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Gevril and Haurex Italia dinner during Baselworld in March 2011 with Larry Brauner standing in the background.
Baselworld 2012 is right around the corner!
Apr
20
How Facebook Pages Will Help Facebook Dominate the Internet
Filed Under Facebook, Networking and Marketing Strategy, News, Social Media and Social Networking Sites
You may already have a website or a blog, but do you have a Facebook page yet?If not, you will before long. Nearly everybody will create a Facebook page. I’ll try to paint the big picture for you.
Facebook pages are the public side of Facebook and are fully accessible to search engines. They are free and easy to set up.
Facebook is continually making changes to their pages hoping to enhance their utility and value. In my opinion:
Facebook pages are part of a grand plan to dominate the Internet to a far greater extent than Google does today.Once such change, seemingly minor, is the Facebook page “Like” button that supersedes the familiar “Become a Fan” button.
Facebook Introduces the Like Button
Facebook fan pages are now simply Facebook pages.
This notice appeared for the first time yesterday when I visited my Facebook page:
Starting today people will be able to connect with your Page by clicking “Like” rather than “Become a Fan.” We hope this action will feel much more lightweight, and that it will increase the number of connections made across the site.
Facebook Page Rationale
Facebook is changing more than just words or buttons.
Coming are Facebook community pages, which are going to be built around concepts rather than personalities or businesses. Facebook pages may also tie in to Wikipedia pages in some way. Will it not make more sense for people to “Like” community pages than to “Become a Fan” of them?
Consider this likely scenario:
Everybody and everything will have a home on Facebook pages making Facebook the largest website hosting service in the world.
Facebook’s Exquisite Revenue Model
All Facebook pages will be sponsored by ads as they are right now. Facebook ads work somewhat like the popular Google Adsense ads except for four key differences:
- Facebook inserts Facebook ads at their discretion, not yours
- Facebook earns revenue from the ads
- Google doesn’t earn any revenue from the ads
- You don’t earn any ad revenue either
Of course, Facebook could introduce premium services and, similar to Ning, let you to pay to:
- remove Facebook ads
- share in the revenue from ads
- use your own domain name
- turn nofollow links into dofollow links
- rank higher in their search results
Facebook already lets you pay to advertise and find people to “Like” your page.
Integrating Facebook Pages and Profiles
Facebook now also enables you to see which of your Facebook friends (if any, up to a maximum of 200) “Like” a particular Facebook page.
However, Facebook pages will become even more integrated with Facebook profiles and will serve to characterize each Facebook member’s interests and values. Facebook profiles will attract new members to Facebook pages, which in turn will attract others, creating a giant web of page and profile relationships.
Who wouldn’t want to have a presence on such a dynamic and connected Facebook?
Build Up Your Facebook Page
Can Facebook be prevented from dominating the Internet? Unless they commit a major blunder or suffer an extended outage, I doubt it. Consider the following five factors working in Facebook’s favor:
- Facebook pages (enhanced and expanded)
- An enormous and rapidly growing membership
- Facebook Widgets (which extend Facebook’s influence)
- Facebook Friend Connect (lets members easily log into other sites)
- Facebook search engine ambitions
If you have a Facebook page, I recommend that you build it up. If you don’t have one, create one as soon as possible.
Please “Like” my Facebook page and leave a comment below.
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Tags: Facebook, Facebook pages, Google
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Thanks for this great info, Larry. It would have taken me months to learn about and understand this.
Best,
Heidi
I’m a fan of Larry Brauner!
Excellent post, Larry! And a subtle point about “like” vs. “become a fan.” Even so, what do you mean by “dominating the Internet”? Do you mean get more traffic than any other site? Apparently, Facebook is already doing that in the US. But I am an SEO and for me to dominate the Internet means to dominate Google. The proposition that Facebook might come dominate Google search (sort of like Wikipedia does right now) is too unlikely. Between us, how useful are Facebook pages? They are only useful to the extent that marketing of this kind us useful, i.e., not really useful at all to the user. So should it happen that somehow Facebook pages will start coming up at the top of too many searches, I firmly believe that Google will… tweak the algorithm! And that will be it.
Larry, great stuff. I’m still left wondering how this will all play out in the communities page area where, for example, OHL, which has a fan page (or page), and there now exists a community page. However, OHL is an acronym used for a lot of different things, most notably (next to our company name) for the Ontario Hockey League. Wikipedia has been notorious for giving all the love to the hockey league and little to companies. Thanks, and come and “like” us on Facebook.
Larry,
Great post! So good I shared it on my Facebook page.
I’m wondering if you have any tips on creating good Facebook pages? I’ve got the basics down but thought you might have some more ninja Facebook advice.
