Trying To Justify That $2 Billion Pricetag, Facebook Expands Beyond Students
from the now-more-like-myspace dept
Here's one you couldn't see coming. Social-networking site Facebook is expanding beyond high school and college users. However, instead of just opening it up to anyone, which might rob it of its uniqueness, they're opening it up to employees at select corporations. So now, instead of it just being a tool to allow a student to hook up with that person in their Gender in the Fin De Siecle class, someone in sales at Intuit can flirt with their cute colleague in HR. It's no surprise that they want to expand their userbase. The company is open that they want to sell out for $2 billion, while at the same time there's evidence that their traffic is flagging. They may have waited too long, however, to go after this market. Lots of me-too starupts want to be the MySpace of the enterprise.
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Tech folks by Steve on Apr 27th, 2006 @ 11:14am
Given that the attention span of the average techie these days is about one wee...ohhh...loook....a router...
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Re: Tech folks by Jezsik on Apr 27th, 2006 @ 11:36am
Thanks for the laugh ... I needed that!
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Re: Tech folks by Cowards -R- Us on Apr 27th, 2006 @ 11:37am
wow.. um, so distracted are you that you cannot even make a point. If you are that distracted, how could you even find the submit button?
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Re: Re: Tech folks by A different Stephen on Apr 27th, 2006 @ 11:49am
Geez, thanks for killing that one
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hm... by silentrite on Apr 27th, 2006 @ 11:53am
Not a bad idea, since a lot of the people at my office are on MySpace. At least facebook is a little more professional.
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by CJ on Apr 27th, 2006 @ 12:05pm
looks like you need your joke-o-meter recalibrated.
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Re: hm... by some dude on Apr 27th, 2006 @ 12:06pm
more professional? i didn't realize attention whoring was a professional business
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bad idea by Hairball on Apr 27th, 2006 @ 12:08pm
IMO this is not a good move for facebook. Facebook is known for being the college and soon-to-be college student's social networking site. I don't see how expanding to 'select corporations' will help their cause. If i'm going to flirt with a colleague, i'll walk to her cubicle (office if she's really hot) and ask her to dinner or something. I can only imagine the sort of trouble someone will get in with their company by posting something stupid. Like that ever happens, right?
And another thing... who decides who these select corporations are?
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re: hm.. by chris on Apr 27th, 2006 @ 12:17pm
"i didn't realize attention whoring was a professional business"
try working with developers sometime. not only is it a business, appearantly it pays well too.
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Select companies by Sean on Apr 27th, 2006 @ 12:18pm
The 'Select Companies' is probably like
What company do you work for? (Insert your company here)
Yeah that is one of them.
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Re: Select Companies by Jeff on Apr 27th, 2006 @ 12:45pm
Hum, so I can flirt online with my two collegues?.... Don't think it is for my company.
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uhh by tk. on Apr 27th, 2006 @ 1:07pm
Sweet, another potential URL to add to the company's block list.
I'll buy facebook for a $2B buy in. Then I'd dismantle every little piece of it, because it's becoming so stupid that no one needs to be exposed to it.
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Re: Select companies by Another baseless comment on Apr 27th, 2006 @ 2:24pm
If you had used Facebook then you would know that you must have a valid email address at the institution that you are supposed to be invloved with. I had to use my student id to regisiter (not my social)...so that leads me to believe that they have some type of agreement with the universities...and I'm sure that businesses would want an even larger level of assurance that someone is infact an employee.
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Re: Re: hm... by Anonymous Coward on Apr 27th, 2006 @ 6:41pm
whoring is one of the world's oldest professional businesses
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by Dan on Apr 27th, 2006 @ 10:00pm
how long till thefacebook gets blamed for someone getting fired a la myspace? i give it 6 months. bets anyone?
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My analysis of facebook adding companies from Augu by Doug Sherrets on Apr 28th, 2006 @ 10:15am
Hi,
I wrote about this on August 31, 2005. Check out the article: http://www.minorityrapport.com/2005/08/facebook_for_al.html
I wrote a new post yesterday: http://www.minorityrapport.com/2006/04/fun_it_actually.html
It will be interesting to see the adoption curve at companies.
Doug
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Doug, you were right, and here is why by Judah Wilson, CEO Top20Network.com on Apr 30th, 2006 @ 10:54am
One word: Branding. The reason it will not work in the corporate world is becuase the branding for the site was solidified when they chose to go for high school students rather than businesses. The first wave of seniors that graduated after Facebook became popular (May of last year) was the market Facebook had to get. Facebook was hot, and a large portion of their users were heading to the corporate world. Facebook missed it, and as soon as privacy issues surfaced, the students that sparked the original movement (students at top 20 schools) stopped using the site. I predict that from here on student usage will steadily decline.
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nd more. From website . by vrdjipi@mail.ru on Aug 3rd, 2006 @ 4:31am
ringtones free
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s by Anonymous Coward on Aug 3rd, 2006 @ 4:31am
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