Wired had a piece today about FB's revenue streams:
http://www.wired.com/business/2012/07/facebook-ads/
Unfortunately, the revenue streams outlined in the Wired article seem decidedly... stale. Daily deals ("Facebook Offers"), Sponsored Stories, "Karma" (virtual gifts), and sponsored App recommendations. Facebook’s ability to monetize a billion users seems a bit underwhelming.
Here’s what I think is happening: Facebook is selling itself short by trying to be nothing more than "the platform." This largely limits Facebook's revenue possibilities to advertising – as per the Wired article, and talk of funnels.
My premise is that instead, Facebook should be focused on what it is people want to buy in a social setting, and providing the best possible experience to do so.
One example of such thinking would be tickets to events. Events are a product that is consumed socially: When I go to a show, I do so with a group of friends. It would be pretty compelling if we could all buy our seats together (and next to each other!) with one click through Facebook, find out who else we know is going, walk into the venue with our phones as our tickets, and then share our photos/posts/etc of the event on Facebook in an "event timeline."
A really killer ticketing experience would be a perfect way to leverage the FB social platform and deliver a tonne of value to all of the stakeholders.
Facebook as a platform certainly works (see: Zynga), but I can't help but think that Facebook should be taking on certain transactions - like event tickets - themselves. Today, the Facebook way is to be hands off: Facebook provides the social platform and advertising venue, Ticketmaster builds a ticket purchasing app on top of it. Facebook loses out on the margin, and Facebook users get a sub-par experience (or have to leave the site entirely).
Thoughts?
For Facebook, that's not the case. I go to Facebook to see pictures and status updates from Friends and Family. I'm not looking for anything to buy, or for airfare prices, or movie tickets, etc. So I naturally tune out the right side of the Facebook stream and never - ever - click on any ads. And about 99.9999% of the time I completely forget they are there. However, when searching on Google, if I can't find exactly what I'm looking for I will frequently scan the ads on the right to see what's there. And that's been helpful, so I know I'll do it again.
Facebook needs to take advantage of something they have that others sites don't: real identities. They could totally kill eBay. My wife sometimes talks me out of using eBay because we just don't know if we can trust the person on the other side of the transaction. Facebook can fix that. You can see who the people are, know who they are connected to (use a 6 degrees of separation connection lookup, etc) and be assured (on some level) of a buyer's/seller's identity (trustworthiness) in a transaction.
Or something similar. They could then take a cut o the sale just like eBay. And I don't mean relegate this function to some part of Facebook no one would notice, but add a genuinely first class feature to enable something like that (or another equally useful commerce related activity).