Facebook: is the platform really dead?
The news is currently full of the latest setbacks for Facebook. How should companies respond? Is it time to rethink their social media strategies? Spoiler alert: In my opinion, we are not quite there yet.
The power of inviting corporate content in
On the job and in discussions with colleagues from the industry I am increasingly confronted with the following question: “Should we really still focus on Facebook? Isn’t it old news already? What about Snapchat or platform {insert-name-here}?”
While I have certainly seen changes over the last couple of months and years, I tend to disagree vehemently.
Yes, it is true: Facebook has matured over the last couple of years. And yes, it might have it’s problems making its original platform relevant to the younger generation.
What I witnessed as well is that engagement has dropped while reach has remained strong. This tells me that, yes, the user behaviour has changed. Facebook has turned into a rather passive medium and many users go elsewhere to post about their everyday lives.
But the beauty is that Facebook is a place where you’ve learned to deal with corporate content. And you might even welcome it to some extent. Take me as an example: I follow a couple of news outlets in order to stay ahead of the most recent global developments; I have subscribed to a few restaurants, cultural providers and the like to know exactly what is going on in my proximity; I am the member of several groups which I tend value a lot; and I choose to follow some additional companies — my love brands if you will. In fact, most of the content I opted to “see first” is corporate content.
In other words this means that I expect to see corporate content in my news feed because I have actively invited it in. And I want to actually receive the latest news and not just pretty pics. This is a rather unique position for Facebook.
A force to be reckoned with
The truth is this: Facebook is there to stay. Facebook is still a vast social media platform with billions of daily users. Just as importantly, it had more than 25,000 employees working on the next big thing in 2017. In other words Facebook’s workforce is about the size of the town I currently live in. Think about that. That’s mental. It means that the company has the resources to shape future trends and technologies — through internal innovations or acquiring (or even copying) any arising competing features.
Just a few examples: Facebook is tirelessly promoting bots and pushing augmented and virtual reality. As I have described in my article “Is the next big tech revolution just around the corner? An internal monologue.” I am pretty convinced that VR/AR is going to be the next big thing and will alter the way we live profoundly. And Facebook will be one of the beneficiaries.
Sharing the burden
As if these weren’t already reasons enough to stick with Facebook (the social media platform), there is more: through internal development and acquisitions, the Facebook Inc. owns 4 out of 10 of the most powerful social networks worldwide: Facebook, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and Instagram.
The numbers show that while Facebook Inc. is still leading by big margins in its core area of social platforms — with Facebook and Instagram — it is also up ahead in the private messaging business. WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger are currently the two most successful messaging platforms by quite a margin. And while Facebook Inc. is at the moment still struggling to derive advertising value from these last two platforms, I am pretty confident that it will very soon find a way. After all, when I started off in social media, Facebook was facing this exact problem with its social media platform — and look how that turned out.
One corporate service to connect it all
Let me be quite frank: the real beauty of Facebook is not it’s community. Don’t get me wrong: Yes, it would suck to have to start from square at any one of the hyped new platforms. But if you attribute enough resources it would probably be manageable.
What really sets Facebook — and with it also its other services like Instagram and Facebook Messenger — apart is the package it provides: plentiful data to monitor the performance; the possibility to post across platforms; the Ads Manager which allows you to target your messages to a very specific audience at a fair price — be it on Facebook, Instagram or Facebook Messenger. One thing is for sure: It would hurt to loose the package Facebook provides.
Is there really an viable alternative to Facebook Inc.?
Let’s get back to the question of whether or not it is reasonable to look for other social media channels to focus your energy on.
What does history tell us? For some time, Snapchat seemed to be the next big thing. But times change and nowadays few experts would claim that Snapchat has the power to get up ahead. In other words: the hype is gone and Facebook has been able to successfully integrate many of Snapchat’s most celebrated features into its own networks.
Now this is not to say that it might not make sense for some companies to try to get a tent into Snapchat. I am sure that for some companies Snapchat is a great fit. All I am saying is that it does not make sense for all the other companies to panic. To desperately try to come up with a strategy that will never feel quite authentic and will fail to meet the expectations.
What’s more is that Snapchat and Co are definitely networks, where most users don’t want to learn more about your latest achievements. They left Facebook to get away from their mums and granddads. So what makes you think that they will enjoy seeing your content on other channels? At the moment, all the want to do is be amongst themselves.
Let’s recap
Due to recent developments, there are undoubtedly sour notes when it comes to Facebook. The company has been hit by the recent scandals and financial reports which fell short of the expectations. Instead of being able to solemnly focus on pushing its agenda ahead, it had to function in crisis mode for the better part of this year.
So, what is an appropriate response from corporations? Here is my advice: Make sure to observe the latest developments. After all, social media is by itself a fast moving industry. But in my opinion, you should be careful not to rush your decision and disregard Facebook lightly.
Because at the moment the truth is: there is simply no platform to match what Facebook (Inc.) has to offer.