Thanks,
Eunice
Larry,
Nice read here. I am with you regarding the popularity and the utility of Facebook. I think Ning is boring and kinda of like a yearbook that everyone passes around to be signed. I am shifting my free Ning sites and all my content to a better playground and I feel that this is a move that I should have done months ago. I have increased my newsletter sign up by 200% using Facebook. Using Facebook, I have been recognized and now am hosting my own live, local radio show called the Great Big Life. Facebook and Twitter, hands down, are victors on the marketing playing field.
Great article Larry and very timely for me. My boss is speaking about this at a writers conference soon and just asked me for some good web sites she could share.
Really enjoy your solid information
Gail P. Smith
Larry, Great article. I must say I have Facebook, but I’m not tuning into it as much as I should.In fact I’m ashamed to say that I’ve got three people asking to be friends from Facebook sitting in my email. I don’t know these people, and I’m not sure why, I just don’t seem to want to get a bunch of people into my Facebook that I don’t know. I did start Facebook as part of my blog and for all the reasons that one reads about: exposure, more traffic, and all the reasons you mention here…but for some reason, I just don’t see/understand where or how far one should go with this social network. Help me out.
Enjoyed this article! We own a shopping center in Arlington, TX and we are currently trying to build our Facebook Page. This post just reiterated the value and importance of having a presence on Facebook.
I’m sure Google is not going to sit back and watch this happen and with the new upgrades to features like Buzz they may erode the Facebook presence as time goes on. I guess we just need to watch and see.
@Heidi @Stephen @Gail Thank you for reading my article and commenting.
@Philip/SEO Intro Sometimes you have to step back and think outside the box. You are assuming that Google will always dominate the search market. What if that turns out to be untrue?
Placed prominently on the top of every Facebook web page is a search box. Right now you can use it to find entities on Facebook or see web search results from Bing. What happens when Facebook turns it into something more useful, and people decide to use it, because it’s there (and perhaps even more relevant) rather than do a Google search?
Furthermore, Facebook is attracting more and more customers for their ads. What happens when Facebook’s ad business starts to substantially erode Google’s Adwords business?
With a gazillion people to network with on the Facebook of the not so distant future and tons of Facebook page and profile content, isn’t it possible that Facebook will become the Internet?
Add Facebook cloud computing and Facebook OS, and all you will need is Facebook.
What Facebook has going for them now that Google doesn’t, is that they’re the biggest viral force on the web.
This is much bigger than tweaking some algorithm.
@Michelle It will work itself out one way or another by following the path of least resistance.
@Eunice I specialize in marketing, not web development. I recommend keeping your Facebook page as simple as possible. It is possible to create a landing page on a separate tab that has the look and feel of your main website. You may need to hire a consultant to help.
@Debbie Notwithstanding the many issues I have with Ning, I still consider Ning useful. I refer you to an article I wrote earlier this week, Ning Social Network Announcement Ruffles Some Feathers.
@jj You probably need a comprehensive marketing plan for your blog based on a deeper understanding of Facebook and the other platforms available to you.
@Lincoln Court Let me know if I can help in some way.
@Warren Microsoft didn’t sit back either as Apple and Google eroded their market share.
Larry,
Best article I have read in a long time on the topic.
The best thing about Facebook NOT being owned by Google is that even as long as Google stays the leader in search, Facebook has a way to monetize using genius strategies like the one you mentioned (letting people pay a premium fee for having dofollow links), and so on.
Google Local is making the yellow pages obsolete. and Facebook may just win the war with Google.
How many people actually like Buzz? Or is Google just going the Microsoft way of releasing horrible products and then improving and improving them until they’re halfway decent?
I can just imagine a Facebook computer operating system eventually!
Larry - great article. There’s millions upon millions of dollars buried in the advice you just gave Facebook.
No wonder your clients love your work!
Thanks Larry. I am going to share this. I agree, having a FAN / LIKE Page is sort of like having your own website. In fact, when I mentored some business women recently that do not have websites, I suggested they create a fan page as a web site until their actual site or blog is finished.
That makes FB the LARGEST website host I am pretty sure. Esp with the ability to have a vanitry URL once you have 25 fans.
I am very intrigued by the “community” point. I wonder what that will look like. You know I like to be on top of NEW stuff form FB.
Thanks for a great read.
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Thanks. I’ll be quoting a bit from this. Very insightful.
No, Facebook is not the biggest on the net. That would go to the Chinese IM/SNS integrated sites. But since it’s for the Asian language market only, most are ignorant of them and I prefer it that way. They don’t have the spam and porn problem that plagues the US. Oh, and they’re also PROFITABLE through the sale of virtual goods. Something FB hasn’t grasped.
As for the community page concept, you’ve seen how that turned out. It’s pathetic. What you’re missing is the point that they made them because of the ABUSE of fan pages by children and adults who can’t read instructions that fan pages are for BUSINESSES. That’s what happens when you open up to the masses instead of keeping it confined to verifiable credentials.
I’ve switched to a new college only site. Something Facebook should have learned to stick with. Too late to turn back.
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