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03 Mar 2014 Op-Ed

Facebooks Future

Today, we follow Facebook and

update friends on our doings. In

the not too distant future, predicts

Mikolaj Piskorski, Facebook will

follow us and call half the planet

customers.

by Mikolaj Piskorski

Editor's note: Now 10 years old,

Facebook's growth is starting to

slow. That's one reason it

purchased What'sApp last month in

a jaw-dropping deal valued at $19

billion. What might the next decade

be like? Harvard Business School

Associate ProfessorMisiek

Piskorski, an authority on why and

how people use various online

social platforms, makes some

predictions.

In the first decade of its existence,Facebook, aided by the broad

adoption of mobile devices and fast

internet connections, emerged as a

virtual Cheers bar where people

share their lives with a legion of

geographically dispersed friends

and acquaintances and reconnect

with faces from the past. First

college students, then Millennials,

and soon after, their parents andgrandparents were drawn in by the

allure of this pioneering social

network that effectively shrank the

world down to a portable and

vibrant community.

The company recently celebrated

its tenth anniversary, and for muchof that time, Facebook's stunning

growthmore than 1.2 billion

users worldwidehas been the

story. That said, the core Facebook

functionalities have remained

essentially unchanged for the past

several years, and so pundits

wonder whether Facebook's

attraction has peaked. The apparent

disappearance of teenagers fromthe site has made these concerns

even greater. I disagree with this

conclusion. Teenagers will return

to the site when they are older, and

Facebook will continue to grow in

size, particularly in India,

Indonesia, Brazil, and Africa.

"His creation will then

undoubtedly bear little

resemblance to its current

look and feel"

But what will Facebook look like a

decade from now? In 2024,

Facebook founder Mark

Zuckerberg will turn 40. His

creation will then undoubtedly bear

little resemblance to its currentlook and feel. A decade of

technological progress will result

in major changes, and I believe the

site will morph into a potent and

active force in people's lives.

Today, Facebook is a passive

vehicle where users manually postpictures, status updates, and

YouTube videos. And then they

quietly observe what others have

posted, occasionally offering a

comment, but often just scrolling

down through content. As such,

Facebook is a retrospective

medium, a place to share

experiences already completed and

then put them on display. But thecompany does little to capture

information as it happens, and even

less to help us organize the future.

But this will change as Facebook

becomes a prospective mediuma

dynamic, real-time driver that will

automatically gather current and

future information that wearable

devices will automatically

broadcast about us, match it with

what our friends are

auto-broadcasting, and then deliver

recommendations on what we

should do socially. This will help

us get off the mobile phone and

actually meet up in the offline

world. This way, Facebook will

become less of a website to visit

than an invisible conduit to the

most important aspects of people'slives, a way to keep a closer eye on

their children, plan social

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interactions, be alerted to pertinent

products and services, and

accelerate the value of a person's

connections.

Two trends will lead to this

outcome. First, people are already

sharing private information

generated by their wearable

devices, such as Nike FuelBand.

The device is a part of a greater

Nike+ ecosystem that has attracted

over 18 million users who happily

share their athletic achievements

with others. Just do a search on

#nikeplus on Twitter, and you will

discover a Nike-related tweet every10 seconds in every conceivable

language. Second, many

companies are already encouraging

us to share private information

automatically. For example, if you

are using Google Maps on your

iPhone, you are most likely

sending information to Google

about your location and

speeddata the companyaggregates to present us with

up-to-date traffic maps. It won't be

long, however, before the two

trends converge, and we will start

broadcasting personal information

automatically as we go through our

day. As soon as Facebook develops

appropriate algorithms to deliver

the right social information to the

right people and demonstrates their

utility to us, adoption will soar.

While all this is happening,

Facebook's marketing influence

will accelerate dramatically,

providing a growing revenue

stream for the company. When

Facebook first started it was no

more than a mechanism to attract

eyeballs for businesses. Since then

it has evolved into a sophisticated

marketing machine that enables

marketers to serve targeted

messages on the basis of our email

address or mobile phone number.

But in 2024, technology will make

possible real-time marketing

possible. As we auto-broadcast our

social data, Facebook can respond

to them immediately with targeted

offers in response to what we need

right now. If I walk down the streetand feel hungry, for example,

Facebook will suggest a set of

friends who live nearby and seem

available and then advertise a

restaurant that we all might like. Or

if my nanny suddenly becomes ill

and can't pick up my four-year old

from preschool, Facebook will

automatically display an

advertisement for a substitutenanny who has worked for four

close friends and who can step in

and pick up my child.

Granted, this has the heavy feel of

the movie "Minority Report" taken

to its ultimate limits, and the road

to 2024 will undoubtedly be

bumpy and filled with controversy

related to privacy. Over its first

decade, Facebook has been no

stranger to controversy,

specifically about privacy controls,

and it is to the company's credit

that its growth has continued

despite such concerns.

"Granted, this has the

heavy feel of the movie

'Minority Report' taken to

its ultimate limits"

This time, however, given the

amount of information disclosed,

Facebook will need to execute as

flawlessly as possible. If it gets the

privacy component wrong and

infuriates its users, its survival is

not guaranteed. Some other startup,

maybe from China or maybe a

US-based open source venture, will

step in and grab that territory. And

there is much to grab, with theworld population soaring to 8

billion people by 2024. But if

Facebook does get it right, it can

easily grab half that population.

Is this an optimistic scenario or a

Big Brother nightmare? There are a

vast number of ways that this

might potentially make our lives

better and happier. And there arejust as many ways that Facebook

can go awry. If the main driver is

to use the technology for invasive

and intrusive paths toward profit,

Facebook's future may well be

questionable. If it can incorporate a

real and active impetus to do the

right thing for humanity, it will be

much more successful in the years

ahead than it has been in the past

decade.

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