Ireland
I read an interesting article yesterday on the subject of Facebook, a social networking web site with over 200 million members. It is the #4 most visited website in the world, a massive following of family members and friends who share photos and news about each other, generally using the site as a means of staying in touch.
The title of the article is “The Facebook Death Watch Begins,” and the premise of the piece is that Facebook will eventually die an incredibly profitable death, but die it will. His reasoning is sound, and every web entrepreneur should pay attention.
Basically, the article suggests that Facebook will wither and die because it is trying to be all things to all people. Rather than concentrate its efforts on being the best at one or two features, Facebook is trying to do too many things.
Photo sharing? Sure, but that’s what Flickr does about as well as it can be done. Gaming? Sure. Email? You betcha. Social meeting place? Okay. But, there are plenty of alternatives to each of those, and everyone has their favorite.
We don’t always go to the same restaurant every time we eat out. We don’t watch the same movie over and over. We don’t always play a game of golf with the same three people every round. We mix things up, we all like variety, and we have our own ways of doing things.
AOL tried to be all things to all people, and it failed spectacularly. When you try to be all things, ultimately you become no thing. Those who concentrate all of their efforts and apply all of their strengths to one or two endeavours usually succeed.
A restaurant that has 100 items on its menu, from Italian to Chinese to Thai and every ethnic offering you can think of, can’t possibly offer the best in each, certainly not the way a single ethnic restaurant can. It has to carry too many raw ingredients to meet menu demands; the costs to carry such a high inventory eventually pulls it down; and, those wanting Chinese will go to a Chinese restaurant, not the “all foods to all people” place.
When it comes to your online business, don’t follow AOL’s model, and don’t emulate Facebook’s everything to everyone approach. Pick the one or two things you believe yourself to be the best at, and devote your energy to them.
Online shoppers have their favorite websites for the products they buy online. They’ve had a good shopping experience somewhere, feel comfortable with the purchases they’ve made, and go back to where they’ve had that success.
From an online marketing standpoint, especially when it comes to search engine optimisation, the more finely focused your efforts are, the better the results will be. A single, strong home page call to action that grabs the visitor’s attention quickly and clearly will most often lead to your getting your most desired response from that visitor.
Keep it simple, and solutions are easy to find. Facebook will make its owners a great deal of money, but I do agree that eventually it will suffer the same fate as AOL – - it will over-reach and topple over from too many things. Don’t let that happen to your web site.