Technology and Business Success in Practice

Why is facebook making it, while the others are not

and it has nothing to do with technology, and yet everything to do with technology...

1. The user experience:

- Picture Profile: Seeing your picture as a way to identify yourself adds so much to a personal experience.
- Layout of the Feeds: The layout of the feeds is so friendly, you can see less or more depending on your choice.
- The menus: The top menus stay so consistent within the user's experience, while the 2nd level menus are context dependent.

2. The technology:

- An open platform: The ability to create new facebook applications by third parties is such as huge strategic success that facebook has over the competition.

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Facebook has the momentum to become the greatest web company ever, but the following are key challenges that it needs to address:

- Advertising program: Its Ad-program is quite weak and ineffective to say the least. The ads look cheap, and often times irrelevant and out of context.

- Mobile experience: Facebook has a set of mobile features, but there is a whole new world of features that are waiting to be exploited with location, context and network enablers.

- Business model: Can facebook sustain the cost of the explosion of its user-base and usage, with its existing ad-based and VC funding. There is surely a lot of thought been given to this.

If facebook can overcome these challenges, it has the momentum to become the greatest web company ever...

posted by Yogi @ 10/26/2009 10:30:00 PM