Comments on: New Legal Legislation: When You Renew Your Drivers License You Are Issued a Facebook Account

By: Rodney Rumford

Rodney Rumford — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 02:09:17 +0000

Oh Gen,
How we think alike. I agree with your comments wholeheartedly. Facebook has some major challenges, but is becoming a behemoth quickly.

By: Nick

Nick — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 02:00:02 +0000

Thanks for the post Rumford – Facebook is nuts! It’s growth is kinda interesting to watch, because the bigger it gets, the further away sustainable profits seem to get as Gennefer commented above,… it almost seems like economies of scale don’t apply.

If anyone’s interested in reading about the infrastructure it takes to support this sort of growth, I did a post on it recently – http://marketingisadirtyword.wordpress.com/2008/12/11/amazing-facebook-statistics/

By: Gennefer Snowfield

Gennefer Snowfield — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 01:57:00 +0000

Love the headline, Rodney! It definitely got me to click through to this post, which incidentally, I did from Twitter. Would be interesting to see if Facebook shows up as one of your top referrers, given the staggering statistics you listed.

But as someone who was once dependent on Facebook as a social platform and now barely logs on, I’m curious if they have any retention data. New sign ups by the hundreds of thousands seems to indicate explosive growth, but how many are active users, and how many hundreds of thousands have dropped off prior to the 600,000 influx?

The key with any social network is sustainability, and one of the big reasons that Twitter has maintained such an active user base (and growing all the time) despite the boatload of technical and functionality issues is that it captivates a dynamic community of users engaging in real time, something which Facebook [currently] lacks.

I agree that Facebook isn’t going away, and I think that it has its place but am not convinced it is a viable business platform — especially as users become more desensitized to ads, and the whole social ad debacle does not bode well for instilling trust and authenticity. In addition, groups and fan pages are becoming increasingly static with little interactivity, serving more as placeholders for usernames than active conversations between motivated individuals.

That said, any network with as large a population as Facebook has tremendous potential for business and collaboration, but I think in order to achieve that, more focus should be spent on fostering relevancy vs. touting numbers that have no meaning without a feasible, actionable — and beneficial — context.

By: linda m lopeke

linda m lopeke — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 01:22:19 +0000

Kind of makes you wonder why their SocialAds network is a big bomb that returns nothing on your investment doesn’t it? Think about it. It’s obvious why these ads don’t work in terms of furthering commercial interests. Clearly there’s more to it than numbers of potential eyeballs.

Linda M. Lopeke
The SMARTSTART Coach