Put on your celebration hats and fibre adult a banners: Facebook celebrates a 10th birthday in 2014.
You’d be tough pulpy to find a some-more popular, nonetheless polarizing, use than Facebook over a final decade. In reduction than 10 years, Facebook has collected a billion-plus users, hosted a presidential Town Hall, been a subject of a vital suit film, and connected people from each dilemma of a planet. Its tellurian code approval competence be a best in a tech world, rivaling usually Google and Apple, both of that had a estimable conduct start.
See also: 10 Tips and Tricks for a Facebook iPhone App
And while 2014 is, in all reality, usually another year for a amicable media hulk to collect users, data, and revenues, it’s also a pointer of how distant Facebook has come — and how fast a tech universe evolves.
As Facebook approaches a ripe, aged age of 10 (that’s 70 in tech years, right?), a association will continue to face questions about a functionality in a amicable media courtesy it created. We’re not articulate about Facebook disintegrating — in fact, all indications indicate to another year of increasing user metrics and revenue, in gripping with a years of solid growth. Instead we’re articulate about Facebook’s identity, that could be mislaid amid a new facilities and ad rollouts that have tangible a company’s many new expansion years.
In a nutshell: What is Facebook now? And where does it fit into a amicable media landscape it helped define?
Building Better Algorithms
The good and bad of Facebook is that it has everything. It’s a hunt engine, a dating profile, a family print album, an residence book, and a newspaper, all rolled into one. For many longtime users, it’s also a never finale category reunion, featuring a tide of life updates and photos from long-forgotten high propagandize or college acquaintances.
The problem staring Facebook in a face, is that there is so many information and connectivity on a height that it’s apropos tough to keep any of it straight. Other amicable networks, like Twitter, Snapchat, or WhatsApp are stuffing a niche use cases like print pity or standing updates that used to be Facebook’s domain.
Facebook tweaked a News Feed algorithm mixed times in 2013, twice with an try to bring some-more “high quality” content to users’ News Feeds. It has spent years identifying that friends users wish to hear from — now it’s time for a association to brand users’ interests and a news equipment they wish to see as well.
The height encourages users to rivet with a ads they come across, in an bid to improved brand that ads work and what people wish to see. It’s a lofty plea with some-more than one billion users and one million advertisers, though a also a plea Facebook will expected come closer to elucidate in 2014 as a efforts continue.
Facebook announced plans in early Dec to offer grow and rise a synthetic comprehension investigate team, a vital pointer that a association skeleton to continue perfecting a algorithms used to aspect and share calm on a platform.
“[Facebook] is sitting on presumably a biggest cache of user information ever compiled,” says Nate Elliott, a principal researcher during Forrester Research. “Certainly they know some-more about users’ affinities — their tastes and preferences — than anyone ever has. If they stopped dancing around [the data] and started regulating it, it would be impossibly powerful.”
Facebook non-stop a initial abroad information core in Sweden in 2013.
A large partial of regulating this information and information revolves around Graph Search, a platform’s Google-like inner hunt engine that allows users to find out some-more specific information from their network of friends. A Google hunt will lapse a list of circuitously restaurants. In a ideal Facebook world, we would get a identical list, with a combined premonition that these recommendations are entrance from your friends, a people we trust and, in theory, with whom we share common interests.
Graph Search is still in a early stages — a association announced a underline final Jan though usually made it available to all U.S. users in August. Expect Facebook to pierce a use to mobile in 2014, a pierce that will exam a functionality as people use it on a go a approach Yelp or Google are used now.
More Relevant Advertisements
Perfecting Graph Search is merely one use of Facebook’s information stash. The other, improving a ad service, competence be a many critical for both a bottom line and a attribute with users. There are few things some-more frustrating on Facebook than entrance opposite an irrelevant ad — one that doesn’t request to a user’s interests or personality. It’s brazen in a News Feed, and eventually leads to a disastrous experience.
