Facebook Annouce today another cadre of new features and benefits, Facebook Lite & @Tagging. No Facebook Lite isn’t design as another new social network fad weight loss program, it’s a streamlined version of Facebook that loads faster. Facebook’s new @tagging isn’t just flattering Twitter by imitating them, their adding some proven secret sauce.
I think Facebook is once again on the right path to providing what their customers are asking for. The biggest complaint about MySpace right now is the busy backgrounds, the annoying music, and the junk people put on their pages. Not only is it annoying, but all that rich media needs time to download into your compter and that takes time, even with broadband and if you are still on dial-up, which a surprising the number of people that still are, it’s excruciating and prohibitively slow. Facebook is seizing on their competition’s short comings and turning them into benefits! Go Facebook!
When I interviewed Kakul Srivastava, General Manager of Yahoo!’s Flickr for The Social Media Bible, she told me that there are three cell phones for everyman, woman, and child on the planet! When I began researching this comment, I found that outside of the U.S. In Europe, and especially in third world underdeveloped countries, people can’t afford broadband, they don’t own laptops, they can’t but desktops. What they all do have is mobile phones. Most everyone can afford a cell phone especially when they are subsidized by the telephone carriers and are often free. In villages where clean well water is often not available, cell service is. They use cell phones to access the Internet, retrieve their emails, SMS Text message, interact with their Facebook pages, and often even talk on their phones. Mobile usage and advertising is the fastest growing technology today, more so outside of the U.S. And is the largest device used for social media and trusted networks. So with the lack of broadband, the overwhelming increase in mobile access, and the general complaints about their competition, Facebook has done it again by streamlining their offering.
@tagging… You just can’t beat coping a successful business model. Just ask Burger King, Quizno’s, Domino’s, Avis, or Microsoft. Twitter is a phenomenon right now. When The Ellen Show and Britney Spears each are in the top three most number of Twitter followers on a social mobile technology, toping 3m each, you have a successful product. With Facebook adding @tagging to their arsenal of tools, they are adding another element for success. It’s been said that by them adding @tagging to their repertoire is another case of imitation being the sincerest form of flattery. My software has been flattered way too many times by both Apple and Microsoft right down to my design of “Tool-Tips”. In business it’s who can bring the best products or services with the best features and benefits to the marketplace most effectively. Now that Facebook commands more than 250m users, I think these new features (Twitter like @tagging) and benefits (faster downloads) will continue to give Facebook a significant competitive advantage of MySpace and other social networks. Facebook is quickly becoming the “Google” of social networks!
What do you think about Facebook Lite, Lon? It’s geared towards areas/people who don’t have a lot of bandwidth or high-speed, so I’m wondering about the potential audience there…
But also, Facebook is adopting yet another Twitter-like feature with the @tagging ability….another case of imitation being the sincerest form of flattery?
Let me know if you want to jot down a few thoughts before 10:30 a.m. Pacific..
Thanks Lon, and have a great weekend…go Arizona Cardinals? ;>)