Many businesses have jumped on the Facebook bandwagon. Many are using their Facebook Business Page as their primary “website” and/or for various promotions and opt-ins. This had made me nervous for some time and I would strongly advise against relying too heavily on Facebook.
Right now Facebook seems like an unstoppable empire. But I personally don’t think they will last if they continue in the direction they are heading and maintain the same business attitude. Mark Zuckerberg is young with more than a touch of narcissism and thinks me knows best what FB users need and want. He has a narrow vision which has proven to be clueless time and time again, both for Personal Profiles and Business Pages.
I believe Facebook has too many fatal flaws that they will likely defend to the end. Their policy of making users “opt-out” rather than “opt-in” to annoying and invasive privacy settings is a sore spot for many people.
When they did away with the chronological order of posts on Business Pages they almost destroyed the effectiveness of the Pages for many companies.
Their almost daily changes with little regard for user preference is turning people off and confusing the rest of us.
And now…..finally there is a contender that may knock them off their feet. Something that might not be hard to do, especially when it comes from a well-known company like Google.
I don’t even have a Google+ (pronounced “Google Plus”) account yet, but from viewing their intro videos I see that they are addressing the missing and failed elements of Facebook. It appears that they have actually designed the venue to what users want. It might be worth the switch for the “Circles” element alone.
“Circles” are groups based on common interests, values, philosophies or whatever, and provide the opportunity to post exclusively to the members of that group. To me, this allows for more freedom of expression than I feel comfortable publishing to my entire “friend” list on FB. The reality is that we all have pods of different types of people and we communicate a little differently within each of those groups.
My prediction is that while it may take a while – perhaps even a year or two….Google+ will likely climb to the top of the heap as the number one social “friending” venue, with Facebook going the way of MySpace.
I have no idea what Google+ does or will feature for a business presence. But Google is a sophisticated business-savvy company and I have confidence that they won’t have any difficulty out-shining Facebook in that arena. Facebook has had no competitors and had no significant consequences to face for its many missteps. But the party’s over and there’s a new kid in town.
So if your business has a Facebook Business Page, ride the FB wave while you can. But do some forward thinking, take a look at Google+ (once you can) and think about where you want to keep your eggs.
