How Facebook changed the online world

With the recent announcement that Facebook during one day had over 1 billion visitors it is safe to say they are king of the online community hill. The road to this point has been lined with doomsayers (TheGuardian 2013, AdWeek 2014) and competitors (Diaspora, Orkut, Ello, Google+ to name a few) trying to poke a hole in the Zuckerbergian armor. Writing about how Facebook became the hegemon it is today could render a dozen articles. The most important factor however also happens to be the most overlooked. I’m not a huge Facebook user, nor a particularly big fan of the behemoth but I do give credit where credit is due.

Mark Zuckerberg is a prodigy in market strategy with a gut feeling for what people are ready to accept, where trends are headed and how to stay relevant. He has been able to keep enough control that his voice and opinion prevailed any internal disagreements. It is hard to be stubborn. Hard to go your own way and still be able to get your team to walk with you even though they are just as convinced you are wrong as you are convinced you are right. This is a fine balancing act that Mr. Z seems to have perfected.

Life before Facebook

In 2004 when Facebook booted up the first public servers the Internet was a very different place. The most visited social playgrounds online was discussion forums, all companies wanted to become your “start page” and every business person worth his/her salt explained that Portals was the next big thing. MySpace was the top dog among communities and considered quite hip due to its large amount of musicians being active there.

MySpace was not the only online community. There were plenty of alternatives and everybody had online profiles with at least two or more communities. A membership with any online community meant you had a “profile page”, not a “Timeline” or “Wall”. On the profile page users wrote a description about him/herself and added a profile picture. This description was the foundation of the concept “online community”. A user account with a community 2004 also came with the important “Guestbook” where conversations happened. A image gallery where you could upload a limited amount of pictures served as a premium feature. Though there were a healthy amount of alternatives all of them were built with the same mindset, looked quite the same and offered the same experience. This meant your choice was only a matter of which crowd you tried to reach. Along came Facebook…

So what made Facebook so special?

It is commonly argued that the “invite only” strategy is what made Facebook more appealing than its competitors. This is specially highlighted in the 2012 semi-fictual movie The Social Network. Another popular argument to Facebooks’ success is the modular programming architecture which allowed for games (such as Zynga’s Farmville) and “apps” to be integrated into the site experience by third party developers.

I argue that these played second fiddle to a much bigger difference. A design decision which turned out to be a game changer in the world of communities. A change that is plain to see, but hard to notice. Facebook didn’t care about the users description of themselves!

You are the story about yourself!

Facebook overnight shifted the focal point from the dull self-described profiles and instead highlighted the actions and interactions by the user. Every move and action the user took on Facebook was logged and tagged on their “Wall”. The concept of a wall was unheard of at the time (as was the infamous “Poke”). Sure there was a field hidden somewhere in settings where the user could fill out a “About Me”-text. But even if you did write it, barely anyone ever found it. Facebook argued that this is the least interesting fact about you, and instead they decided to show the world what they knew about you. By studying how others interacted with you and in which social circles you belonged, they told the story of who you were! They coined the term your “Social Graph” for this compilation of data.

The choice to let a users actions on the site together with how others interacted with the user define the online profile to others was as simple as it was brilliant. It took away the awkward requirement of having to explain oneself, something that still prevents most dating sites from massive popularity. Facebook did this at the expense of perceived privacy. It felt unnatural to many of us at first.

“Where do I tell the world who I am and why can others see what I am doing?”

This was a big deal at the time, but only a pebble of what was to come! To many it was a wake up call as to how much information we reveal about ourselves. This was scary to many of us but also offered a refreshing new take on social interactions. The trade-off was simple, our privacy online in exchange for letting us know about the people in our extended circles.

Based on this new take on data collected about us Facebook often end up in stormy weather with how they handle users privacy. They need to push the envelope on how transparent they can make us to stay relevant, and we are often not comfortable with what we learn about ourselves. Marks’ deal is simple “If we don’t like it, we can leave”!

Everybody wants to be on Facebook because everybody is on Facebook

“Critical Mass” is the concept of how many users you need before the amount in itself attracts new users. Some argues this is why Facebook can’t fail anymore. But I argue that users are fickle and this tide could turn at any moment, as it has in the past. That is why Facebook every day must take decisions and make changes to stay relevant. We usually never hear nor see most of these changes, but they are there. Slowly the boundaries of acceptance are pushed forward.

As long as Facebook keeps thinking outside the box, dares to act on what they learn when doing so and make changes no one asked for they will stay relevant. Being alive in the age of Internet means staying relevant!

Next time you “check your Facebook”, take a moment to realize what a tremendous social experiment it is behind all the bells and whistles!

The reason Facebook is so successful is because they think outside of the box, push boundaries of what is accepted and continues to embrace that technology reveal new patterns in social interactions. These reasons are also why Facebook is so controversial!

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