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A business founded on the values of a generation, such as Facebook, has to keep up with, and respect, evolving lives and needs. The classic example of a compan
by edw519 16y ago
A business founded on the values of a generation, such as Facebook, has to keep up with, and respect, evolving lives and needs.
The classic example of a company intelligently growing up with a generation is McDonald's and baby boomers.
First, cheap food at drive-ins where teenagers can hang out, check out cars, and find dates. Then happy meals for their kids, who can stay in their car seats in the drive-thru. Now, healthier choices and high end coffee.
- joezydeco 16y agoIntelligently growing up with a generation, or just trying to stay ahead of plain 'ol American competition? McDonalds got it's kickstart because it was cheaper and faster (self-service) than drive-ins. Happy Meals kept parents from choosing other burger chains. Salads and low-carb choices came in response to dieting trends. Coffee was upgraded to avoid losing breakfast business to Starbucks. But I'd wager none of these innovations would have come as quickly if there wasn't a business threat to the company.
- rick_2047 16y agoYou make it sound as if it was bad of them to do so. Any financial organization responds to only one stimulus very quickly, that is financial. If they are responding to such stimuli and moulding their services accordingly where is the harm? The customers are at a net gain anyway.
- joezydeco 16y agoNo, it's not bad to do at all. Never tried to imply that. But let's not give credit to "vision" and "foresight" when in reality it's just a company trying to keep up with the world as it changes.
- alttab 16y agoThe author of the original post was saying that Facebook was failing to do exactly that. Using the McDonald's example, it could be akin to McDonald's making all of their burgers out of ground turkey because they got a huge deal with a turkey meat distributor, the customers saying "no, give us hamburger!" and McDonald's saying "fuck you." What happens to those customers wanting hamburgers? They go to Burger King.
- joe_the_user 16y agoYes, The problem is: suppose they weren't making a profit on the hamburger and so serving the turkey was the only way they knew how to make profits. But also suppose that it would be quite hard for customers to switch to Burger King. Then you have characterized something of the paradoxical condition of the Facebook. Making money while accumulating ill-will.
- whopa 16y agoWell, to make the analogy a little more accurate, suppose they weren't making as much profit on the hamburger as they are by serving the turkey... Facebook and Twitter both have the problem that they have to justify the amount of investment they raised, and both are doing things that are unpopular with their community (users for Facebook, developers for Twitter) to make a bigger business than the original things that got them popular can sustain.
- julius_geezer 16y agoThirty-five or forty years ago, McDonalds got caught out serving kangaroo in their hamburgers. Much more recently it was found flavoring the french-fry oil with a bit of tallow, to the great offense of vegetarians and I think a few Hindus. However, it has always been much smoother at the apology business than Facebook now seems to be.
- whopa 16y agoThe kangaroo thing is an urban legend. Think about it, why would shipping kangaroo all the way from Australia be cheaper than locally sourcing beef? Hell, kangaroo in Australia costs more than Australian beef.
- Devilboy 16y agoYou don't need 'vision' or 'foresight' to listen to your customers.
- bradgessler 16y agoThe introduction of healthy choices on the menu back this up. People don't want to eat food that's bad for them. McDonald's can either respond to this or wither away.
- joe_the_user 16y agoThe point is that Facebook doesn't have the same competition...
- stanleydrew 16y agoBut Facebook is really only 6 years old right? That's not really enough time for a generation to grow. I think what we're seeing is that Facebook's user-growth is being driven by older and older people.
- ajdecon 16y agoI think it is, in the specific case of the generation Facebook initially targeted: college students in 2004. It's enough time for most of them to get their first job or two, and for some large fraction of them to start building a life with different requirements than college life. Many of them will have gotten married (median age of first marriage in 2007: 27), and some will have had kids. There's a dramatic shift there: most "family" people I know tend to expect more privacy and control over their lives, and be less focused on expanding their social life and sharing details with their friends. But this is anecdotal, I know: I'd love to see a study on how social networking use patterns change during this age shift.
- nostrademons 16y agoThere's a big difference between what a 19-year-old wants and what a 25-year-old wants, even if they're the same person separated by 6 years.
- bradgessler 16y agoI'd argue that the HRB article is right in that people who signed up with Facebook in college six years have since moved on to a professional career, got married, and/or had kids. These are pretty big changes in peoples' life and what they demand changes respectively. People that were sharing keg stand pictures 6 years ago today want to share pictures of their baby running around.
- sophacles 16y agoSix years is a lot longer for a 20something than the same six years for a 50something. Both in overall life percentage and in major life changes during that timeframe.
- joe_the_user 16y agoDealing solely with information, Facebook has a "slightly" larger problem than McDonalds ever did. It's not just that the Facebook needs to offer different fare but that the fare older adults want conflicts with the fare Facebook would like to offer in order to become profitable.