What's the long term plan for Facebook ?
Apr 10, 2020
31 Comments
Is it always going to be ads or is there some other revenue generator that I'm missing ? WhatsApp will likely always be a user retention play. Instagram is promising but are there other drivers of growth ?
Tc : 275k
comments
All businesses are at risk when you look 10 years into the future. It's nearly impossonle to accurately predict what might happen.
My point is that even the blue app is growing and making more and more money. Fb isn't invincible and like past behemoths, it can suddenly decline, but at the moment, beyond negative media sentiment there is no sign that it began.
Advertising will be cut in the short term, but it really depends on the business and its dependence on online marketing to make money.
The engagement spike and adoption of services that didnt previously pick up will NOT convert into 100% newly retained users, but a subset will retain and that will have positive long term effects.
Another effect of the pandemic is that many business globally are forced into the digital world to survive. This major shift will remain post-Corona and will give the online giants another boost.
Lastly, I must say I'm always confused by the diversification question. Saying that the entire ad business is just one source of revenue is like saying that any business that depends on money transactions is dependent of a single monetization source. Advertising is HUGE, growing and much of it hasn't yet transitioned to digital.
The need to diversify is not necessarily to move out of advertising and it's more about diversifying the advertisement types and the advertising surfaces (e.g. reduce dependency on a popular surface like news feed for example).