rise,’ Cook is doing what he does best.  Now in Manchester, he hasn’t grown up from his teenage days of drugs, sex and violence on a regular basis, despite a brief stint in jail.  Cook is a drugs dealer and when his employer asks him to find a house for his attractive girlfriend, you can guess the rest.  Expect revenge to be served and a reminder of his previous dodgy past.

And after these six weeks, it will be all over.  Skins has left plenty of good and dramatic memories, given new actors and actresses a real breakthrough and is going out at just the right time.  Let’s hope that it ends on a high with this final mini-series.

Categories: 2009, Audience, Britain, Dakota Blue Richards, Dev Patel, E4, February, Jack O'Connell, Kathryn Prescott, Lily Loveless, NME, Plan B, Skins, Slumdog Millionaire, TV