Is Facebook the Infernos of social media?

By October 25 2011, 10:16 am 3 Comments
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The Facebook backlash has begun. Respected software  analyst Ray Wang has called the social media darling the ‘AOL of our generation’ Adding: ‘Facebook doesn’t respect privacy, brands are over-reliant on Facebook and it will come back to bite them.’

Earlier this month Laurent Vernhes, CEO and Founder of Tablet Hotels, compared Facebook to a giant nightclub where you go with your friends and do a bit of flirting. In contrast if you build your own community on your own website you can foster interesting conversation where people get heard. Adding: ‘If you don’t build your community on your own site, you don’t control the richness of content.’

The comments follow the plethora of posts by users ‘dumping Facebook’ and falling out of love with the world’s biggest social network.

Complaints from agencies that Facebook has become ‘arrogant’ and the sheer enormity of the numbers and data that Facebook hold make this backlash feel somewhat inevitable.

So is Facebook the Infernos of the social media world, where brands will struggle to be heard over the noise? (For those who are not familiar with the infamous Clapham nightclub, think sticky carpets, loud music and men who inexplicably wear Lifeguard T-Shirts all year round.) And what is the alternative – do brands risk creating beautiful ivory towers of their own communities which no one, bar the agencies that created them, will ever visit?

The truth is probably somewhere in between. You can’t argue with Facebook’s  numbers but brands need to spend more time and effort finding niche networks and building their own content driven hubs. The nice local pubs to Facebooks’ rowdy nightclubs, where you can get a seat, hear yourself think and have a proper chat. (In my case it would be the Idle Hour or the Tim Bobbin). Because lets face it Facebook friends often aren’t real friends at all.

Discussion

  • Martin Thomas

    This isn’t really a backlash.  For devotees of Gartner’s hype cycle this is merely a case of a technology moving beyond the breathless hyperbole, through a brief period of disillusionment before reaching some level of maturity.  

  • Flavia Giardino

    I don’t think this is a backlash. I reckon that brands are struggling to be heard as Facebook users are looking for more than just branded content. Social media is more about socialising, and not selling. It’s not only about being creative, but adding a real experience into their lives. 

  • James Campbell

    Haha like the comparison between Facebook and Infernos!

    However, I do feel that now “brands being heard over the noise” on Facebook isn’t necessarily their goal. Facebook has become such an entity that it has almost become a necessity rather than a choice to have a presence.. and that doesn’t mean using it as a sole communicator to stakeholders to be heard over the noise, merely just a presence, impactful or not.

    To use a similar comparison to yours (Facebook/Infernos vs Your website/Local pub).. a lot of people have heard of Infernos, they go there because a lot of others do, it’s easy (some might say in a lot of ways!) and is familiar/accessible. ‘Idle hour’ and ‘Tim Bobbin’ are not as familiar, not as many people go, there are not as many shared experiences and they’re not talked about all over the world.