These guys have no idea what is happening.
Facebook is spending really close to there margins, but making revenue in terms of Ad/Sense optimization. They have a social network comfortably over 1 Billion strong, and blah, blah, blah. Don't worry I'll put in the link so you can read it. It's just one since they all say the same thing. No one saying anything strong for or against, everybody saying general "Safe" stuff.
Well I am gonna say it: Facebook, wake up or G+ is gonna kick your ass!
The bottom line is Facebook to the consumer looks almost identical to Myspace just before Myspace had 3 catastrophic issue's all at once. No one at Myspace saw those issue's because social networking was barely in our vocabulary. CEO,COO, CFO at Facebook all know better. At least they should.
"Facebook has maximized it's Ad/Sense", in English this means that they have put a ton of spam on the site and it feels really congested at times. Also FB is a great place to play free games, and that has now turned for the worse. It has for the most part been when you play a game over a social network it's free but you can't do anything really fun unless you log in everyday and/or pay money. So we all got used to that, we now it's to the point where you can barely get ANYTHING done in some of these games without tons of pop up spam, and adds. If click on just about anything it takes to a window to use your Pay Pal or credit card. Which smacks of "greedy-shady-company". Guess what, Myspace did the same thing when they got into trouble, and we the people 1.4+/- billion of us left.
Paying for games on-line via digital download is the future, don't get me wrong. It's done a lot now and is just going to grow to be a set standard. BUT! There is a way to do this and a way not to do this. Planetside 2 is a game that is doing it right. Matt Higby is the creative director for Planetside 2 and he was on a podcast where he explained the right approach to this gaming mode. He basically said the free users act as content creators for the paying user. The things you pay for don't move you up as much as they give you options. So two players of equal skill if one is paying and the other a free customer can still be very competitive for each other in that environment.
Now here is the tuff part. Google, Google has been adding more and more and more options to there G+ product. Now with the exception of Twitter I can do everything I need to do from my Chrome window G+ account. I don't notice any spam, and it is there but very minor by comparison. The real thing is the network, it's not on G+ yet. A billion people is still a billion people. So Facebook is still the top dog, but they could be a dying sick dog by the end of the year if they don't start trying to actually compete with G+. You can't just say "I'm hiring between 3k and 4k new staff and we are gonna come up with some stuff" which is me paraphrasing poorly, Mark Zuckerberg. I want to hear him(Mark) say, "We see the direction that G+ and Yahoo(Y2) are going and we can do it better!", "BRING IT ON!". That is what I want to hear from him, that makes me feel like he knows what is going on in the market and is in the trenches. Instead what I see is that sad image of the IPO launch where he looks tired and in way over his head. Every time I log-in to FB, I get reminded of Myspace. I am just waiting for the day when no-body is on.
It's not over FB can pull a save and stay in the game, but I caution that Google ADDED social media, they where a great stock before that. Now they are just going to get steadily stronger. No matter what FB is gonna loose a % of there current customer base, for no other reason than that for business G+ is just easier and it doesn't feel like it's made for a 15yr old. (Yeah Myspace had that problem also)
Ok so a FB breakdown.
- Too much Spam
- Gamification done poorly
- Does not seem to be a serious competitor
- Making Myspaces mistakes
- The CEO does not inspire confidence, I wanna believe.
My prediction Facebook does too little to late. They don't fall apart like Myspace did but G+ takes a huge chunk of the customer base away and the stock moves slow.
The article is from Bloomberg
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