What is a media company? What is a tool? What is 'technology? 'And what is a Utility?
More and more Facebook is growing beyond a simple social network into serving as a virtual operating system (is that an oxymoron?) for our lives. We access Facebook functions via our smartphones and anything we still call a 'computer.' our group updates and friend requests show up on our inbox. the blue "F" is embedded in web sites and out-of-home billboard ads. Facebook open graph is a doorway to into many Web sites. The list will just get longer.
Jeffrey F. Rayport at Castanea Partners shared about the absence of Facebook at a C-suite summit of media executives. He does a great job of showing how Facebook transcends the job fo simple "publisher."
"Connection is a human imperative. Technology that hyper-enables it should, logically, thrive. Because Facebook enables it better than any other social network, it has metastasized throughout the Web and beyond — into our mobile devices. (Install a Facebook app on your Blackberry, for example, and you'll see Facebook features integrating themselves mysteriously throughout the functions of your device.) As Facebook expands inexorably, perhaps we should focus less on the asset and more on the impact. By extending its seemingly endless tendrils online, Facebook is surely changing business; it's also changing us in ways that are arguably out of anyone's control — including that of the gifted entrepreneurs who actually run the "site" itself."
This level of embeddedness and how we take its presence and role for granted, help define it as a true utility. Add to that its commercial mission and now it is a capital "U" Utility delivering a precious resource to us albeit one without the limits of resource like the Water Company.
"in the last 24 months, Google's top search term was "Facebook." Of the top five terms in 2010, two were "Facebook.com" and "Facebook Login." If Google has built a "database of intentions," Facebook has built a database of connections. One in every 13 people on earth uses Facebook. With "Friend Finder" — a sometimes controversial feature that automatically suggests people you might want to "friend" — Facebook operates a connection engine of unprecedented scale and scope."
I am less intrigued by any 'search war' between Google and say, Bing, or rivalry between Google and Apple or even Google OS and Microsoft OS, than I am with how Google and Facebook coexist in our lives 3-5 years from now. Between Google Android and Google Chrome OS, there is a good chance that Google will become the fabric on which many of our Internet interactions will play out. Browser-based Web access will continue to dominate even as mobile access eclipses PC access in the next 3 years. Chrome now has 10% of the market - much of that taken from Microsoft's IE. Meanwhile Android closely trails (25%) Apple iPhone (28%) in market share in the US and shows strong growth amongst new users. Google has its hooks in us via search and now via the logic enabling much of our access to the Internet.
The question may be whether Chrome or Android dominate but not whether Google will. One way or another, Google is the new Electric Company. PCWorld has a POV on which will dominate:
"Thick client or thin, I think Android's hybrid model will be the real future of software development, and not Chrome OS's browser-centric model. Last week, I lamented that the HTML standard seems to have fallen under the control of the browser vendors. The most unfortunate aspect is the implicit assumption that browsers will be the primary consumers of Web content for the foreseeable future. Efforts such as Tim Berners-Lee's semantic Web strongly suggest that this won't always be the case; the evolution we're seeing in the mobile software market all but proves it."
A couple of years ago, social media pundits scoffed at marketers who wanted a "Facebook strategy" as too tactical or too platform specific. They should start with a higher-level social strategy. Now it seems that a Facebook strategy is not only warranted but essential. Add to that a Google strategy. What will your business look like as these two platforms weave their way throughout our lives?
One huge difference with the new "utilities" like Facebook that businesses have to contend with is the huge potential for abuse and lost productivity. Many businesses ban access to these sites - it seems a bit strange to promote a strategy that you are determined to keep your own people away from.
Posted by: Dovetail Jigs | February 08, 2011 at 07:23 AM
That's exactly the metaphor I used last night in a social media strategy presentation. I described Twitter, Facebook, and Google (the companies, not the services they provide) as utilities. They are opaque, and you get a service from them, but there is no support in case something goes wrong.
Posted by: Michael E. Rubin | February 08, 2011 at 08:34 AM