A Million Users Isn't Cool. You Know What's Cool? A Billion Users.
Few days back Facebook touched 1 billion active users. Quite an achievement I should say. Facebook is now becoming the benchmark on how social networking will be measured in future. Leaving aside the privacy and advertising avenues that are a concern , following are the things that Facebook has achieved in a big way.
1.Facebook is an extension of your real life
In a pre-facebook world , most online social networking provided an alter ego for a real person which is basically an avatar. You can have a pseudo name and in many instances what you do with the profile does not represent the real YOU.
Often we come across people who by concealing their identity under some weird avatar, talk total non-sense ,post abusive messages and make the environment totally unhealthy for all users.
But Facebook brought the real person into the virtual world and made Facebook their extension of real world. People have real name and their own photo as profile picture. You cannot have pseudo names .People in your life - your friends and relatives are the ones' who are friends in Facebook.The way how you conduct yourself with family and friends when you meet them in person is the same you will be on you facebook.You will not say anything so stupid that will make your friends and relatives embarrassed .
Facebook is not your alter go but is the real you.
Keeping oneself as real has made the whole ecosystem healthy. For people who are free thinkers and want to talk anything in the world that are either abusive or disgusting,Facebook is not the place. You can look somewhere else like Twitter.I do not see many pseudo avatars that can talk total non-sense by concealing their identity in Facebook.
My whole family including my dad , brother and relatives are in facebook. So I take utmost care and attention as to what i say in facebook and so are other people. Facebook has kept people in the network as how they are in the real world - yeah so people who fake in real life will continue to fake in Facebook as well. But again Facebook is not about getting to know the real you , your inner dark secrets but a way of keeping in touch with you.This according to me is the unique selling proposition that made Facebook credible and lead the way for mass adoption.
2.Facebook redefined consuming content and sharing
Though RSS reader was preferred choice for reading content via feeds, Facebook made reading content on the web more easy and relevant. People have now stopped visiting different websites every day for read news. Instead subscribe to news which is being served into our timelines directly.Based on how relevant the news item is,we click on the link and visit the website to read whole news.
One of the awesome aspect of Facebook is that it considers itself as a platform, preferred to co-exist with all content providers and made sharing easy. Every content available on the web can be easily shared via Facebook now.
Sharing music/videos is just a click away . This has what made people come back every now and then to the site.
3.Facebook Connect makes connecting with new website made easy
Before Facebook connect,it is a pain to register in new websites .Every website will show a big user registration form and mandate a lot of user information. Open ID was a standard that was meant to solve this problem,but it did not work out because no one preferred the approach.
With Facebook connect , all it takes now is to register and sign in with help of Facebook in few clicks.
This takes away pain of registering with different user id/password combinations in every website.And most of the mobile apps that is being developed has Facebook connect that makes it easy to get jump-start with friends.
I would be happy to pay Facebook a subscription fee for the awesome service that is being offered if they can take steps to minimize or remove advertisement in my timeline. I understand that for Facebook to deliver services they need money. And yeah, there are many users like me who are willing to subscribe for the service and keep Facebook free from spam