Facebook: What’s it REALLY worth?
Weather UP; VAT UP; value of Facebook UP; New Year UP.
2011 already feels a more exciting place than 2010. But I guess it depends a little upon which platform you happen to be observing events.
I’ve just made a rare sortie to my Facebook page to be greeted by someone’s feet. I’m afraid that may be why I don’t often bother to go to Facebook.
The feet are perfectly enticing, but as I set about my day, do I need them right now? Do I need to know that assorted people have written on my “wall”? Do I get excited that seven people have “poked” me in the last week and that three people have asked me to “be their friend” today?
Facebook is full of time-consuming diversions. Potentially hugely attractive and amusing, I have no doubt…but then I have no time for either.
Twitter, on the other hand, is focused, fast, informing, and the future. I am told in the newsroom that part of the $50 billion that Facebook is now worth is ME! I am told that I have a monetary value – I am so excited by this concept that I have practically fallen off my chair as I write this.
Then there is my blog. One of my New Year resolutions is to test the true value of blogging. Does blogging add much to the sum total of human understanding?
On Snowblog we have a developing community of respondents. But does the blogosphere have as much potential for interaction as the Twittersphere? Should I blog less and Tweet more? Is Iain Dale right to have hung up his blog? Where is our discourse taking us? Is there anything that we are doing that is making the world a better place?
And perhaps most particularly today, does Facebook make the world a better, happier place? Or is it adding to the communal disconnect as more and more people burrow into their key boards, head down, engaging with people they don’t know and will never meet?
Hang on a minute – isn’t that exactly what I do every night on the telly?
The Facebook bubble is down to QE2, says Faisal Islam
Facebook isn’t worth $50bn: it’s really worth a lot more, writes Benjamin Cohen
Related posts:
- Psst! Young blogging talent about!
- Twitter reigns! and I’ve got my bike back
- No thanks for my Manx banks blog
- Helen Mirren made my Baftas marathon worth it
- Strangers on a train: part one
There are 41 comments on this post
I agree when you say you find twitter more useful than facebook – but I find twitter most useful when I can click through to a blog/news article/ further info, so I would say both the tweets and blog are the best way forward!. It means I can choose how much info I consume, either a 140 nugget, or an extended dissertation (if the mood really takes me!). Either way though, twitter allows me to choose what information I receive and how much of it. Facebook on the other hand gives me a stream of updates about farming, pirates and hangovers!
I tried facebook,and found it the most banal,load of rubbish to have been put into the public domain,these last few years.When i found that i was sending messages to my contacts without actually doing so , i decided to send a message to the effect that if a message was received from me do not open it as it must be a virus.I have not been on since.
I found it annoying ,that people whom i had no idea existed could ask me to be their friend.The only advantage i see of facebook is in a big brother surveilance society THEY can keep an eye on you.
As for tweeting, my only knowledge of it, is that birds do it.Can one tweet a 1000 profound words at a time?Or is it quick fire responses to serious subjects? Perhaps i might have a look !!!
I do love the blog to put my point of view.To point out the absurdity of the Socialist dream,and generally point my fellow bloggers in the right direction for a better world.Can i do that on twitter???
Twitter superior to blogging? What did you drink over Christmas?
Blogging at least allows some space for reason while twitter comes down to ‘you wrong, me right’
Can you imagine trying to do Fact Check on twitter?
The thing I find most interesting about this blog with its regular contributors and new additions by the week, is how quickly people’s personalities emerge. And also how the discussion can tip my view, albeit slightly. Why even Adrian has occasionally said things I agree with
So no more of this tigger-like flirting with novelty, Jon. We need at least four blogs a week from you, especially on stuff that even C4News doesn’t have time to cover.
Agree re blogging, Sam. But don’t dismiss Twitter. I joined because I heard Jon mention it at the end of C4 news once. Must confess, I thought: ‘If he thinks it OK, perhaps I should drop my prejudice against it – no particular reason, just prefer real to electronic contact – and give it a try’. Haven’t stopped using it since, as a campaigning tool and means of passing on useful links. Here’s one from today’s Guardian – Adrian, you too will be interested in this, I think – which follows from yesterday’s posting on previous blog re UK’s forests/woodland up for sale:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/jan/03/forest-of-dean-protesters-woodland
I follow Jon and Julian Rush and find useful links in return.
