Facebook has grown from a small project by some college kids into a billion dollar company. Yes, it is the story of dreams and super success. It had the rags to riches story and no wonder the Facebook story has become so popular thanks to movies like “The Social Network”.
Facebook it seems will soon challenge Google or maybe even eclipse it. That might be interesting but I do feel there are 3 reasons, Facebook will never reach the size and more importantly the influence that Google has.
#1. A Closed Environment
No, I do not mean the work culture. I guess the work culture of both companies is pretty open and fun. Closed environment for me, means the lack of outward innovation. Google wants to be the company that manages your online data. That goal is simple yet open.
For Facebook, it wants to replicate your social life on the web. Great it has achieved that; but now what? More connections and more friends, along with more options to share content form the web. That is great but other than that, Facebook does not seem to have a open-ended aim.
With a faster web we might share photos and videos and maybe buy movies and services from our Facebook account.
#2. Lack of clarity on data management
For some reason Facebook messed up with privacy last year. It changed the privacy policies and made people uneasy about the intentions of Facebook. About a year ago, I had many friends on Facebook who were there because they loved it, now they are on it only because all their friends are on it.
Facebook can take users for granted but only to an extent. At some point of time, MySpace probably did the same and is now a dying service.
Google on the other hand has a reputation, which is more reliable at-least when it comes to handling our data.
#3. Content creation Vs content sharing
Google encourages creating new content mainly because it wants people to search for newer and more up to date content. Facebook basically encourages sharing content thanks to links and photos but does not necessarily encourage creation of new content.
Facebook to really challenge Google’s influence on the internet will probably need to sort out these issues. They are not exactly issues or problems as Facebook still seems to be finding a purpose after 7 years of existence while Google always had a purpose well before it went live.
Do drop in your comments and views.
One Comment
I completely agree to all of these. It’s better if Google continues to be what it is. Facebook will eventually become social search where we all will look for details of anyone and everyone [will be helpful in matrimonial cases 🙂 ] and Google will continue to rule the web! 🙂