Melon Corporate Blog
Interview with Mark Zuckerberg - founder of Facebook
Mark Zuckerberg was interviewed at the recent South by Southwest Interactive Festival.
The interviewer is annoying in her flirtatious style but it is an interesting insight into Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg. Mark Zuckerberg was recently named the youngest self made billionaire ever by Forbes magazine - a very impressive financial achievement.
What struck me during the interview was how Facebook are still not quite sure how they are going to generate income. He tries to put a new spin on the advertising angle but it doesn’t sound all that different from keywords (contextual ads).
He talks a lot about their collaborative approach in terms of opening the Facebook platform which is very interesting. The "Web 1.0" successes such as ebay and Netscape didn't have this approach built into their platforms.
This collaborative type approach I think will continue in the broader business environment as more companies realise that the "wisdom of the crowds" outweighs a closed proprietary approach. Even Microsoft are approaching some of their systems in an open source manner.
Mark Zuckerberg is clearly a driven and smart young man and I am sure he is going to be a significant player in the 'net world for a long time yet.
Facebook however I think should rise to the challenge and get more creative with their revenue streams - they should move beyond advertising. Particularly since Facebook users have already backlashed against the existing advertising. The advertising - no matter how contextual and relevant - may alienate the users in a significant way. Maybe partnerships around specific applications and content could work. People are getting more used to paid for subscription services.
I think the key for Facebook is to truly get to understand their value proposition and find out how they can deepen this value proposition to their users - and charge for this privilege. They shouldn't see their users in terms of advertising "eyeballs" but rather as users extracting value from their platform individually and as a collective.
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