Facebook? Never used it and no interest in doing so. Don’t like the name, reminds me of the gross ‘in your face’ phrase. I’d rather email/phone/text friends and family. Benjamin Cohen’s explanation turned me off it completely.
But we need the blog, Jon. Adrian’s been won over to LVT – land-value tax – and I severed all links with an LVT-support organisation one of whose members was offensive when he asked a perfectly sensible question. NB I’m still a supporter of LVT!
A good place to start in your community building is putting the thumbs back
Placing a like/dislike click is as rewarding as making a post – if someone has already summed up my view it saves me expressing it. And when a post is published, seeing others agree with it is gratifying, seeing disagreement is edifying. No harm in being wrong when others put you straight.
Voting enhances user engagement because it creates a dialogue between users. That dialogue creates and consensus. With the thumbs, you can see the opinion of the audience actually shift. Without the thumbs you can only ever see opinions aired. What you get is conflict: bunfights between super-users which put off newcomers.
The dialogue should be not between Ch4 and its users, but between the users themselves – when you disabled this, you disabled the entire community.
Bring back the thumbs!
well said,Tom.Ably put that even the most hardened moderator should have a tear in the eye at the thought of all the thumbs up i might get
Observation, Communication, connection,takes us further to understanding views, sharing views, realisation that views are not dramatically different . Language and interpretation share a large part in understanding our our commonality.
Take away the platform , the trappings and strip it all down to its barest. From whichever standpoint the compound eye looks from, most desire similar.
How to achieve these things brings us back to the beginning ; observation , communication and connection.
Facebook, a lighter type of vehicle for the above serves well for those who can relate more easily, for it is the younger generation who seem to have adopted its pages.
Twitter is fast and I agree more practical for news and factual movement of information. It also has a directed message section which allows friends and families to keep in touch quickly.
If I talk along with other bloggers to Jon Snow on the blogosphere ,the communication is less cleansed than an edited format of the mainly visual. The blogsite becomes a focus group providing evidence of attitudes, opinions and emotions. Remember on the box we can see if you are emotionally affected , but where is the reciprocation?
i had a brief dalliance with farcebook and found it bland and un-creative, myspace used to be okay but it’s tried to become like fb and it’s latest interface incarnation is literally unusable.
twitter is encouraging and i follow almost every m of p who has a account but generally speaking none of them let slip anything of proper interest and it can be a chore scrolling thru the tweets.
i like the challenge of trying to convey thoughts in a hopefully cerebrally challenging fashion within the one hundred and forty character limit but i would never resort to a mixture of txt style speak and it annoys me when tweeters do it. as others have mentioned it’s great for linking to blogs and videos, but one thing i can’t abide is those who near constantly post “positive thinking” and/or the famous quotes of others as i find it lazy and patronizing.
i wasn’t present on the jon or any other c4news blogs when there were “thumbs” but without them perhaps it encourages lurkers or new readers to get replying rather than be anon via a simple yay or nay click.
here’s to captain jon’s blog stardate 2011-
love long and prosper
Facebook is of very limited value unless you want to keep in frequent touch with distant relatives/friends – it does save on phone bills and time-consuming emails. Unfortunately it’s full of silly frills, games etc. which the bored/aimless/brainless are fond of. A couple of years ago I wrote an article for our local paper on the time-wasting shallowness of social networking sites, and their potential for eroding the capacity for developing genuine relationships with real body language and all the associated nuances of spoken language; I called it “Get a Life!” I received some very nasty comments about that. It seemed I’d touched some raw nerves.
Twitter is too trend-conscious for my taste, although it apparently provides a valuable outlet for important events that otherwise
would be subject to official censorship, e.g. the 2009 demonstrations in Iran. There are too many people on Twitter I’d like to “follow”, too many campaigns I’d want to support, but I just don’t have time for all their tweets, so I gave up on that.
Jon, please don’t give up on this blog. I don’t agree with Adrian’s “blandness” comments at the end of your last blog; I find it very lively. Irreplaceable!
Annie my “blandness ” comment was to promote reaction on a dead blog.It almost succeeded
You’re such a stirrer, Adrian!
For me, Facebook is a place where I (rarely) post the odd Flickr photo now and then and where I let old friends back home in Sweden know I’m still alive and kicking.
Twitter is different. Part from (errhhm) C4 News, Twitter has become my main news input. Instant. Snap – click – retweet – thousands of people can be reached in seconds.
