4 ms·

Total users is a poor measure of value. Google's search is so valuable because people are using it to actively find something. Advertisers are looking to let

Total users is a poor measure of value. Google's search is so valuable because people are using it to actively find something. Advertisers are looking to let people know about their product/service, and the most valuable time is when someone is actively looking for it. Facebook, as currently constructed is much less valuable to advertisers, because most people aren't using it to find out information about products/services, and if they are, they're going to that brand's Facebook page. Facebook is still mostly "potential". The hope is that they can find a way to monazite their large user-base. The Facebook platform with credits has room to grow, but how many more iterations of Farmville are there? The biggest potential I see is with Facebook commerce. If they can leverage the credits system into an easy to use payment system for things other than Facebook games, they might have a winner. None of that is guaranteed though.

paganel 15y ago
> Facebook is still mostly "potential". The hope is that they can find a way to monazite their large user-base. There was a chart navigating the interwebes a couple of months ago documenting "time-on-site" for both FB and Google. As far as I remember FB had just managed to topple Google on that criterium, which supposedly made the latter "scared shitless" (to paraphrase a comment I remember reading on that story). Edit: I've found it - http://articles.businessinsider.com/2010-09-09/tech/29987553_1_google-sites-comscore-facebook http://articles.businessinsider.com/2010-09-09/tech/29987553...
- locci 15y ago
  Google is a search engine, not a content provider: the less time I spend on it, the better it works. On a personal note, I very much dislike the walls facebook builds around its experience: it annoys me almost as much as content farm popunders.
ippisl 15y ago
I think only ~50% of google's revenue comes from adwords. That's leave's 50% as a target for facebook. Also there can be other ways to measure intent. For example analysing content of chats or status updates in real-time. And given large amount of IPO cash + huge user base, maybe facebook can build a good enough or interesting search engine that could draw users. Also , facebook's data could be the basis of TV ad targeting when internet TV becomes the norm. So there's another revenue source. On the other hand, google can combine all sorts off data to get strong targeting, so it's not clear who will have better targeting.

paganel 15y ago

> Facebook is still mostly "potential". The hope is that they can find a way to monazite their large user-base. There was a chart navigating the interwebes a couple of months ago documenting "time-on-site" for both FB and Google. As far as I remember FB had just managed to topple Google on that criterium, which supposedly made the latter "scared shitless" (to paraphrase a comment I remember reading on that story). Edit: I've found it - http://articles.businessinsider.com/2010-09-09/tech/29987553_1_google-sites-comscore-facebook http://articles.businessinsider.com/2010-09-09/tech/29987553...

locci 15y ago
Google is a search engine, not a content provider: the less time I spend on it, the better it works. On a personal note, I very much dislike the walls facebook builds around its experience: it annoys me almost as much as content farm popunders.

ippisl 15y ago

I think only ~50% of google's revenue comes from adwords. That's leave's 50% as a target for facebook. Also there can be other ways to measure intent. For example analysing content of chats or status updates in real-time. And given large amount of IPO cash + huge user base, maybe facebook can build a good enough or interesting search engine that could draw users. Also , facebook's data could be the basis of TV ad targeting when internet TV becomes the norm. So there's another revenue source. On the other hand, google can combine all sorts off data to get strong targeting, so it's not clear who will have better targeting.