Social Media & Digital Marketing in Singapore

Why I Think Facebook’s Popularity Will Rise In Two Years

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The reason is simple: it comes down to demographics.

Last week I was casually looking at the profiles of people who joined Facebook while they were in school, and those who joined Facebook while they were already in the workforce, and one main difference struck me. Keep in mind that this is by no means a scientific method of “research” but casual observation. Remember that Facebook was started out as a social network for college students to share stuff like timetables, and for those of us who started it while in school, it may well have been used for those purposes and connecting with people in the same classes.

The Big Observation
I realise the people who were in school/are currently in school, tend to have much more friends on Facebook than those who were part of the workforce when Facebook appeared. I’m not sure if this is surprising to anyone, but to me, while the number of friends in itself doesn’t necessary say anything explicitly, it does suggest a number of implications:

1) We’re used to this mode of communication
Some days I realise I don’t have someone’s phone number with me, but we’re friends on Facebook. So I whip out my iPhone, log into the Facebook mobile application and I can send them a message and expect a reply back pretty quickly. And not all messages are created equal. The tone and context of a Facebook message is different from that of an SMS or an email, bringing a certain level of flexibility to communications. I think Gen Y will learn to leverage this mode of communication more and more in the future.

2) We’re used to being searched
We know that employers and colleagues screen us on Facebook. We know how to blend our personal and online profiles to get across who we really are on our Facebook profiles. This may differ from people who aren’t used to sharing information about themselves or pictures of their family. I think this enhances our ability to connect and build relationships and networks.

3) We’re used to adding “friends”.
It’s not at all uncommon to attend an event one night and be tagged in a Facebook photo the next day and become friends soon after. The old definition of “friend” becomes looser all the time and these loose links may actually turn out to be the most valuable of all, so there’s a lower barrier to adding these aquaintances. (Caveat: it doesn’t work when you’re obviously a pushy marketer out to collect friends rather than build relationships)

In addition to these three points, obviously with time, more people we know will get on Facebook from friends to family to co-workers to business partners to casual connections online, and that will only enhance the network effect and that will be a big factor in keeping Facebook “sticky” because people simply won’t switch to another social networking site unless most of their network does too. And when “most of their network” translates to easily 500 friends, it’s no easy task to induce a switch.

So why two years?
Simple, that’s the time it would have taken for all the people who joined Facebook in the first few years of its’ existence, to have graduated out of school and enter the workforce and start using it as a real social connector and virtual rolodex. I’m pretty sure this will lead to reversals of decisions to unblock Facebook and perhaps really solidify the wave for social media marketing via social networking channels by people who understand them the most.

This of course is my possibly skewed view. What do you think? Do we use Facebook any differently than people even slightly older than us? Is there a greater propensity for us to connect or is it a level playing field? The comments are yours.

Tags: definition of friend, employers screen facebook, facebook, facebook application, facebook demographics, facebook friends, facebook mobile, facebook popularity, facebook profile, facebook search, facebook searches, Gen Y, generation y, loose links, social media marketing, social networking channels, used to facebook communication