Quote:
Originally Posted by NJBest
I disagree. Facebook's biggest driver is communication. If you take away the communication, then all you have is a place of storage where people store data, links, photos, etc.
Facebook is all about sharing and, yes, advertising, both of which are forms of communication. It is very effective at linking one or more people together allowing them to communicate.
In fact, you can go as far as saying Facebook is a near-perfect incarnation of Matthew Jameson's research on rich communication at AT&T Labs in the late 80's/early 90's. Take a look at their model and it demonstrates the clear usage of such ties of information as communication.
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Myspace linked people. Friendster did as well. Twitter does so too.
This isn;t about linking people. That is not what drives Facebook's revenues. What drives Facebook's revenues is the amount of time people spend logged in.
As I said before, I would be with utmost certainty that once Facebook initiated photos, the time people spend on Facebook dramatically rose. Every feature thereafter such as chat, statuses, etc. has been instituted in order to keep folks logged in for long periods of time, day in and day out.
I would agree that communication is a secondary effect of users being logged in for long periods of time. They're already logged in, so they might as well message, comment, or chat while they're at it. However, the main driver is vanity and voyeurism; what's so and so doing or what's so and so saying.
Why do you think, Facebook initially kept all profiles open for all to browse photos? Or that they favored a lax privacy policy until the FTC stepped in?
They know what drives growth and user retention.
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