Trying To Justify That $2 Billion Pricetag, Facebook Expands Beyond Students

from the now-more-like-myspace dept

Thu, Apr 27th 2006 10:13am — Joseph Weisenthal

Here's one you couldn't see coming. Social-networking site Facebook is expanding beyond high school and college users. However, instead of just opening it up to anyone, which might rob it of its uniqueness, they're opening it up to employees at select corporations. So now, instead of it just being a tool to allow a student to hook up with that person in their Gender in the Fin De Siecle class, someone in sales at Intuit can flirt with their cute colleague in HR. It's no surprise that they want to expand their userbase. The company is open that they want to sell out for $2 billion, while at the same time there's evidence that their traffic is flagging. They may have waited too long, however, to go after this market. Lots of me-too starupts want to be the MySpace of the enterprise.

19 Comments

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Steve, 27 Apr 2006 @ 11:14am

Tech folks
Given that the attention span of the average techie these days is about one wee...ohhh...loook....a router...
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- Jezsik, 27 Apr 2006 @ 11:36am
  
  Re: Tech folks
  Thanks for the laugh ... I needed that!
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- Cowards -R- Us, 27 Apr 2006 @ 11:37am
  
  Re: Tech folks
  wow.. um, so distracted are you that you cannot even make a point. If you are that distracted, how could you even find the submit button?
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  - A different Stephen, 27 Apr 2006 @ 11:49am
    
    Re: Re: Tech folks
    Geez, thanks for killing that one
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silentrite, 27 Apr 2006 @ 11:53am

hm...
Not a bad idea, since a lot of the people at my office are on MySpace. At least facebook is a little more professional.
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- some dude, 27 Apr 2006 @ 12:06pm
  
  Re: hm...
  more professional? i didn't realize attention whoring was a professional business
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  - Anonymous Coward, 27 Apr 2006 @ 6:41pm
    
    Re: Re: hm...
    whoring is one of the world's oldest professional businesses
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CJ, 27 Apr 2006 @ 12:05pm

wow.. um, so distracted are you that you cannot even make a point. If you are that distracted, how could you even find the submit button?

looks like you need your joke-o-meter recalibrated.
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Hairball, 27 Apr 2006 @ 12:08pm

bad idea
IMO this is not a good move for facebook. Facebook is known for being the college and soon-to-be college student's social networking site. I don't see how expanding to 'select corporations' will help their cause. If i'm going to flirt with a colleague, i'll walk to her cubicle (office if she's really hot) and ask her to dinner or something. I can only imagine the sort of trouble someone will get in with their company by posting something stupid. Like that ever happens, right?

And another thing... who decides who these select corporations are?
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chris (profile), 27 Apr 2006 @ 12:17pm

re: hm..
"i didn't realize attention whoring was a professional business"

try working with developers sometime. not only is it a business, appearantly it pays well too.
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Sean, 27 Apr 2006 @ 12:18pm

Select companies
The 'Select Companies' is probably like

What company do you work for? (Insert your company here)

Yeah that is one of them.
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- Another baseless comment, 27 Apr 2006 @ 2:24pm
  
  Re: Select companies
  If you had used Facebook then you would know that you must have a valid email address at the institution that you are supposed to be invloved with. I had to use my student id to regisiter (not my social)...so that leads me to believe that they have some type of agreement with the universities...and I'm sure that businesses would want an even larger level of assurance that someone is infact an employee.
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Jeff, 27 Apr 2006 @ 12:45pm

Re: Select Companies
Hum, so I can flirt online with my two collegues?.... Don't think it is for my company.
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tk., 27 Apr 2006 @ 1:07pm

uhh
Sweet, another potential URL to add to the company's block list.

I'll buy facebook for a $2B buy in. Then I'd dismantle every little piece of it, because it's becoming so stupid that no one needs to be exposed to it.
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Dan, 27 Apr 2006 @ 10:00pm

how long till thefacebook gets blamed for someone getting fired a la myspace? i give it 6 months. bets anyone?
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Doug Sherrets, 28 Apr 2006 @ 10:15am

My analysis of facebook adding companies from Augu
Hi,

I wrote about this on August 31, 2005. Check out the article: http://www.minorityrapport.com/2005/08/facebook_for_al.html

I wrote a new post yesterday: http://www.minorityrapport.com/2006/04/fun_it_actually.html

It will be interesting to see the adoption curve at companies.

Doug
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- Judah Wilson, CEO Top20Network.com, 30 Apr 2006 @ 10:54am
  
  Doug, you were right, and here is why
  One word: Branding. The reason it will not work in the corporate world is becuase the branding for the site was solidified when they chose to go for high school students rather than businesses. The first wave of seniors that graduated after Facebook became popular (May of last year) was the market Facebook had to get. Facebook was hot, and a large portion of their users were heading to the corporate world. Facebook missed it, and as soon as privacy issues surfaced, the students that sparked the original movement (students at top 20 schools) stopped using the site. I predict that from here on student usage will steadily decline.
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vrdjipi@mail.ru, 3 Aug 2006 @ 4:31am

nd more. From website .
ringtones free
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Anonymous Coward, 3 Aug 2006 @ 4:31am

s
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