Plus, I have met so many of my twitter friends in real life. These people, previously unknown to me, have enriched my life in ways I thought was impossible.
However, Twitter wouldn’t be half as good had it not involved links to blogs, articles, photos and videoclips. Therefore – blogs are an in depth platform for where 140 is not enough. I need it myself, when the urge for a blog post comes on. I’ve noticed 140 is not enough even for Iain Dale, so there goes his new, blog free life! Keep this blog going Jon!
I have to admit that right now, today, this minute, Facebook does mean a lot to me, for once. It is my only way of contact with my daughter who is in Thailand with her boyfriend. That contact is worth a lot more than $50 billion to me!
I totally agree about Facebook,, a total waste of time. I live in the Philippines now and Facebook is very popular here. I was persuaded to join but very quickly realised it was just not for me. Big Brother is alive and well sadly, Twitter gets me up to date interesting news from around the world
Just left Facebook. Utter waste of time. Twitter & links to info is the way forward.
The real danger is that life happens around us while we just read the commentary…
I too find Facebook annoying, bland, facile but also strangely compelling. It is useful to find out more about organisations such as charities or supporters of artists/politicians/thinkers.
Twitter’s strength, 140 characters results in short, sharp messages, but is also its weakness. So people soon caught on to using it to link to websites and blogs where the arguments can be more fully expressed.
Unfortunately, many links are used to push traffic to unhelpful or unpleasant websites.
Can blogging make the world a better place? Not sure, and worried that we are all so busy writing what we think are important messages, calls to action, critiques of our leaders that nobody has time to read the really important ones.
I don’t believe in conspiracies but what a great way to ensure that we are all too busy complaining that we will never take any action to put things right!
Sometimes it feels like Facebook is like reading those awful Christmas round-robin letters for 365 days a year.
In contrast, Twitter is more like an online equivalent of going down the pub. People sometimes talk of load of complete bollox, but you have the option of not listening to that awful pub bore in the corner.
Tedious usual pretentious guff in the comments about Tweeting/Blogging for the high brow and Facebook for the stupid masses.
There’s a lot of Facebook that I don’t like such as the games and awful virals/viruses that do the rounds but it’s pretty easy to hide them. Ultimately I like it because it has all my friends on there and is the best way to socially interact when we’re not face to face.
“Tweeting/Blogging for the highbrow and Facebook for the stupid masses.”
That’s just silly! Even the most generous would be hard-pressed to find anything highbrow about me. If you mean people who like to try & think independently, who like to read books & decent newspapers (and to watch real news channels!), & who find it a pleasure to be able sometimes to interact with other people in words of more than one syllable, well guilty as charged. However, if you’re trying to manufacture some quasi-point out of this, about the “educated” and the “great unwashed”, well, on yer bike, mate, it just doesn’t follow. Non sequitur, don’t ye know.
An amazing snobbery materialises over these sites. It wasn’t long back that many, many people were dismissing Twitter as a complete waste of time – What changed? As has been said, Facebook has it’s uses for keeping up with family at least and I have recovered old friends I may never have bothered contacting otherwise. If Facebook had any sense though it ought to strip itself down and go back to basics – It is becoming like Elvis Presley – Fat and frantic.
Facebook- who Know if the valuation is right or not. I’m sure there will be more interest over the coming weeks. I’ve used social media for some time, but like many other people I know they are concerned about privacy.The increased level of advertising and the annoying applications that I get bombarded with also detract from the initial experience many years ago.
Facebook will need to evolve to maintain its primary position as the number one social networking site.
People who want just to network socially may eventually choose an alternative if the advertising and security issues persist too long?
Spot on there. I see it that someone will come along with a stripped down version of Facebook. “Back to Basics” sort of thing. After all – Look what happened to Friend’s Reunited once F/B came along. The same thing could happen again.
If you’re having problems with applications and certain photo’s appearing on Facebook, then you’re doing it wrong. Or at least your friends are.
Ignoring apps takes less than a second on your News feed. Facebook is NOT there for speedy access to current events and celebs, it’s there to stay in touch with friends and family. You know, people you know rather than the ones you wish you knew. It says more about your own friends and way you treat FB if you have an issue with it than you know.
