How long is Facebook going to stay, as I may call it, “The Big Boss” when it comes to Social Networking sites? Are Facebook’s continuous efforts to bite off chunks of the social network market proving to be successful and how much of the chunks can it digest? Are there any currently available sites which can confidently say they are competing at the same level with Facebook?
Founded February 4, 2004 with the aim to “Give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected”, we have been more than aware of, and even impressed with, how Facebook has been on top of the game since the beginning. By taking chunks of the social networking market and offering a more comprehensive service and wholesome user experience to its users, Facebook its proving, day by day, its commitment to improvement and innovation through researching its current and potential customer needs and creating features and applications that meet them accordingly!
- Facebook added the photos features. This, coupled with their SN platform, provided a great method for people to share private photos and even for professionals to use it as a portfolio and in turn gave Facebook a chunk out of the social photo sharing segment such as Flickr.
- Moreover, Facebook added a videos service allowing people to share videos between friends and with better privacy options. So, that’s how Facebook took a chunk out of the social video sharing market, like Youtube.
- In August 2006, Facebook Notes, which currently has 21,456 fans and proved to be highly social and easy to use, was introduced allowing Facebook to obtain a chunk of the blogsphere market.
- In February 2007, Facebook added a new gift feature to the website, which, in my humble opinion, was a way to obtain a segment of the online greeting cards market.
- In May 2007, Facebook acquired a chunk of Web 2.0’s mashups market segment by launching its SN platform.
- In July 2007, Facebook allowed users to post attachments to their walls, which was most likely an attempt to replace or dilute the use of e-mails thus biting of a chunk of the e-mail users market.
- In another conquest, Facebook introduced fan pages and groups that highly resemble forums thus allowing Facebook to take out a chunk of the social forums market.
- What about Facebook chat? Well, it seems that it was a try to take a chunk of the instant messaging market (I can’t assert how successful this was, but I’m sure many people tried and are still using it!)
- On December 2008, Facebook opened the gates with “Facebook Connect”. This in turn helped FaceBook take a chunk of the Open Authentication systems like OpenID.
- Now, I come to the news article that got me thinking about writing this piece, the latest Facebook conquest was: Obtaining a chunk of the micro-blogging market, the one Twitter is it’s king, through opening status updates. A new application, RSS Feeds, makes use of this new feature.
What do you think would be the next market chunk Facebook is going to bite off? And will the following step be integrating music and playlists into the default Facebook site rather than an added application?
P.S: Thank you swardraws of Flikr for the sandwich photo.
