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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.
HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL | WORKING KNOWLEDGE | HBSWK.HBS.EDU
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