Snobbery really has no place in this, really. They’re tools with different purposes – I use both, and both have their uses. They are, however, very very different beasts. Forcing one to be other other simply doesn’t work, comparing them only does superficially. Dig deep and many of the problems related to these sites by people are actually down to their own deficiencies rather than the site themselves.
Or rather – a bad workman blames his tools. Or his friends, in this case.
Unfortunately many bad workmen are employed in the public sector.Or not necessarily bad ,but just into bad habits because there is no market place discipline.
Twice in the past 3 weeks i have had occasion to call out my council to water problems .On both occasions the caller stated he couldn’t do the repair because he did not have the equipment , yet i had specified the problem.So 4 visits for two simple repairs .Where is the logic or financial restraint in that?
I’m not entirely sure I follow your line of reasoning. Either that or you’re running with the metaphor a little bit too much?
Squarejaw, you are quite right,but the metaphor fitted,where it doesn’t seem to as regards “social networking”.I think Jon’s news item said it all , with his economics editor(there seem so many of them )openly bragging about how open he was on his face book site.What a dangerous place it is.It is open to all sorts of unsavoury characters, from murderes , and thieves to paedophiles.How innocent the majority of the public are and how gullible.
I mentioned i had had what i believe was a virus!Does that mean someone i did not wish had infected my site? Or had someone hacked into it?It is as dangerous as the guy who runs wikileaks and his little band of saboteurs,who believe they are above the law and can do as they wish.It breeds that type of individual
Jon,
A not-so-Freudian slip there from your FIRST blog post on this subject…..the one you deleted.
Yes, quite right, you ARE just an economic unit. So is everyone and everything else. That’s the way capitalism and the stock exchange casino works.
So what’s new, apart from shyster novelties like Facebook and Twitter?
All you have to do is come up with a new idea and persuade everyone else it’s what they NEED. Then you can dip your fingers in the pork barrel.
L. Ron Hubbard did much the same thing with scientology, as does the Vatican and all those loony christian fundamentalists in the US…..to say nothing of murderous arms industries. They’re all cut from the same grubby cloth.
As a silver surfer, I find Facebook far more useful than Twitter. I find Twitter a realm of posers who sem to want to reveal details of their lives whicvh are of interest only to them. On facebook I meet friends and friends of friends and enjoy swapping news/photos/jokes, etc. This way we’ve met several of our daughters’ friends long before we met them physically. Actually meeting was like meeting old friends rather than new ones.
Ultimately I rather like the joke that Facebook, Youtube and Twitter agree to merge and form “YouTwitFace”.
Facebook has no real value – it can be replaced in a year by an alternative that has no central control and no intrusion from advertisers or other interested companies. I have an app that blocks all the ads as it is – I use it because it is easy to find / keep in touch with people. But to write a replacement program that people can use for free, and keep control of all their content, is a trivial matter. There is no great technology behind it. It grew because it was cool and fun and has toy like applications and games on it – this can all vanish rapidly. Is it worth fifty billion? no. Keep in mind it only earns a net profit of a few million each year.
Benjamin Cohen mentioned tonight the way Facebook tailors ads to suit profiles. Guess what ads I’ve got tonight:
1)Tired, faded & shabby? What does your sofa say about you?
2)Low Pension Income? Use our free equity release calculator.
3)Reading Bucket list. Things to do in Reading (READING???) before you die.
Ho ho ho.. that’s how to lose a Facebook member.
I think twitter is better. Its immediate. And you can stop and start following as and when you want and the good tweeters take you into interesting stuff.
But facebook best for games and personal events.
Best not to think people are really friends.
As with many developments in IT, Facebook, Twitter et al often start out as ‘a solution looking for a problem’. What then happens is that the ‘problem’ emerges (quick broadcast to disciples, group social therapy etc) and the successful products take on a more solid form.
Then the cash-box starts to get hungry. The driving aim of all web-services is to monetise the thing, to find ways of generating cash back to the mother-ship. That usually works OK for a while, until the more alert users eventually realise that a service which started out quick, slick and focused is now really targeted at its revenue-generating profile, rather than its usefulness, and that’s when they start leaving.
And that’s when the next bus comes along. More like shooting-stars than robust enlightenment.
Would I value Facebook at £50bn ? Today, possibly, but tomorrow, almost certainly not – the short history of the Interweb would consistently confirm that. I’ll not be putting my sparse pension on it.
Jon- I am aware of your interest in the Palestinian issue and wonder if you could give some attention/airtime to the Gaza Youth Breaks Out manifesto on Facebook .
