Research
Interview Synopsis

Facebook – update on businesses, key themes & new initiatives

  • Private Equity
  • TMT
  • North America

“The thing that makes [Facebook] such a competitive company, is that they have the ability to lean into all of these various applications in so many different ways that would just continue to enable them as the market pivots and shifts into whatever the next big thing is,” a former marketing manager from the company told Third Bridge Forum. The Interview also looked into key company themes, monetisation and the competition.

One of the first topics covered was Facebook’s main business offerings and what they could offer in future. Across its products, the company covers a wide range of demographics, meaning that “the wealth of data and extensive reach and the feature richness that is available to advertisers… is bar none.”

Moving on to the question of whether Facebook could create revenue from Messenger, in light of a leadership change at WhatsApp presaging such a move, the specialist responded that it seemed unlikely. “No one, for the most part, has cracked it. Apple iMessage, also super, super strong set of followers there… and they also have not figured out a way to unlock more of the power that is behind all of those users.”

Commerce across Instagram was also on the agenda, and “it’s not a surprise, the platform just lends itself so easily to being able to enable and just turn on these various different commerce features”. While Facebook also offers its own feature, Marketplace, the specialist thinks there could be more of a perception problem.

“I think a lot of it comes back to that misinformation/integrity piece. I think people are like, there might be a stigma around buying stuff off of Facebook from someone that maybe you probably don’t know. There’s just a level of protection I think Facebook cannot provide for that. Craigslist can’t either, but I think on Craigslist it’s more expected.”

Owing to Facebook’s diverse offerings, it also has a lot of competition: “You can list off Google, Apple, YouTube, Snap, ByteDance/TikTok, Amazon, Microsoft, etc.” The specialist noted that, much like Instagram, Facebook tends to move quickly to release new products, whereas Google and YouTube take their time.

To access all the human insights from Third Bridge Forum’s Facebook – update on businesses, key themes & new initiatives Interview, click here to view the full transcript.

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