Whither Facebook?

This week Mashable published a blog by a 13 year old New Yorker who laments the fact that now she’s old enough for her own Facebook account, it doesn’t live up to the years of anticipation.  You can read the full blog here.  So does this clearly tech-savvy teen have a point?  Has Facebook reached its sell-by date – or has it finally matured?

In its infancy, Facebook was the stuff of students.  In 2005, very few people outside the university system had come across it.  It spread like wildfire.  I first used it in January 2006, and I was one of the earliest adopters among my friends.   As someone who has travelled, lived in different countries and continents, it was another way to keep in touch with far-flung friends, and it was a breath of fresh air for someone who started online long ago, exchanging messages on clunky intranets and early email systems.  But, as Ruby Karp explains so clearly, whatever the cool features of the platform (and it was very cool when it started out!) you need friends to make it worthwhile.

The graduates of 2005 will be thirty years old now. They may well have young families.  But they are still there on Facebook, posting pictures of family outings rather than wild parties.  Older ‘early adopters’ have teenagers themselves, and here’s the rub: do those teenagers really want to be ‘friends’ with their mum?  Is that where their conversations are happening?  It’s something we tell our corporate clients – if the conversations you join in are not happening on Facebook, you don’t need to be there.  The trending platforms like Snapchat and Instagram will be more attractive to a teen – because that’s where all their friends are.  (Note to parents: you may have got the hang of Facebook but it doesn’t end there.  For safety, keep an eye on those trends, and try to follow what’s happening!)

The original student users and older ‘early adopters’ like me and my friends are watching the changes in Facebook since it grew up and floated on the Stock Exchange.  It’s not the latest hot social media platform, but it’s one of the strongest and most patronised across a wide age range.  And for the commercial world, it’s a gold mine.  The influencers in a family are generally the mums – who are the most prolific Facebook users.  The most effective marketing is word of mouth, and Facebook is a route to a huge body of consumers who will use the flexibility of social media to recommend or criticise openly.

Is this the future of Facebook?  The ultimate interactive marketing and feedback tool?  It’s maturing nicely now for the investors, but remember – that 13 year old will be making purchasing decisions in less than a decade.  How will Facebook engage her then?