Facebook - A model built on growth
When Facebook was released to the Ivy League schools, it benefited from a powerful group of early adopters. Zuckerberg isolated a need, and offered a standard solution. Facebook presented a simple approach to networking.
When individuals refer to “opening” up Facebook, they refer to the decision to make the service available to everyone, but this wasn’t the first “opening”. Prior to this, Zuckerberg made the unpopular decision to open Facebook to non-Ivy league participants. By breaking from the elitist ranks, he alienated a number of early adopters but transformed Facebook from a useful application to a billion dollar success.
What the average student doesn’t like about Facebook is exactly what propels the company’s growth. Students disagreed with the expanding community, students were upset with news feeds, upset with the onslaught of applications, and upset about the Beacon advertising strategy.
Yet these new features are the cause for some major keg parties at Facebooks youthful Silicon Valley headquarters. The expanding community quadrupled the user base, and the new applications mean users spend more time on the site.
In the world of internet advertising, if a user goes to facebook, logs in, checks messages, and leaves, he or she may have spent three minutes on the website. Now if a user logs on to do battle in Jetman, before ranking their friends from 1 to 1,000, a user spends hours a day during each login.
This propels growth, and is vital to Facebook’s revenue model. The longer individuals spend on the site, the grander the Silicon Valley Keg parties are becoming. Each time you set a personal record in JetMan a twentysomething, software engineer pulling in 6 figures a year while working half days in shorts and sandals raises his glass to you.
New around here? ...you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed. Thanks much for visiting!
Tags: Early Adopters, Facebook, Silicon Valley, Zuckerberg