WHAT DOES FACEBOOK’S MOVE TO MOVIES MEAN FOR MEDIA COMPANIES?

Recently, Warner and Facebook announced that they will be offering the rental of the movie Dark Night on the social networking site.

I’m sure even if they wouldn’t want to accept it, this move by Facebook has given many new media startups and media incumbants sleepless nights. The announcement even sent Netflix’s stock down. The billion dollar question is, is this a real threat to media content distribution companies or just another move by an over-grown startup that is trying to own everything else online, of course apart from search which Google already owns.

If you have followed Internet companies for at least 6 to 7 years, you should know that every move facebook makes should be taken seriously.

If you look at their continuous iterations and for the fact that they have more than 600 million registered members, you will see the large distribution power they have over anything. If there is one thing they learned from creating a huge open platform, is that the money is not on the platform itself (facebook) but on ecommerce services third parties have shown them how to create, grow and monetize off their own platform. This is the best thing about creating an open platform and giving users and third parties control, you get to tap into their creativity and ultimately find monetization ways you wouldn’t have thought of. {This is a complete post on its own on how to get users to creatively show you how to monetize}.

So Facebook can definitely give media startups a run for their money and yes, we in the business should be worried. Even media companies and startups in Africa should be worried, this is why;

Facebook is good with taking things Global, advertisers may argue Facebook ads are not as effective as Google’s adwords but believe me, Facebook ads are more geo-targeted.

Facebook’s global strategy was one of the reasons they beat myspace. Facebook grew well with International markets and Myspace was still bigger than Facebook in America.

Big brands are all jumping on the Facebook ride. It’s completely debatable if this is going to last or not, afterall we’ve seen AOL. But personally I believe Facebook is different and could get even bigger than Google. Facebook taps into our behaviour to design how we interact and use the site, so unless human behaviour completely changes, Facebook is here to stay (I know this is a very bold prediction, still I’m ready and willing to make).

Social gaming is very succesful on Facebook, and social TV could even be more successful. Facebook can even make local social TV successful for their recorded success in scoring local advertising deals.

If Facebook could connect people based on their interest and location through movies and TV? Boom!! It would be the biggest media company. I’m not exagerating here...
So with all these, what do you do as a small video content startup?

1. Niche Distribution.

This is debatable because Facebook is divided into networks and that covers lots of niche markets. Still if you have a huge reach in a niche, lets say lovers of movies in a particular African language or setting, then you have a stay of execution.

2. Exclusive content.

Netflix is moving to create it’s own network quality TV content. You need exclusivity to differentiate and that exclusivity is going to be hard because the content owners will go to someone with bigger distribution to produce more revenue for their content.

3. User experience

This is the one that will actually determine if you’ll win or lose. User experience in media design is everything. Content of course is king, and once your technology doesn’t suck, the one with the best user experience wins. If you can beat the geeks in designing for viewing (social networking and watching a show or movie are active and passive things respectively) since the people at Facebook may not hit the nail on its head the first time, then you’ll get some much needed traction in time.

Even though the Netflix boss said “people don’t go to Facebook to watch movies”, we at AfricaMars media are taking nothing for granted.

Facebook is bigger than just a social network, its becoming a global community and in every community people live, eat, work and do so many other things. Same with Facebook, people mainly connect on facebook, but soon they will work on it, discover information and entertainment on it, may be even study and of course always go there to kill boredom (watching movies) ;)

Social Media Marketing: Twitter "follow suggestion" best thing yet!

I believe the only reason Twitter has not surpassed Facebook is due to its poor early user retention. (strictly my own personal opinion).

Well, another personal opinion too, in the long term, Twitter is by far more engaging than Facebook! So if Twitter will find a way to keep new users and keep them engaged so they come back more and more once they've signed up, then Twitter will be on its way to becoming bigger than Facebook.

The new suggestions for people to follow, which now twitter shows you has put the short messaging service on that road to becoming the next biggest web service, and guess what... If and when Twitter reaches the #1 status, its going to stay up there for long just for its nature and how engaging it can be to users in the long term.

So what's in it to gain for marketers and businesses as long as this new development is concerned?

Twitter is going to help Marketers engage consumers much more than Facebook. I believe the only reason users would leave Twitter is if they are not following the people they should follow. I mean the right people who reflect the users interest. Consumers will be engaged by twitters feature that allows users to quote, re-tweet and @replies. Brands that know what they are doing are already making great use of twitter.

By the new suggestion feature, if the site will be smart enough to suggest to users the right people to follow, then Twitter is going to grow more rapidly in the coming months. And as more of our friends from Facebook and in real life get on Twitter, we will begin to use the service more and stay longer.

Conclusively, Twitter is the future.. No seriously it is!

Startup Advice: Get Ready To Go Big Or Go Home Early!

Right from the beginning of the commercial web, you have to be super ambitious as a startup in other to stay longer than the next code innovation!

You have to be ambitious and focused on a market for a start. But you have to keep your eye on the big picture by following market shifts and new products or new startups launching. You have to think how you are going to gain more n more market share over time.

Your team also needs to be obsessed with innovation if you don't wanna be the next Myspace. You have to try new things, new ways and new code to improve your products performance. If elese, someone will get inspired by your idea and move to your market and beat you.

Come to think of it, Google came up with the "don't be evil" slogan and from the search engine that they started with, now they have a blogging platform which I am now writing this article on, an architectural design software (Google sketch), an operating system, a smartphone OS, a mobile phone brand, Google Earth, a mobile ad platform, the list goes on and on.

The point I am trying to make here is that, to be a big success, you have to think of dominating the World atleast a few times before you go to sleep! :). No... Seriously.. You have to dream of ruling the market you are in and you have to try to see that it comes true! Just trying to be a player in the market isn't healthy for an aspiring startup to dream.

Now Lets take a look at Facebook. You think Mark Zuckerberg only wanted to build a social network for college students? Well may be you buy that, but I don't. I don't know how true the stories in the book "accidental Billionaires by Ben Mizrich" is, but Mark is really an ambitious person. You can check out the book here http://www.amazon.com/Accidental-Billionaires-Founding-Facebook-Betrayal/dp/0385529376

You really need to hope to be big when you are just starting and work towards that. If not, you may not even get to start. Did I confuse you? Well, I'm sure the ones that really have the startup DNA in them know what I'm talking about!