Hacker News Reader

Comment by tomerico | Hacker News Reader

Facebook may have not yet found its cash cow, but it has a huge potential. A few ideas from the top of my head:

* They could compete with Groupon (Or buy them). Groupon is an inherently social business, and Facebook can enjoy it. * They could compete with Skype and other VOIP service. Perhaps replacing telephony. Almost everyone has facebook, and you already have you friends inside, seems like a pretty direct step (After all, people come to facebook to communicate). * They could replace photo sharing websites (Flickr, Picasa...) if they just improved their photo's app (e.g. being able to view high resolution images). * They have the potential to become the internet ID for everyone, so that you could log in to almost any site with facebook.

I can probably come up with many more... I think the real question is whether Facebook can execute or not.

View on HN

You are simply listing all the internet services and arriving to the conclusion that people will use it because they already have a facebook account.

They will not replace Flickr. Anyone who cares anything about photo sharing or has slightest knowledge about sharing photography will not diminish the value of services like Flickr. First of all "just being able to view high resolution images" is not as easy as you think it is. Can Facebook truly scale providing support for it? Will people who share pictures on facebook even care for those things? Wouldn't you rather have ease of album creation over viewing exif data? Flickr and Facebook are different. I think Flickr cannot be replace.

They have the potential to become the internet ID but would you want to create a Facebook profile to have an ID? Many people would rather support things like OpenID. And would you want to login to sites using your Facebook ID, where the website could really scrape info about you?

They can compete with Skype just as GTalk is trying to or countless other messengers are trying to. But I am sure there are many who prefer Skype over these services in the offices and at home.

While I agree with your comment, note the following

All the problems you have mentioned are engineering problems.

Flickr might be irreplacable right now, but (if you'll excuse me for crossing the memes) what if Yahoo kills it?

They could certainly do many of those things, but how would they monetize them? It's easy to compete with another service if yours is free and their costs money (which is why many casual users I know use Facebook and don't have a Flickr account), but if Facebook charged for improved photo-sharing features, as it seems like it would need to if that was how it was going to support itself, then it might be a more difficult value proposition.

Same thing with Skype-like VOIP services. If you're offering free calls, sure you can get users. But the second you start charging, you're going to be competing with Skype et al on merit (and for the much smaller number of users who are willing to pay a non-zero amount for the service), and they have a big head start.

It sure doesn't look trivial to me. Facebook doesn't have a "natural advantage" versus other players in any of those fields. In fact, it seems like they'd be at a disadvantage, since those companies are specialized -- they can afford to put all their effort into being the best photo-sharing service, VoIP service, etc., in order to get people to open their wallets.

I'm not as bearish on Facebook as the author but I do think they have some significant challenges ahead. Translating users (even engaged users) into revenue is a challenge that lots of other companies have failed at, so their success is in no way certain.

Apart from Groupon, all the services you list are free.

Google brings in 23+ billion a year on free.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com