Reunify’s Tech-Know Tuesday: F8 2016 Conference
Facebook has found the key to retention and it just so happens that it’s Not-Facebook…We here at Reunify spend most of our time dreaming up the most effective ways to garner retention for our fitness club clients, and so for our first “Tech-Know Tuesday” post we’ve decided to take a look at the effective way that the tech giant has been able to do this for it’s own consumers.
With F8 beginning today, we will all be getting a glimpse into the future of Facebook to see what new tech they have readied for the upcoming year. One thing that we do know already is that Facebook is a multi-faceted company that has created an effective form of retention by acquiring other useful companies under it’s own umbrella and in turn, using those platforms to reach different audiences, so that even when we are not on the Facebook app itself, we are still linked back to them in some way. Some of these recent successful acquisitions have been:
(1) Instagram: Not only does Instagram reach a huge demographic, namely the millennial/younger demographic, but it is always evolving. Such evolutions include the recent change of the time limit on videos to one minute from 15 seconds.
(2) Messenger: Zuckerberg has huge plans to advance this mobile app beyond merely being an alternative to texting by also making it a multi-purpose tool, turning it into “a hub for artificial intelligence bots and mobile payments.”
(3) Oculus Rift: The virtual reality goggles, providing what reviewers have called a “breathtaking” virtual-reality experience.
Here are some thoughts on the topic directly from the mind of Reunify’s CTO Jafar Adibi:
“Basically, when you invent a platform that people spend time on, you need to make sure you build more features and facilities so even if people do not want to use the main feature of the platform, they can still use it for the other features. For example: I’m not on FB, but I still want to use it as a chat tool, etc. From the engagement point of view, while the engagement to the main feature might drop, say for teens, they will try to replace it with a product that they actually use, like Instagram. For our case, at Reunify, we try to find other alternatives for engagement, say if someone goes to a gym for yoga she might want to know that there’s group yoga on weekends or there’s a Zumba class on Monday night, etc. in order to increase the engagement and hence increase retention.”
So, the genius behind the strategy lies in the consciousness that they need to hit as many different audiences as possible in order to stay relevant in different arenas. In short, Facebook has created a platform with multiple features and facilities, so that audiences can pick and choose what apps fit their needs, so that if they don’t want to necessarily use the Facebook app they are still in it’s orbit by using one of the other plethora of apps. In this way, they don’t miss out on a certain demographic and get to retain and engage all of the major demographics that they target.
We have to wait and see what other wonders will be unveiled for the Big Blue App in the next two days, but it can be said almost with certainty that they will do nothing short of amaze us with the new ideas and products that are ahead.
Source: http://www.cnet.com/news/facebooks-secret-weapon-to-keep-your-attention-not-facebook/
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