Is Facebook having an identity crisis?

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JonBurdenNakedOpinion-thumb-200x133-233329.jpgBy Jon Burden, executive creative director, Naked Communications

Is Facebook having an identity crisis?

 

Could it be the site that allows people to curate and broadcast their own identity, is having an identity crisis itself?

 

A recent ruling by the Central London Employment Tribunal determined that 30,000 Uber city-drivers were ’employees’, with rights to minimum wages and holiday pay. Uber’s defence has always hinged on the argument that they are a technology company – a platform for self-employed drivers to ply their trade – as opposed to a transportation or private hire company.

 

But if it looks like a duck, and it quacks like a duck…

This past week, two of Facebook’s longest standing senior executives were at pains to reiterate that they too are a technology company (as opposed to a media company in this case).  But if we define (and I do) a media company as a property which aggregates an audience by successfully delivering content, and remind ourselves that almost all of their revenue comes from advertising, Facebook’s behaviour starts to look increasingly like most other media outlets I know.

 

So why cling to the ‘technology’ definition? Facebook isn’t a ‘gig’ outfit; they’re not doing it to avoid their responsibilities as an employer, and I sincerely doubt that their reported 1.7 billion monthly users would shut down their profiles if the company accepted the ‘media’ tag.

 

One answer might be that Facebook’s historical model of personal content in an ‘individual’ newsfeed is starting to flounder. Clearly Facebook is concerned; the organisation has set up a team in London to help develop a strategy to stop the double digit decline in people posting their own content on Facebook.

 

I can understand why Facebook doesn’t want to just become about sharing existing media and thus boosting other providers’ audiences, but as they look at new ways to capture people’s imagination, there’s precious little evidence the company is walking the tech walk or talking the tech talk. At the WSJDLive Conference, their Chief Product Officer, Chris Cox, spoke about rolling out a series of filters that reinterpret a live video in the style of painters like Monet or Rembrandt. It’s charming, but only one step on from Prisma, which has hardly enjoyed a massive uptake.  Of course Facebook has the reach to market art-inspired filters to a larger base – just like a media company.

 

Facebook has acquired more than 50 companies, of which many represent ground-breaking technology firms like Oculus and Surreal Vision. These acquisitions are largely about headhunting talent and, with the exception of Instagram, the original products have been mothballed or shut down. But simply acquiring great tech minds doesn’t make a great technology company, or even a mediocre one; a great technology company needs to pioneer in technology.

 

Let’s look at Google’s technology agenda for comparison: Google also aggregates an audience through content, and they have acquired a mind-boggling 190 companies.  But rather than shutting things down, Google pushes them forwards. They started Google Life Sciences about two years ago – with Andrew Conrad at the helm – as part of the company’s ambitious goal to expand into big industries such as healthcare and transportation. Sci-fi-like highlights include a Google-designed contact lens that measures the glucose level in tears of diabetics, and a cheap, disposable device the size of a Band-Aid to be worn on the skin to send blood-sugar measurements to a smartphone.

 

Throw tech innovations like Google’s Atlas Robot into the mix, initiatives around home networking, and of course the infamous driverless car, and suddenly Facebook’s efforts feel like they’re licking plastic balls in the padded toddler area.

 

None of this should detract from the extraordinary success of Facebook: MySpace, Flickr and Friendster have fallen by the wayside, but the Grandpappy of social media has avoided similar attrition rates and seen off the competitors.  But Facebook’s business model, and that of its acquisitions, is media content and media sharing, as opposed to technology innovation. I’m not sure how the company is going to continue to grow, and even their own executives are starting to protest too much and too long.

 

I opened by defining a media company as a “property which aggregates an audience by successfully delivering content.” Maybe Facebook presents the opportunity to create a new hybrid; one in which technology innovation and media content can overlap, but the key lies in Facebook’s own definition of “success.” If success is measured in ad buys or sales increase to third party technologies, then Facebook is a media company.  But if Facebook’s business model starts to honour its own corporate motto – “to give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected” – now that could produce some tech worth talking about.