With a stalling stock, and tough competition from peers, it seems
Facebook is now getting a bit more than it bargained for. This probably
explains why they're hard at work improving their service, and
introducing more features such as Graph Search, video and voice calling, and some brand new marketing features,
the list is long, but doesn't end there. Facebook is introducing a new
location tracking feature, which will help Facebook friends who are
nearby to connect to each other. Additionally, businesses will be able
to reach out to customers and promote offers to users based on their
location. Apparently, this is a big change. But are we ready for this
kind of thing?
The evolution of the social media user
Back in the days Facebook was born, there wasn't really much concept of a
social media where people could connect and get together to form
private circles, share life events etc. Back then, Facebook was one of
the very few social tools for connecting. Fast forward now, and you'll
see a plethora of such services waiting to be checked out. The social
media user is no longer restricted to a few means of communication.
There are so many other tools that directly (Google+, Twitter etc) or
indirectly (Skype, WhatsApp, Instagram) compete with Facebook. Hence,
the competition may be too much for Facebook to handle in the long run.
Another trend that's been on the rise for the past few years is that of
users going mobile. More and more people are now using mobile devices to
surf the web. And an even higher percentage of social users use their
mobile devices for socialising. According to Facebook's latest 10-K
report, about half of its monthly active users are mobile users. This
clearly points to the eventuality that Facebook will have to find mobile
revenue streams as well, such as mobile ads, since around 85% of its
income comes from advertisements.
Facebook also seems to have lost some of its charm. According to a
study, around 21% of its regular users are now too busy to log in as
much. 10% think it's a waste of time, whereas another 10% have deleted
or deactivated their accounts for long periods in the last year. This
goes on to show that users are less and less interested in Facebook with
the coming days - all the more reason for Facebook to enhance its
features and bring life to itself.
Location tracking
With the world going mobile, it's no wonder Facebook has decided to do
the same with its location tracking feature. It bought a location
tracking setup in the form of a social media known as Glances last year.
And the year before that, Facebook acquired Gowalla, another
location-based social media. Now, combining the efforts, Facebook has
launched its own location tracking feature that is based on the push
technology. Push notifications will tell Facebook when a user is at some
place, and when his friends are nearby.
Great mobile feature? Probably. But breach of privacy? Totally! Users were already agitated on the photo tag suggestion feature.
So this new feature might just send the paranoid user into a frenzy.
People don't want their location to be tracked, and their whereabouts be
disclosed to a company that's made up its own little world out there?
Besides, this new feature would be a heaven for stalkers, which I am
sure none of us sane people want, do we?
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