A face-off with Facebook

Hey, am not anti-Facebook. Why would I be?  After I am a social person and Facebook redefined social networking (it virtually sent Orkut into oblivion). Created by Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg who is sitting on $13.5 billion at 27 years of age, it has some great features like newsfeeds, easy photo uploads with tag-in etc.


While we invite, like, comment, post and poke, Facebook makes its money through advertisements. The Click Through Rate (CTR) is much lower for Facebook though, as compared to Google or even MySpace … probably because we are busy communicating with friends rather than looking for information or searching.

Facebook clicked because we are more interested in knowing what others are upto. ..what they think, where they travelled, how they partied, what kind of fun they had. But sadly, some guys aren't funny or insightful and they share way too much. 

There was a time when it was cool to be on Facebook. That time has passed. Though it was designed for college kids, it took legions of people their parents' age to fulfill its ultimate destiny. Facebook now has 500 million members and its fastest-growing age group is 30 and up.

Facebook has a way of creeping from something useful into a contributor of procrastination, mindless clicking and a major waste of time. Facebook is the web’s number one time sink. An average US user spends over 7 hours in a month on Facebook. You may be addicted to Facebook if Facebook is your home page or have over 500 friends, half of whom you’ve never actually met or or get entertained by poking yourself from 2 different accounts. 

While we are still getting friended in Facebook or followed in Twitter, be prepared to be circled in Google+.  With features like multi-person video chats, Sparks that encourages users to plug into news that interests them and integration with Picasa…. lets see whether Google can beat Facebook.

For the webbers, the better the merrier.