Facebook: The Next Step
So Facebook went public on Friday 18th May 2012 and there have been plenty of suggestions as to why Zuckerburg let the company go public. Does Facebook want to build products, did Zuckerburg sell up as he doesn’t feel that he can take Facebook any further or is the competition ramping up to be something to be scared of? Only Zuckerburg really knows.
Ultimately Facebook needs to make money for its investors, so selling up and going public makes sense. However, the suggestion of the creation of products is something that is quite intriguing.
Over the past few weeks Facebook have announced that they are working closely with Apple, along with hiring former Apple iPhone developers. Does this mean that Facebook are planning to build their own phone or will Facebook now have deeper integration in Apple products? Either way it seems that Facebook are finally aiming to have a good crack at mobile devices as they are yet to provide a good offering on mobile. Google + on the iPhone is a beautiful integration, so will Facebook start to monetise their ads with mobile? Remember that Google have recently announced with integration of AdMob into AdWords.
The punt at mobile would make sense with Facebook buying Instagram and also releasing the Facebook Camera. It will be interesting to see how Facebook plan to monetise their mobile-based platform.
Another suggestion could be a plan to have deep integration with Apple TV. Apple CEO, Tim Cook said ‘stay tuned’ at the end of May for the latest announcement regarding Facebook and Apple, could he be hinting that TV may well be on the agenda? Social TV has been a bit of a buzz phrase over the last twelve months and could be something that really kicks off and provides enjoyment to its users.
Personally, I think it is a plan to offer deeper integration of Facebook in Apple products in order to increase the ad revenue and to improve the targeting, with Facebook playing around with their open graph and ticker feed helping with the targeted ads. This is where Facebook are now taking information from what you are currently doing online as well as on Facebook - not just targeting you with ads from your list of ‘Likes’.
