Facebook's new Timeline application
Day 3 of the Global Leadership Meeting and it’s ‘The Future According to Facebook’, a presentation from the company’s Blake Chandlee. Fitting it took place today as it is Facebook’s eighth birthday. Yes, it is only eight years old. Think how much the world has changed in that short space of time and how much Facebook has changed the world. And Mark Zuckerberg has now reached the grand old age of 27…
So, rather than the future according to Facebook we should accept that the future is Facebook. So much so that at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos last month, President Peres said; ” Facebook….is the most important force in the world to get rid of fascism.” Like.
There are now;
- 800m active users of Facebook
- 350m Facebook mobile users
Every day;
- There are 2 billion posts
- 500 million users
- And 250 million photos uploaded
And bear in mind that Blake said the Facebook journey is only 1% finished! Think what the other 99% of that journey might bring. As Blake stressed, the Web is changing fundamentally; the Web is being rebuilt around real people. ‘Disruption’ is taking place and brands must embrace, not reject, that disruption if they are to grow and flourish in the modern world.
For Blake there are two big Facebook developments, one current and one planned.
First Timeline, which he described as ‘an evolution of where we are going as a company.’ For Facebook, it is now about ‘stories, not moments’, a ‘living legacy of who I am.’ No more fading photos in the attic when you reminisce with your children. Such stuff are memories are now made of…
And next month sees the launch of ‘brand story telling’. It is still under wraps but the essence is to introduce brands to Facebook users so it becomes mutually beneficial i.e. brands will be connected to things and people we care about. And it won’t just be ‘Like’; it will be storytelling, with brands as part of the actual experience in a social context. Think word of mouth marketing on an incredibly large scale.
The future according to Twitter, Google and Facebook in just two days. And the ones to watch, according to another guest speaker, the investor Mark Kingdon, Pinterest, Fab.com and Flipbox. Remember you heard it here first….
Brian Beech, Managing Director