Facebook has both growing pains and gains
Chris O'Brien
Issue date: 1/11/08 Section: News
By fall, the non-Yahoo deal was a dim memory. Microsoft took a $240 million stake in the company, giving Facebook an estimated valuation of $10 billion to $15 billion.
With Facebook threatening to become a juggernaut, Google responded by launching an Open Social initiative that would create an open-source standard for writing social networking applications. And over the past few months, just about every Internet company was trying to articulate its social networking strategy.
But beyond the Web, even traditional companies and marketers latched on to social networking as a way to change the way they related to their customers and employees.
Toward the end of 2007, Facebook found itself once again in the crosshairs of privacy advocates with the launch of a new advertising platform called Beacon that critics claimed tracked too much of its members' behavior.
This probably won't slow Facebook much in 2008. And the company and Zuckerberg clearly have the long term in mind. Speaking about Facebook applications, he recently said, "We're going to work on this for years," he said. "It might take 10 years before this is a mature platform."
That's in part why the far wider embrace of social networking by business and culture will likely affect the way Silicon Valley operates for years to come.
"Most marketers are now looking to incorporate social media in their markets," Owyang said. "So this is just getting started."
With Facebook threatening to become a juggernaut, Google responded by launching an Open Social initiative that would create an open-source standard for writing social networking applications. And over the past few months, just about every Internet company was trying to articulate its social networking strategy.
But beyond the Web, even traditional companies and marketers latched on to social networking as a way to change the way they related to their customers and employees.
Toward the end of 2007, Facebook found itself once again in the crosshairs of privacy advocates with the launch of a new advertising platform called Beacon that critics claimed tracked too much of its members' behavior.
This probably won't slow Facebook much in 2008. And the company and Zuckerberg clearly have the long term in mind. Speaking about Facebook applications, he recently said, "We're going to work on this for years," he said. "It might take 10 years before this is a mature platform."
That's in part why the far wider embrace of social networking by business and culture will likely affect the way Silicon Valley operates for years to come.
"Most marketers are now looking to incorporate social media in their markets," Owyang said. "So this is just getting started."
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