This week’s Newsweek features a cover story exploring the growth of Facebook. Following up his thoughtful piece on the class divide, I thought Steven Levy did a great job with the story. In the article I talk a little about how Facebook’s attempt to reinvent itself is changing the nature of the service; I’ve previously fleshed these thoughts out in a blog post entitled “Where are Facebook’s Early Adopters Going”.
As the Fall semester starts up anew, Facebook’s efforts to distance themselves from the college market grow more clear. Facebook has decided to drop support for classes, meaning that college students will now have to use a substandard third-party application if they want to see their fellow classmates. On a college campus, the browsing of classmates via “classes” was a core “information vector”, and many loved the feature as they learned more about the people sitting next to them. Now that this feature has been summarily executed, students will reap less informational value from Facebook. Granted, it’s a small change, but an important change; while the site clearly wants to distance itself from its core audience, I fail to see why they feel the need to penalize students.
Facebook’s attitude towards college students might be best summed up in this quote from the Newsweek article – it’s a spin job that would make Karl Rove proud: “Facebook did not change college life, but it changed the lives of the early adopters … many of whom were in college.” (Former COO Owen Van Natta). Yow. And as Facebook focuses its efforts on shutting out its core audience and appeasing the blogosphere, am I the only one left shaking his head and wondering? I get that Facebook wants an older audience, but it’s not like you see Nike leaving the basketball shoe market to compete with Florsheim.
Tags: adoption, cognition, facebook, media, situational relevance
I present Cole Haan’s “Air” line – all Nike shoes with Cole Haan tags.
Yeah, but you don’t see Nike canceling the Jordan brand to make Cole Haan shoes. That’s my point :)
Fred – I agree with you. College users are their core. Apple coddles this segment of their business for good reason (and to great success).
I understand it in vague terms from the perspective of them trying to be more “operating system” and therefore deemphasizing their own apps, but I see no reason why they would be so dramatic as to kill it off. Why not just drop it to their own app status, like vides, etc. and leave it as an option for all students signing up in college network? (Or high school?) Their architecture seemingly makes it pretty simple to keep college stuff for college folk.
I think it will be a few months, at least, before we see good school apps, and longer still before adoption rates make them useful.
Facebook is into “utility” right?
I agree with you – why ditch this very useful social utility at the risk of alienating their core?
I never used the “Class” feature, but it appears the other options (though sub-par according to you) now have two weeks to convince students they are the best–and nothing motivates a coder like a bg, scary deadline.
It sounds like “Free market” to me, and the proof Facebook is ready to sacrifice immediate usability to be a platform (or a Utility, as they put it) with the best loong-term incentives toward any willing developer.
Mark Z. shaked the world saying at that developer meeting that he would discontinue officials apps if competitors proved convincing: he now has to measure how much the “official” status helped reach critical mass, to decide when he should challenge it.
I think it is an interesting business model, more then being the most convenient SNS; it is close to Linden Labs’ one, and much better suited: the “real” world is not 3D, but social.
If it proves a failure (and they should know by now, as they sent a census on every profile) Facebook would have to handle the crisis, and “re-nationalize” Classes. Certainly not a popular move in free-market obssesed USA, but for once an informed one.
Another intelligent approach would be to help the competitors by making the Class source available.
Bertil, you’ve got good points, but I’m with Kevin on this one. I imagine that Facebook wanted to force college students to experience Applications.
That sort of brings us to a point that isn’t reported often – college students aren’t as aware of the Platform as the A-list blogs might lead us to believe. The “application requests” that show up in inboxes appear as friend messages, and many students aren’t exploring outside of applications to which they’ve been directly invited. I’d wager that many, many college users have never browsed the application directory.
Perhaps by forcing college students through the process of finding and adding the courses app will they discover all the other apps. Who knows. But I have a feeling that a lot of students are going to be very, very confused as they attempt to register their courses to find this option no longer available.
