New Facebook fail or "like"?

Brian_Rice

Brian_Rice

Carbonite Member
So more interesting changes at the old FB. Now there's a subscribe button for people who have over 5,000 friends. I've already ranted before about and cheered on the reporting of people who set up profile pages as their businesses and fictional characters, and I wonder about the implications something like this has on FB's Terms of Service. Certainly more people than ever are now going to be inclined to set up faux profile pages. Why set up a fan page if you can have an unlimited number of "subscribers" to your profile page?

Personally I think it sets a bad example and is a slippery slope. Real celebrities with real followers have fan pages. The only people who seem to need the "subscribe" option are those people (but usually fronts for businesses) trying to exploit the network.

I think this was a bad business decision on facebook's end because it completely eliminates the need for a public figure to have a fan page, thus decreasing revenue for paid advertising per year for people promoting said fan pages in network.

I have no desire for Facebook to be more like Twitter, but I understand that they're watching a lot of people link FB to Twitter and so might see that as somehow losing revenue there?

I'm worried that things on FB will continue to change and we'll eventually end up with just another MySpace. This is certainly another step in that sad, sad direction.
 
There were a lot of steps before this. It's the cycle of the internet. Unfortunately, dumbed down seems to be the trend right now. That's necessary when the people who use it most are more interested in checking a news stream on their phone than getting into the details on a larger format. We're all at desktop (or sometimes laptop) computers regularly just because we're media producers, and we tend to like fully featured descriptions and sentences because we are business people and/or people who love stories and storytelling. The market is less interested.

I do definitely see your issue, but if they're not supporting profile based ads then there's a huge advantage for people creating pages. The people who have 5,000 friends - real celebrities - don't need to advertise anyway, so they're not contributing to the ad market. In my opinion it's a non issue that doesn't really change anything except to better personalize relationships between fans and a celebrity's publicist. They just want people and organizations to remain separate, which is fine.
 
One big difference between facebook and myspace is numbers. I don't recall myspace being nearly as widespread as what facebook has become; even great-grandparents have facebook accounts.
 
Okay, so after complaining about this new feature and seeing it as the single feature that will lead to Facebook's ultimate decline, I've decided to do a little experiment. I'm going to set up a fake profile filled with a bunch of half-naked chicks and will add-on the "Subscribe" button option.

This will lead to said profile being "suggested" as a "subscription" by Facebook in the sidebar. Which, before long, i's all your going to see in the sidebar of your facebook page. No more need for ads, no more need to pay facebook for anything, just half-naked chicks in the sidebar named "Lez Bianwholikes Menz."

What a waste.
 
I didn't mention this here, but I did in another conversation I was having on the same topic.

In the short term the new feature is amazing. For those who understand how to manipulate the system, much like MySpace, they'll see what would amount to hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of free advertising. MySpace was great for marketers and independents at the outset. Now it's effectively useless. Boys cannot help but click and follow pictures of half-naked women, and there are a good percentage of lonely women who cannot help but click and follow pictures of half-naked men. You aren't penalized for subscribing to 10, 20 or even 100K users. Thus all of those men, boys and lonely women will have walls that are essentially a running stream of free advertising updated every 3 seconds. People everywhere will want things to go back to the way they were before the subscribe button, but it'll be impossible, the lure of the half-naked profiles (really fronts for businssess) will be too challenging to release and Facebook will never see fit to *reduce* the amount of options offered. They don't have even remotely a spec of the amount of man power needed to police its product, and without the 5K max, the subscribe option essentially "deregulates" the entire system.

If you're trying to sell something *now* or are wanting to build a massive fan base *now* for zero marketing dollars, it's an exceptional opprotunity (like MySpace was at its inception). But mark my words, 5 years from now Facebook is MySpace. Facebook won't be able to sell adspace to save its life and it won't have any means of reigning in the beast it's created.

So get all your goodies while they're here. Especially those who missed the MySpace bubble. This is the beginning of Facebook's bubble. Burst to come.

And all because of one little button.

That's why kids shouldn't be running multi-billion dollar companies. When they make a mistake, it's for all the marbles.
 
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