With one of our companies ReverbNation launching their music player on Facebook, I decided to create an account and check it out.
Assuming you are already caught up on how Facebook works, here are some observations from using it over the last 2 weeks:
1) I'm jealous of the growth Facebook is experiencing. Seems like a pretty smart decision for Facebook to open to the general public. Leading up to that move, the site was limited to college students and traffic on the site had leveled off.
But now, Facebook has hit 30 million users and just under 60 days ago that number was 24 million. And looking at other interesting stats, I found that users that are 35 years old and older doubled over the last year - now past 10 million. The biggest growth is with 25-34 year olds, up almost 200% year over year.
2) I was amazed how many people I know are in Facebook. Pretty quickly I have connected with 85 people that I know... and that was without trying too hard... most of these are work connections and many are LinkedIn duplications (which is a whole different topic btw). So, besides college students (where Facebook absolutely dominates) who is in Facebook? 1) A lot of younger, web savvy entrepeneurs. 2) A ton of VCs. Here is a quick sample of VCs that are members:
- Mike Feinstein, former GP, Venrock
- Brad Feld, Mobius Venture Capital
- Elliot Katzman, Commonwealth Capital Ventures
- Simeon Simeonov, Polaris Venture Partners
- Mike Hirshland, Polaris Venture Partners
- Paul Kedrosky, Ventures West
- John Kim, HIG Ventures
- Nathaniel McNamara, HIG Ventures
- Lucy McQuilken, Intel Capital
- David Aronoff, IDG Ventures
- Chip Hazard, IDG Ventures
- Jeff Bussgang, IDG Ventures
- Jack Biddle, Novak Biddle Venture Partners
- Phil Bronner, Novak Biddle Venture Partners
3) People (I hope the ones I am connected to are not in this category) spend an average of over 3 hours/day on Facebook. 3 hours/day!! With some college students that I have talked with, it seems to have replaced or at least greatly minimized having a Yahoo or Gmail account for your email. They use Facebook to communicate with their friends because they are all on the same platform.
Some features I like is that it is really easy to track what applications people are adding to their profile, see recent pictures they have added (some have 150+ pics), see upcoming birthdays and track events all over.
4) It is really easy to start a new group on Facebook and keep it open or hide it. After I quickly found out who was on Facebook, I noticed there are a lot of groups popping up. I joined some groups I was most interested in: Web 2.0, eCommerce Strategies, Venture Capital 3.0. A couple of the groups I joined have over 1,000 members and growing fast. Some are more active than others with valuable content where members in that group offer valuable tips. I think I am a member of 15 groups right now.
Then to better understand groups, I launched Southeast VC on Facebook. I started the group on Facebook for entrepeneurs in the Southeast to compare notes, ask questions. 40+ people have joined so far. Of course, anyone is welcome.
5) Facebook seems a lot better organized and has a cleaner appearance than MySpace. I really don't understand MySpace. I set up an account there a while back to test drive it. I may go there once/month max. One of my college roommates reached out to me there. Funny.
6) The number of new applications on Facebook has exploded. Less than 60 days ago, Facebook started allowing third party companies to build applications for Facebook users to add to their profiles. Over 1,500 companies have built applications and these are mostly web companies targeting Facebook's 30 million user base. According to Facebook, some of the more popular applications have gone from zero to 850,000 users in just 3 days. Those kind of numbers seem to be more of the exception. Half of the Facebook users have installed at least one application. What kind of companies are noticing and building apps for Facebook? Well, eBay launched one that allows users to search for items and shop while still on Facebook. And I mentioned earlier that ReverbNation launched an application as well.
It remains to be seen how many of those companies make money on this.
7) $6 billion is a lot. Microsoft is rumored to buy Facebook for that? Can that be real? Facebook is supposed to do $100 million in revenue this year. 60x 2007 revenue? I'd sell.