Kevin:
> why ditch this very useful social utility at the risk of alienating their core?
Unless Fred has new numbers, Facebook is not likely to be anything but more widespread then phones among College crowds this year. However, their frontier is not so happy about the College humour tone: my blog roll is biased, but I’ve read more techies complaining about having to describe their relation with private consultants as “We dated but it’s over. It’s complicated.” then sophomore complaing they now have to choose what app to use for Class management.
Facebook is changing, and when tranforming, you consider the edges. What is probably the biggest project right now? My guess would be translating: good luck into making College brackets that make more sense in Europe or Asia then “Undergrad” and “Grad school”.
Will American college students be upset by having to crowl though education levels they don’t understand when stalking that hot Greek exchange? Probably–but Facebook can expect to double the size of that college core by making this available. And my guess is: this will not come from a Facebook developer–so thank you for opening what appears a problematic black box to me.
Fred:
> I’d wager that many, many college users have never browsed the application directory.
You know better then I do, but I don’t think it’s about browsing the Apps directory, rather then installing one. Does anyone have the iLike (or any very popular app) rate of adoption?
If it is low as you expect, then I rest my case: students don’t know about this — but it’s a good thind their have something positive to figure out, as now they are all on before the usual September. If not, they know about it and then it’s two clicks away.
In either cases: they learn about how social network games, and how they don’t end up so well unless switching is easy. To me, that’s the key lesson they’ll learn on Facebook this year.
My money is on: it’s a bold move, like the feeds, like opening, like many other moves they will continue making; something will probably go wrong and they will have little time to react–but they proved wise under pressure so far.
Bertil,
On one level, I do agree with you – FB is probably equally well off if applications are completely transparent, and thereby only viral apps get seeded through the space. But in my mind that sort of feels like purely relying on Digg for your news – if the Platform is to succeed, I’d think you’d want users to have a conception of what it is, and how to go about utilizing it.
Platform represents an “information space”, from which tremendous value can be derived. But if we only rely on viral and catchy apps to make their way around, it seems that a lot of the potential information value of the space will be lost. Now, maybe its A-OK in FB’s eyes that 95% of the userbase only sees viral apps bought by Slide, but something tells me that the Platformw was developed for a more substantial purpose.
Oh: I never said they will only rely on platform–but based on their own knowledge of what they want to do with Classes, they decided to go with the viral market. They still can provide a better solution, leak the source, use a staw-company to have their idea win the game, or use the current poll to come back on their decision.
Can this be an experiment that will cost them more then what they will learn from it? It might: I don’t disagree with you–but getting in touch with people you are supposed to spend several hours a day with, on a sealed-off campus, while all have desperate needs to get laid/drunk/figure out what the lesson was about. . .
It’s both easy to get around that loss, and very motivating to figure out a way to replace it:
I do think they took minimal risk before kick-starting what appears to be the big picture.
However, you raise another point:
It is a good thing that Slide sits on a monopoly position on that emerging market?
Based on Greif’s “Lessons from Medieval Trade” I’d say, yes: we need a poster boy, one that makes money, looks good, claims to take risks, looks entrepreneur savvy, reassures bankers.
One that preferably is arrogant enough to p*ss off one of its employee in a year time, enough to have him start a new company, and therefore kick start intelligent, well-funded competition.
End of August is still the key moment of that company, it appears.
“I imagine that Facebook wanted to force college students to experience Applications.”
Yah. And jeez, I’m not sure why they’re doing this. I guess I know why, but it also sounds eerily like the kind of thinking behind the Fakester genocide – dictating to users of a (useful but optional) utility exactly how they must use said utility. Facebook’s of course always been more bounded, but it’s kind of weird that they’re clamping down in some ways as they’re opening up in others.
+1 jkd, +1
I never used facebook, even when I was sill in college but the idea that other people can browse my profile based on what classes I took rather than simply speaking to me before or after the class smacks of internet stalking.