Facebook’s only weakness: Mobile | Hacker News Reader

Facebook’s only weakness: Mobile

extremetech.com

23 pointsukdm5 comments

"We do not currently directly generate any meaningful revenue from the use of Facebook mobile products, and our ability to do so successfully is unproven."

I don't think it will be a problem if management is aware of it and is taking measures to correct it. Also, smarthphones evolving will also help them. Good for them to have identified their main risks and weaknesses.

I also disagree that relying on advertising revenue is such a bad risk for Facebook: so does Television and their business model has been succesful for a loong time. Not to mention their largest rival Google also relies on ad revenue.

"I also disagree that relying on advertising revenue is such a bad risk for Facebook: so does Television and their business model has been succesful for a loong time. "

It's not a problem to rely on advertisements as a main source of revenue, but Televisions have commercial breaks. What Facebook is afraid of is that most of their users won't even use the website at all, and only the mobile app. Or to continue the Television metaphor, it's like having all the TV watchers switch from TV, to TVs without commercial breaks. poof goes the revenue.

This makes a lot of sense to me now. I have been scratching my head at some obvious and simple things Facebook left out of their otherwise fantastic mobile applications on the platforms I use. Windows Phone has a great built-in Facebook client, but when I'm viewing my status, all I can see is how many people "Like"d it. To see who it was, I have to go to their website. Likewise, I can't add new friends from it. On WebOS (IMO the best Facebook client I've used, but I've never used the iPad app), it's fantastic but there's absolutely no Facebook Chat support anywhere in the entire OS. On Android, Facebook and Facebook Chat are two different apps. Both need to be running to get the "full" experience, and I'm sure there are still things missing.

It seems every platform is missing something, and it makes sense that they would deliberately give you basic functionality to use but require you hit their website for the full experience (and full ads). In a world of "apps just launch the website", Facebook is taking the opposite approach. Apps are the gateway drug to the full version.

I have always wondered why Facebook does not display any ads in their apps - after all, the traffic generated by mobile devices and iPads must be substantial. Perhaps that was the reason why they did not plan any iPad app at first - forcing users to view ads? I'm sure that they will do fine, though - the desktop won't die soon. I often find myself switching to the browser version because I can't stand typing more than a few words with a soft-keyboard.

That is far from their only weakness. They have really weak ad-clicks-per-users numbers. They rate at which they add new users has been slowing drastically.

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