Facebook has evolved massively since its early days, and now represents a family of apps and extensive functionality – as such, it is so much more than just a social network. Facebook is replicating just about every social media feature and more, to become a social operating system. A successful, and hugely popular one at that:
Nov 2015: Facebook’s latest community update
It’s easy to miss just how much has progressed when new features are dripped out, but Jeremiah Owyang, founder of Crowd Companies and the only person I know on Facebook with a winking profile pic (check it out here), has just put together a handy summary of their evolutionary progress.
He’s compiled a list of their features – they’re taking the best of the tech world and making it their own, whilst innovating their unique experience:
- Status updates are easy like a Tweet
- Native videos get more newsfeed attention over YouTube
- The Notes feature makes it easy to blog on FB
- Emoticons and stickers replicate Asian social networks
- Filters and online editing tools make 3rd party editing tools redundant, even threatening Instagram’s original value
- Messenger replaces the IM tools found in many clients
- Events challenges EventBrite and other scheduling tools
- Places and locations are including ratings and reviews, like Yelp and TripAdvisor
- Followers allow content to spread without direct friending, like Twitter
- Facebook translate converts other languages into text you can read like Google
- Facebook’s mobile browser takes on Chrome, Safari, and others
- Facebook launched an ‘at work’ version to take on Slack, Chatter, Sharepoint
- Facebook has live video for influencers, replicating Periscope and Meerkat
- Facebook M is the start of a sentient intelligence like Siri, Ok Google, Amazon Echo and Microsoft Cortana
- Facebook’s 360 videos and Oculus Rift can take on Google’s Cardboard VT and 360Video on YouTube
- Facebook is launching drones that emit wifi, competing with Google Loon
-and the list goes on. They still have some major competitors of course, and Facebook is undeniably a pay-to-play system these days, but one that definitely cannot be ignored.
(Source: Jeremiah Owyang)
By Kate Tyler
Kate Tyler is the founder of Shake Social and our long time social media expert. A regular speaker at events, Kate offers consultancy and training on a range of digital marketing topics, in particular safeguarding and using social media in an educational setting.