How I Would Save: Facebook

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Facebook is dying.

It doesn’t look sick now, but it also doesn’t look well. It can be fixed, but it won’t be. Mark my words: by 2012 Facebook will be a footnote.

——- What’s The Problem? ——-

Where do I begin? Facebook isn’t a service anymore, it’s a disaster. It’s trying to replace instant messaging (Facebook Chat), Twitter (status updates), and even email (Facebook messages). It’s neither fish nor fowl.

Facebook can’t seem to figure out who it wants to be when it grows up. If you take the past 6 months as any indication you would be convinced that they idolize Twitter and, like a 7th grade girl, Facebook will do anything to look, act, and sound like Twitter. It’s sad really.

Before that it looked like Facebook wanted to be a real-life version of the Sims or World of Warcraft. With it’s bumper stickers, pins, gifts, flair, top-friends, zombies… etc. It felt less like a community and more like a f*cking flea market.

So what I’m trying to say is that the problem is, Facebook’s leadership doesn’t seem to understand why people love/use it.

People use Facebook to maintain their network of people they almost know but don’t care enough to call. It allows you to play voyeur with your quasi-friends.

Facebook is not the next wave of communication, it never was. It’s big sell is that it allows you to (barely) keep in touch with people you otherwise would never speak to again. That’s it.

They need to lose these grandiose plans for world domination and accept what they really are. A portal that greases the wheels of communication between you and one-off friends.

——- How Would I Fix It? ——-

First I would immediately stop working on anything that the majority of users don’t get gratification from. What I’m saying is I want to cut the bullsh*t.

So this means I’d cut:

Every 3rd party Facebook application
- I’d venture to say that 90% of users don’t use one single 3rd party app.
Facebook Chat
- It’s creepy. You have no control over the fact that people instantly know a) you’re online and b) you’re actually at your computer.
Facebook Connect
- If I wanted to know what you thought of a particular blog post I’d read the comments.
Message Sending for Groups, Fan Pages, Events
- This gets annoying. 4 out of 5 Facebook emails I get are some group message about something I could not care less about.

Now that I’ve cut the fat, I’m going to stop this inane obsession with beating Twitter. It’s not going to happen. Facebook and Twitter are social, that’s where the similarities end. Twitter lets me see and share public thoughts and discussions in real-time. Facebook lets me catch up with friends, check in on acquaintances, and gives me another way to flirt. On my own time, privately.

So with that I would change the homepage. No more obsession over the status updates and more concentration on pictures, wall posts, and profile updates.

I would then add the following:

Improve the Friend Recommendation Service
- Improve the algorithm for finding people in my friends network that I would/should know
- Make this a bigger deal on the home-page.
Rank friends
- Three Levels
  - Close
  - Friends
  - Acquaintances
Show different “profiles”, photos, and wall-posts based on friend rank
- Allow me to share more or less of myself depending on the friend rank
- Allow me to post status updates to only one level of friends… etc
Improve Flirting
- Like the “poke” button have a “flirt” button
- - If the person reciprocates they can give you their phone # / ask you to call them
  - Allow you to block “flirts” from specific people or from people more than n-off your current connections, or above a certain age… etc
Integrate with Hallmark/1-800-FLOWERS/Amazon… etc
- Instead of letting people send “e-cards”, allow people to buy and send real cards, flowers, gifts.
  - Let groups do this as well
- E-gifts are thoughtless, real gifts show you care

Facebook has a real chance to make something of itself. It’s the biggest (and arguably the best) social networking site out there. It has over 250 million users, and still can’t turn a profit.

Maybe someday down the road they’ll realize the error of their ways, but my guess is that Facebook will be the Webvan of the post-dot-com-bust.

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