A year ago the venture community scoffed at application startups who were dependent on Facebook. Today, Facebook is not just where you want your app to run, it is also your most important tool (through Connect) for driving traffic to your site.
To my mind, this makes Facebook the new Google.
The power of Google over the web was manifested by the emergence of SEO and SEM as cottage industries in and of themselves. In the early days, SEO was a dirty little secret that sites like About.com and IGN used to build audiences far bigger audiences than could less insightful competitors. But then the rest of the world caught on and SEO/SEM became a standard part of web marketing.
Today, understanding how to leverage Facebook is eclipsing the importance of SEO/SEM as the future of web marketing. Some of our portfolio entrepreneurs are all over this, and those who aren’t are getting an earful from us on this topic.
Gregg Spiridellis, founder and CEO of our portfolio company JibJab, recently posted on Inside Facebook on the dramatic impact Facebook Connect has had on JibJab’s user growth. JibJab was one of the masters of using email to drive viral marketing. But using Connect dwarfed the power of email. As Gregg wrote:
It took us 8 years to reach 1.5 million registered users in the era of email. It took us only 5 months to acquire the same number of users on Facebook.
We used to get 2 to 3 email recipients for every piece of content shared by a user. Today, we are seeing anywhere from 12 to 20 clicks back to JibJab.com for each post into the stream. Because of this, we have completely subordinated email to Facebook stream publishing in our product experience on JibJab.com.
Another portfolio company of ours, LOLapps, has not only learned the power of the Facebook platform but in fact is building a business out of helping app developers publish on Facebook. Originally focused on enabling Facebook end users become app developers, LOLapps recently has launched a platform for game developers to build and publish games on Facebook. While still in its early days, early signs are promising as the first two games launched on the platform were both among the top 10 fastest growing games on Facebook last week.
And yet a third Polaris portfolio company, Sprout, is building a business helping brands build and publish social advertising campaigns on Facebook (and other social networks).
That giant sucking sound you here? It’s Facebook, pulling users, entrepreneurs, brands and web businesses into its grasp.
4 responses so far ↓
Giff // November 15, 2009 at 11:28 am |
I agree, Google SEM is no longer a great user acquisition strategy for most startups because price points get bid up. Using social word of mouth through Facebook and Twitter tends to be more effective, and companies like Zynga have seen good results directly advertising on FB as well. I think StumbleUpon and the like are hoping to also tap into the “user acquisition” money getting pushed out of Google. Entrepreneurs just need to pay very close attention to Facebook policy changes and shifts in best practices.
Michal // November 16, 2009 at 1:51 pm |
I don’t agree. If Facebook is the new anything, it’s the new MySpace. MySpace was cool back in the day too.
Marshall Clark // November 16, 2009 at 3:10 pm |
Facebook has opened the door on social-mediated Discovery of new content, but good old keyword Search still meets the needs of the majority of people on the web.
What I’m really fascinated by in all of this though, is the potential to use social graph information to build a next generation search engine – one that incorporates social influence instead of just PageRank (http://www.bit.ly/128U9V).
The prize goes to whoever nails social search first. Google’s got a bit of an uphill battle since much of the necessary social graph data is currently locked behind Facebook’s walled garden. Should continue to be an interesting fight.
İsmail YK Facebook // November 16, 2009 at 3:52 pm |
Thanks for good documentation.
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