Incidentally I was told yesterday that Facebook owns everything posted on it. Is that true?- scary.
$50 Billion? Where did that figure come from? A Facebook post perhaps?
Hey Jon. Keep up blogging it is the way forward. Much better than Facebook. Facebook is ok for flirting but that is about it. Facebook is totally censored and definitely not worth 50 billion, if Goldman Sach are to be believed? Lest face the facts Goldman Sachs don’t have good record on being fair and true. It looks like a crafty way that they can scam some more money for their greedy clients.
Part 1)
I have to disagree with you on this subject Jon. I cannot see Twitter as the future and I kind of predict that the ‘Twitter effect’ will wear-off sooner than later.
To tell the truth, there isn’t even much grounds to compare both, other than the ‘tweet/status update’ – they are completely different tools and to compare them might be not to understand them.
My relationship with Twitter have been frail and I strive to try to understand its usefulness at all. As one of your followers today said, and very well, “Twitter is great if you’re a celebrity, if not it’s a tad boring”.
A good experiment for you could be to create an anonymous account on Twitter, without the Jon Snow brand, and then to try to make any sense of that website. Try doing this for a week, perhaps it will help you in your pursue of “the true value of blogging”.
I have to agree with Squarejawhero, and I think he is spot-on when he says that on Facebook “you know people you know, rather than the ones you wish you knew”.
Part 2)
I understand that the reason why you have 38000+ followers on Twitter might be the fact that there are many online who seek to stay informed, but I’m sure that more than 1/10 of those you may not even know them. Now, seriously, how many of the three million + Jessica Simpson’s followers do you think that she knows, and how important can her ‘tweets’ be for society in general or its understanding?
I also think that Twitter on its own is quite a poor tool which lacks content, and thats why a great amount of the ‘tweets’ there are accompanied by a link.
My relationship with Facebook was not always an easy one, and even after most of my friends and family having their profiles in there, I still took a good couple of years before I conceded defeat and joined them. After the first week of trying to fit in I gave up and stayed away for at least one month. Then, after a lot of insistency from many I finally decided to give it a try.
Part 3)
I too have no patience for the games and quizzes that happen there all the time, but a few adjustments here and there and they no longer bother me. Facebook is much more content rich then Twitter, and surprise, surprise, something that you may not even know, you can also blog in it. I do some of my blogging on Facebook (to a limited audience of course), those on my friends list get to read it and then, if they like it, they can share it with their on friends.
As my Facebook followers I have family, friends, work colleagues and people who I have met through business or leisure. I am the one who decides who to have in my friends list, and they too have a say on that. As for the kids playing on Facebook… Thats what kids do. If anything, Facebook is great for bringing together so many different generations.
Part 4)
As for “adding to the communal disconnect”, the people who I have as friends on Facebook are people who usually I see face to face on a daily basis or family and friends who are separated by the distance, so no, it doesn’t add to any disconnection with the real world. It is my opinion, that Twitter will add to the ‘disconnect’, as most of the people on the followers list are complete strangers, people who often we will never know.
I have an internet connection since 1997 and since then I have connected myself to social networks, in a way or another. I have seen many of those platforms coming and going all the time, and I’m sure that for Twitter and Facebook too, its just a matter of time. I anyway see Facebook as a more robust platform and one that is here to last for much, much longer than Twitter.
The interesting thing about facebook is they have more web pages than anyone on the planet About 2,950,000,000 results according ot Google,
twitter = 1,030,000,000
IF facebook has 2,950,000,00 pages and Goldman Sachs values them at 50 billion dollars that is 16.95 dollars a page. What Popycock. How long are we gonna let these Banksters get away with these scams. Based on this Twitter would be about 15 Billion.
Facebook’s system just generates pages at a frightening rate allowing it dominate search engine results. That is why they have become the goliath they are.
It’s just most of it is rubbish and nonsense….
“But does the blogosphere have as much potential for interaction as the Twittersphere? Should I blog less and Tweet more?”
I haven’t counted them, but that single statement is somewhere between 80 and 100 characters. “Tweets” are limited to 140. Just how developed can an argument be, if it has to fit into 140 character bits? Other modern media are less blatant, but the need to respond immediately has a similar effect – the discussions tend to miss all the “ifs” and “buts”, and turn into shouts from polarised positions.