Facebook Wants To Rule Online World

It was always clear that Facebook wants the dominant position in the online world and now even the ones who didn’t believe need to revise their thinking. It’s now easy to imagine Mark Zuckerberg as Connor MacLeod from Highlander who is saying “There can be only one.”

Facebook dominated social media, and it looks that no one can conquer with Zuckerberg’s empire. I wrote about it in the article “3 Questions About Facebook For 13th Facebook Anniversary” so no need to repeat. Mark Zuckerberg understands this clearly that there’s no time to waste – he needs to set new trends, but also he needs to react to the trends set by other players. There are to way to respond here.

First is to buy a company that creates something which is popular (and is one the path to even bigger popularity). The best examples here are

a/ Instagram bought for $1 billion

b/ WhatsApp bought for astronomical $19 billion

(If you want to read about other mergers and acquisitions by Facebook read this.)

The second option, in case, if you can’t buy a company is to propose users features which let them stay and not turn to other platform or application. And this is a field Facebook is also very active.

Facebook vs. Snapchat 

Evan Spiegel, Snapchat’s CEO refused an offer from Zuckerberg and decided to develop his application without Facebook help. Recently, Snpachat IPO was announced, and now everybody is trying to guess if it’s going to be the biggest success or biggest fail ever. Regardless of that, Facebook didn’t let the grass grow under their’s feet. BusinessInsider published an article where described all the times Facebook copied Snapchat in 2016. Why is Facebook so active here? For many teenagers, Facebook is the platform for older people, for their parents so often they are not so much interested in being active there. Some of them say openly that they cannot be themselves when they have parents and their parent’s friends as… well, “Friends.” So they choose the applications which their parents are not visiting very often like Snapchat.

Facebook vs. Twitter

Probably many of you are laughing at that moment, saying “What? Twitter?”. Yes, Twitter. I know that platform is struggling, fighting for life, etc.beside, but there was something that users besides core feature of Twitter) – live streaming. It was the field that Twitter through Periscope app was winning. But Facebook launched Facebook Live and… do you still remember about Periscope? No?

Here are some Periscope numbers:

DAU – 1.9 million

Total Number of Broadcasts to Date – 200 million

Total number of users – 10 million

[source: Omnicoreagency]

Facebook vs. Linkedin

There was a time when recruiters were shyly admitting that from time to time they also check candidates profiles on Facebook because people show there their real faces. They are more open, more honest, simply more real and this is perfect opportunity to compare the professional image from CV with the actual face from Facebook. Just imagine, you are looking for the candidate for some security position in a bank, the candidate looks great on CV, but on Facebook, you see many pictures of the candidate who loves to party hard. You may say – come on; everyone can do whatever he wants in his private life. Well, yes but not. You can do whatever you want that’s true, but some of the behaviours can only give employees advice or at least raise a question – do I really want to hire on security position someone who loves to party hard?

So, having 1.8 billion of users and lot of information about all of them, entering job boards industry was only a question of time. It’s simply too good not to use it, and both Facebook and HR people know this. So, Facebook is adding application feature.

This feature will change a lot with time. First of all, business will receive next argument to stay with Facebook. It will be not only place for communicating with clients and potential clients but also to potential employees. Some companies on Facebook are taking care about employer branding for many years already, and for them, it will be the natural step forward to connect it with jobs offers – which some of them are also doing, but with the built-in feature, it will be much easier. The biggest challenge stays for users to control not only pictures they publish but all content they share. We don’t know what kind of profile of candidate/user Facebook will show to the employee, but it will be definitely rich in information.

Last but not least, job boards it’s too good business to leave it to the others.

Facebook vs… Google.com?

Will Facebook fight with Google on the field where the Google is emperor? I will not be surprised. The question is if Facebook can be successful in this area and if Facebook can fight with Google? What we know is that Google is not able to compete with Facebook on social media. If Facebook can compete here, Facebook opens a door for their own Adwords. For Mark Zuckerberg, it might also be the too good business to leave it to others.

And if you are still not convinced, read Mark Zuckerberg letter he just published.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Since 1998 I'm working in the online industry. Before that I was promoting big events (like Metallica, Tina Turner, Sting, etc.), great Polish artists (Kult, Kazik na ?ywo, Pid?ama Porno) and I was also the music journalist. Now I am working for Gemius where I am Regional Manager responsible for all our abroad markets. It means that I travel a lot, many of European airports I know like a back of my hand. I am also responsible for marketing and what I like the most are non-standard actions. You can read more articles like this on my blog Molicki.com