Facebook would like to partner with telcos and pursue more revenue potential by promoting brands according to the firm’s director of online sales and operations in EMEA, Colm Long.
Speaking at the TM Forum on Wednesday, Long spent a significant amount of time evangelizing to the telecom industry about the importance of “social commerce,” while maintaining that Facebook kept people at the center of everything the site does.
“People are the foundation of everything we do on Facebook,” said Long adding that users could customize the site into their own “personal newspaper” where all content was selected by the individual and their friends. “It’s about the people you connect with, the brands you connect with, all the content is completely user generated,” he said.
Long quoted his colleague Chris Cox, VP of product at Facebook defining identity in the modern age as “the sum of all things which an individual is connected to.” Meanwhile, Facebook, he said was “the projection of that identity into a digital space.”
And quite a digital space it is, boasting over 500 million users worldwide with 50% of those returning to the site on a daily basis, more than 250 million active mobile users and over 30 billion pieces of content shared each month.
The social network has purportedly also become the largest photo upload site on the net as well as the number one chat platform and recommendation engine.
60% of people are finding jobs through friends, said Long, adding that 90% of people trust friends more than critics for music recommendations.
“Word of mouth is the best marketing tool there is,” he explained adding that close to 98% of content on Facebook was user generated.
“It’s not just about an Internet of things, it’s about an Internet of people, where identity is really at the center of everything,” he declared adding that one was much more likely to click on something if someone sent it to you.
The notable take-away for brands, then, was that the few could activate the many on such a network where sharing opinions, likes and interests was so simple and fast.
“Your friends are there. You don’t have to put the effort into doing this,” he said, seemingly proposing that marketeers leverage their friends and family to spread the word for the brands they work for.
Long had some advice for companies thinking of entering the Facebook brand fray, though, encouraging them to get their houses “in order” first, figure out what they were trying to sell and then setting out to create viral content.
Companies like Levis and GAP have already seen remarkable success using the newly launched Facebook “Deals”, seeing a 50% one day sales increase for the former and selling out of 10,000 pairs of jeans in a day for the latter.
Despite talking to a room full of telecom executives, Long didn’t appear to have particularly tailored his speech to mobile, other than to note that Facebook was probably the number one app on many smartphones and that consumers were “demanding” that their carrier provide access to the service. Even in countries like Indonesia and India.
“We have strategies around emerging markets that are all built around mobile,” he commented adding, “we’re not going to build those around desktop because it’s never going to happen.”
Ubiquity, said Long was the true key to Facebook’s pervasiveness and while Long didn’t discount the possibility of partnering with carriers he stressed that any deal would have to be “mutually beneficial.”
While the firm is being stand-offish about telco partnerships, however, Facebook does seem to want to leverage outside resources to enhance its platform. “We are pretty resource restrained. We achieve everything through partnerships,” said Long emphasizing that the site did not involve itself in verticals. “It’s the same for mobile, we’re not planning to build things ourselves, we expect people to partner with us,” he declared.
Feeling somewhat apologetic later in the Q&A session, Long later toned down the arrogance a tad to admit that Facebook should be sharing revenues with the Telcos, because it is they who are building the pipes. Google, however, said Long, should be contributing more money as it is creating a far bigger over the top (OTT) experience.
Long also discussed Facebook’s “dirty little secret” – revenue. “There is revenue” he said, noting that ads were an important part of Facebook’s cash flow. “We have a big opportunity to work with large brands,” he continued, noting “we have massive audience, with great reach who are present and engaged, which is a decent business for us today and we see it as a growing opportunity going forward.”
Gaming, said Long, was also a key category and source of revenue, after a rule change a little while ago allowing Facebook a cut of every transactional fee made in games on its platform.
While this may seem like a dubious cash flow, Long reminded the audience that in its first day, Farmville sported 100,000 users, growing to 20 million daily users after a month and 70 million daily users after just three months.
