What comes after Facebook, for Facebook?

John Herrman sur BuzzFeed :

Facebook the site and Facebook the company are, to most users, indistinguishable. But Facebook may be entering a period of immense change, which could pry site and brand apart. “The business is going from a major transition from desktop to mobile, and you’re seeing a generational and use-case fragmentation of social connectivity,” BTIG analyst Richard Greenfield says.

“On the desktop, they were a platform,” he says. “On mobile devices, they’re just another app. If their app becomes more interesting, they have to either create new ones, or buy new ones to keep people engaged.”

[…]

But while the internet moves fast, the world of social networking moves faster. Facebook, once a leader in almost every category it touched, now leads in almost none: It’s not the most exciting picture service, nor is it the next big messaging service, video service, mobile texting service, or news-sharing service. The only thing it definitely is is the leading identity service — something that a lot of sites are trying to take away from it.

En gros, ça sent le sapin. Même si l’échelle du nombre d’utilisateurs du service fait que Facebook ne va pas mourir demain, on peut sincèrement s’interroger sur son avenir. Phénomène étrange, autour de moi, peu sont ceux qui utilisent encore le service par plaisir. C’est devenu une sorte d’habitude quotidienne, limite une obligation. D’ailleurs, quand je pose la question “Pourquoi tu es sur Facebook ?”, la réponse quasi systématique est “Parce que les autres y sont”. Ce qui, selon moi, n’est pas une bonne raison (en tout cas, pas une raison suffisante).

Amusant comme tout cela rejoint bien l’article de Benedict Evans, au sujet de Facebook Home (et de Google Glass):

This applies even to Google or Facebook. There’s lots of data showing the high proportion of online time that people spend using Facebook, and the high volume of web searches that they do using Google. Facebook and Google are important. But that doesn’t mean they’re everything.

When I was watching the launch event for Facebook Home, a loud alarm bell started ringing for me when Mark Zuckerberg said words to the effect that “phones should be about more than apps – they should be about people” – by which of course he means “about Facebook”. The problem with this is that actually, we’ve spent the last 6 years making phones about more than just people. People use Facebook on their phones a LOT, yes, but they do a lot of other things as well. If all I wanted was a phone about people I’d be using a $20 Nokia with a battery that lasts a month.

L’utilisateur est volage et Facebook cherche donc un moyen de le garder captif. Facebook Home était une tentative. Manifestement, un échec.

Alors, quel avenir pour Facebook ? Est-il condamné à voir l’activité de ses utilisateurs diminuer petit à petit, tout comme ses revenus publicitaires ? Ou devrait-il s’orienter vers un modèle Premium: un abonnement mensuel pour profiter d’un site ad-free ? C’est très sérieux, et c’est le co-fondateur de Twitter, Biz Stone, qui soumet l’idée:

Anywhoo, now that I’m using it and thinking about it, I’ve got an idea for Facebook. They could offer Facebook Premium. For $10 a month, people who really love Facebook (and can afford it), could see no ads. Maybe some special features too. If 10% percent of Facebook signed up, that’s $1B a month in revenue. Not too shabby.