There are some-more than one million advertisers on Facebook, though some-more than 25 million tiny businesses have active association pages. That means a lot of intensity ad clients, and Facebook will continue going after them in 2014 . If Facebook can successfully offer adult meddlesome audiences to startups formed on user data, we can design many of those tiny businesses to hack adult for a News Feed ad (or two) relocating forward.
With Facebook launching a initial automobile play video ads on Tuesday, ad income should soar in 2014. Pressure from advertisers to get video ads in front of suitable users will also be aloft subsequent year.
The association is rolling out a ads slowly, and usually to a name series of users. Once a ads are stretched to all users (sometime after in 2014, presumably), we will get a glance of how effective a ad algorithm is. You can corkscrew past a News Feed post, though automobile play ads are harder to ignore. Sending irrelevant ads to users will not usually be some-more noticeable, it will be bad for all parties involved, including Facebook.
Addressing (Alleged) Teen Flight
Of course, advertisements usually work when users rivet with a platform, and Facebook spent a tail finish of 2013 traffic with a cloud of guess per teenagers on a amicable network — some-more specifically, how mostly they are regulating a site.
The account has been discussed for utterly some time. Facebook doesn’t mangle out a user metrics by age, definition there is unequivocally no approach to know how many teenagers are regulating a amicable height during any given quarter. Teenagers, mostly a many tech-reliant age group, tend to set a bulletin for that tech products are value profitable courtesy to — hence their significance to all amicable networks.
In Facebook’s case, there were a handful of signs over a past 3 months that disappearing teen use competence be a regard for a amicable network.
The many apparent came during Facebook’s many new gain call, when CFO David Ebersman certified that some teenagers were spending reduction time on a platform. “Youth use among U.S. teenagers was fast altogether from Q2 to Q3, though we did see a diminution in daily users partly among younger teens,” Ebersman said. It was a brief mention, and there is no approach of meaningful accurately what Ebersman meant when he pronounced “younger teens.” Still, it planted a seed that teenagers competence be withdrawal a platform, however slowly.
In October, Facebook lowered a age requirements that limited teenagers from creation their posts public. Now, teenagers can select if they would like to share their posts publicly.
“While usually a tiny fragment of teenagers regulating Facebook competence select to post publicly, this refurbish now gives them a choice to share some-more broadly, usually like on other amicable media services,” a Facebook orator wrote on a association blog. If other amicable sites were attracting teenagers this way, Facebook clearly didn’t wish to skip a party.
The many new justification that Facebook competence be endangered about losing teen users flush when Facebook reportedly attempted to acquire Snapchat for $3 billion in November. The photo-sharing app is renouned with teenagers — it claims users send 400 million photos and videos per day — and it would positively assistance keep Facebook applicable to a youngest era of amicable media users.
Depending on who we ask, Facebook’s supposed teen influence issue is a vital problem, or an emanate artificial by a media. Michael Pachter, an researcher with Wedbush Securities, believes that since teenagers vital during home see many of their friends and family each day, it creates a service’s core functionality — staying connected — rather invalid for youngsters. Teens are on Facebook to check it out, and either they use it each day or not isn’t a emanate since a a site becomes some-more profitable as people get older, he says.
“The teen regard is way, way, approach overdone,” explains Pachter, observant a greeting to Ebersman’s comments were overblown. “[Analysts] will burst on anything. If a CFO coughs, it’s like, ‘oh, Facebook is sick.’”
We should find out in 2014 either or not Facebook is cold when it comes to teenagers, and if it isn’t, how it skeleton to get behind in their good graces. No matter a income numbers — and they should be healthy, generally with video ads in a overlay — Facebook investors will positively listen delicately to what happens with a site’s youngest adopters.
As Facebook crosses a threshold into a second decade of existence, it will understanding once again with a doubt we initally asked after a then-Harvard undergrad launched a site from his dorm room: what is Facebook, and how does it fit into a lives? As a association continues to enhance a reach, we sojourn fervent to learn a answer.
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Image: Josh Edelson/AFP/Getty Images, Jonathan Nackstrand/AFP/Getty Images
Article source: http://mashable.com/2013/12/26/facebook-looking-ahead-to-2014/?utm_medium=feed&utm_source=rss