As the social networking phenomenon has moved from a cautious curiosity for advertisers, to a bona fide ‘goldrush,’ what are the new numbers saying, and is this a lasting enterprise?
Bloomberg’s Business Week reports that advertisers on Facebook have increased spending 10-fold in the past year alone signaling a new era of taking this once marginal idea, very seriously indeed. Currently it’s estimated that there are 500 million users of Facebook making it the world’s largest social network, by far, and the speculation is that its CEO Mark Zuckerberg will let momentum continue to gather before making a public offering of the company in perhaps 2012. Whatever the case may be, things are definitely heating up and the money is starting to roll in for both clients and Zuckerberg.
Besides courting advertisers (there identities remain undisclosed by FB), the company is also making shrewd acquisitions of small start-ups hoping to capture the best young emerging talent to continue the current success. Vaughan Smith, Head of Corporate Development, said quite succinctly in the article that, “This (the acquisitions) is working for us, and it’s working for the people that we’re acquiring.” He went on hinting that these acquisitions will probably move from the realm of start-ups, to much bigger fish, very soon.
Nonetheless, Facebook will have to tackle the privacy issues that have plagued its users for the past several years. Another media analyst in the article summed this point up nicely by saying that the advertisers want to see that users are there to stay and aren’t fleeting – this will require that it preserve its “user base” and not create a backlash like the one earlier in the year. But, for now, everything is coming up roses for Zuckerberg and Co.
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