I recently had the opportunity to sit on a Facebook Deep Dive panel which allowed me to think about Facebook looking forward into 2010. Here’s a few of my Facebook predictions for 2010 that I shared:
Facebook will go far beyond Facebook.com
Facebook interaction isn’t always on Facebook.com, and that trend will accelerate in 2010. While Facebook would love for you to spend all of your time on their site, they know that they can’t force that agenda, nor do they need to. Content and interactions between real individuals and brands are the bedrock of their value, and while page impressions help with advertising, capturing interaction data and building ubiquity is far more important.
Adding “Share” and “Become a Fan” links are a first step, but they are rudimentary. And, of the hundreds of thousands of sites leveraging Facebook Connect, most are merely scratching the surface. Expect to see progressive brands performing much deeper integrations in 2010 that better take advantage of Connect/Open Graph API, and in turn Facebook itself.
Facebook’s on-site search will evolve
Facebook has dabbled with their on-site search, but they haven’t done anything all that impressive. The promise of a true ‘social search’ where results are catered to the individual user is something that Facebook is uniquely qualified to provide. Facebook’s latest redesign (still not ‘live’ at the time of this posting) is a clear indication that search is something they will be giving heightened importance to.
How Facebook handles on-site search results of its own content as well as content from the greater web will evolve throughout 2010, creating both challenges and opportunities for marketers. What Facebook delivers with search on their own site may very well be something completely abstract to how we understand search at present.
Facebook will do far more for local businesses
Businesses are flocking to Facebook – there are currently more than 700,000 local businesses with Pages. And, these local businesses are important to Facebook. Last year nearly 75% of Facebook’s TOTAL revenue came from local businesses and advertisers ($~229 Million). The rapid uptake in Facebook user mobile usage (currently 65M of their 350M active users) as well as the popularity of sites like Yelp present a further case for Facebook.
On search engines local continues to be a hot topic and area of rapid growth. Numbers vary, but depending on what data source you believe somewhere between 20% and 40% of all Internet searches today are local in nature. Expect Facebook to expand its offering and presentation of local businesses in ways that pay dividends to businesses that are active with Facebook’s various interaction points and have Fans that interact in-kind.
What predictions do you have for Facebook in 2010?
Follow me on Twitter
Get the RSS Feed
Subscribe via Email
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Interesting post, Scott! I am intrigued by your thoughts and look forward to seeing them unfold.
I like prediction number three. Geo-targeted advertising is becoming more and more popular, indeed.
Great post on your Facebook predictions for 2010. I agree with all of them especially regarding local businesses. Facebook is the #2 most visited website in the world so local businesses can definitely benefit from all this traffic. Pretty soon Facebook will be a non-stop shop for people. It will be interesting to see what other innovations the people at Facebook will come up with. Thanks for your insight.