Facebook has just announced these last few days that after 2 and a half years of connecting people and letting them ‘poke’ each other it has finally made a profit.
Facebook generates revenue from advertising and sponsored groups and no doubt the social networking site will be focusing on improving its offering for the big brands and businesses in order to maximise its profitability. But how will this impact the current users?
Having acquired FriendFeed and with its move into ‘real time’ it has been following in the footsteps of Twitter, although I think personally they have very different purposes. I view Facebook as being more of a socialising tool than the other sites out there as it is appeals to a wider range of people. With the fastest increasing user demographic being the over 35’s, this demonstrates that the older generations who may not have necessarily grown up with the Internet have found it easy to use and engaging.
However, one thing that will be interesting to see is whether, as Facebook and its users get older, will the broader appeal decrease? I know I am already bored of having to de-tag myself from hideous childhood photos that my mum/dad/aunties post… and that’s just the start of it!
But back to my point, if the wider appeal does decrease then so will the interest to advertise to a wider audience.
Unfortunately I’m not Derren Brown and I can’t predict lotto numbers or the future, but it will be interesting to see how Facebook changes and moves forward. Or now that it’s finally making a profit should they sell up and quit while they’re ahead (but let’s face it, it’s unlikely to go the way of Friends Reunited)?
I recently read ‘The Design of Everyday Things’ by Donald Norman and ‘Don’t Make Me Think!’ by Steve Krug, both of these books have helped me to gain some basic understanding of user experience.
After this we hiked to Hyde Park with a nice bottle of Pimms and lots of sports day equipment. We started gently with some general knowledge questions then got stuck in with egg and spoon races, sack races, bean bag balancing races and plenty more, I think most of us definitely felt the pain the next day!