Facebook: The Fickleness of Social Network Success
Dec 2nd, 2007 by Dan Blank
This snowy Monday morning has several folks thinking about the incredible backlash that Facebook is experiencing due to its “Beacon” service, which is an attempt to monetize the site:
- Scott Karp:
“Facebook Beacon, currently in the process of going down in flames, is a classic case of overreaching… Facebook overreached because it’s acting like a traditional media company with monopoly control of its channel.” - Fred Wilson:
“It’s always like this, the euphoria is always followed by the backlash. Facebook has had a great year, the evolution from a service for students to a service for everyone, the opening of the platform, and the $15bn valuation from Microsoft. It’s hard to beat the year they’ve had. But now the backlash is here. It’s largely related to their efforts to monetize their service via behavioral targeting…” - Robert Scoble:
“Personally I’m having lots of trouble with Facebook but Facebook doesn’t care about people who have more than 5,000 friends unless they can figure out a way to monetize us. Everytime I look at Facebook I am reminded of how little Facebook cares about me. So, I care less and less about Facebook every day.”