Learning from the competition

[Arzina222]

facebook-home-htc-firstFor example, the lock screen constantly shows status updates from your friends with photos. From the home screen, you can quickly post messages to your Facebook page and you can chat and post status updates via Facebook from all your mobile apps. Facebook wants to use this to bind users more to itself, to bring its own advertisements to the forefront and to push competing providers more into the background. The app has now been downloaded 500,000 times, but that is still far from a success, compared to the millions of users of other apps .

Battle for the user
It is a typical reaction of a company with a dominant position that is under pressure and therefore wants to impose itself more. It fits in perfectly with Microsoft, Google and Apple, all of whom compete for the favor of the user, the consumer. The user benefits from freedom of choice and apps are easy to install and remove. On the other hand, users sometimes appear to be less attached to their old services than expected. Internet Explorer and MSN turned out to be acceptable alternatives to Netscape and ICQ respectively.

However, companies eventually miss the mark with this strategy and alienate users. Microsoft learned this with Windows. Google is increasingly under fire for forcing manufacturers who want to use Android on their phones to also prominently install other Google products such as YouTube and Google Maps. Google has now proposed adjustments to meet the criticism of competitors and users.


Instead of pushing itself further, Facebook should come up with new innovative services and listen to what users want. What can it learn from the success of its competitors?

First of all, 'apps' should be very easy to use. Checking and sharing status updates can be done faster with Twitter, chatting can be done better with Whatsapp ( rumor has it that Google recently had its eye on it ), calling works fine with Skype and exchanging photos is easy with Instagram (for that reason bought by Facebook for no less than 1 sweden phone data billion dollars). And if you share what you find beautiful or interesting, Pinterest and Tumblr are popular. In short: simple apps with not too many different functions that you can quickly switch between.

Secondly, there are competitors that offer more possibilities for preserving privacy, such as using fake profiles (Facebook 'forces' the user to use their real name), closed networks for 1-on-1 exchange (such as Path), determining how long and how often others can view your photos that are then automatically taken offline (such as the fast-growing Snapchat ) and not remaining in your timeline indefinitely. And social networks that make it possible to share messages or updates only with specific groups in your social network, such as Google Plus with its 'circles'. After all, your parents and colleagues do not have to see how drunk you were with your friends on Queen's Day.

Google glassAs a third option, Facebook could focus more on innovation, for example by introducing new services that enable a richer exchange of feelings and emotions: a next step after chat messages and status updates. The exchange of short videos via Pheed and Vine (from Twitter) is growing rapidly. Furthermore, we see Samsung experimenting with brain-computer interaction and Google with Google Glass. Several companies are working on smart watches with extra sensors. Truly innovative concepts that could give a new impulse to social networks in the long term.