Will “I Grew Up In XYZ” Groups Save Facebook?
Raise your hand if you joined a Facebook group to reminisce about your old home town or high school over the past few weeks. Raise your hand if you joined more than one of these groups. Raise your hand if you spent all day yesterday glued to your couch, following a particular group or groups.
Me? Last week it was the Life in Fairfield & Westport pre-1989! group. This weekend, it was If you’re really from New Canaan (CT) you’d know…..
Can these start-up groups that seem to be sweeping Facebook help it fend off the threat of Google+ (Yes, that links to Multichannel Merchant’s Google+ page… and we can;t figure it out!)? Yes, no and maybe, I guess… and here’s why I think that:
Okay… I went and put the links in for the groups, and I spent another half an hour checking the New Canaan page before I returned to blogging. Imaging being a Facebookaholic in recovery and suddenly being sucked back in? Yes, these groups are addicting. If you’re Facebook (whether you intentionally set up these groups or not), you’ve got to be smiling. Just when it seems Facebook saturation set in and users are asking for invites to test out Google+, these new hometwon groups are helping the end-user communicate again.
It’s been like a bunch of multi-class reunions have been taking place on Facebook, people are reuniting with old friends (and even people they barely knew or didn’t know from the old days), and everybody’s happy (unless they are in jail and they don’t have Facebook and there’s big threads within these groups about the crimes they committed). Okay, maybe everyone got happy after they edited their settings and didn’t get bombarded with emails every time someone posted…
Now that’s good news for Facebook’s usage stats – I’m sure the time spent on Facebook and even registrations has soared this summer. What’s it doing for the advertising numbers? I have a feeling that’s down. I, for one, did not pay attention to a single ad all weekend. Clicks have got to be down.
Also, I’ve ignored my wall this weekend (sorry, friends!). Are others doing the same? And if you’re a marketer with a Facebook page, does that mean your message is getting lost in the clutter?
(Hold on, someone just replied to a message about old teachers… BRB, LOL!)
(Okay, I’m back!)
So, still want to do Google+? What do you think? Will these groups keep the end-users from joining Google+? Or are we still looking at an evolution of social media, one that caused AOL’s instant messenger (IM) to get swallowed up by MySpace, MySpace get eaten alive by Facebook, and several other start-ups try to dethrone Facebook (Oh, yeah, and Twitter annoy the hell out of everyone!)?
And as a marketer, does the renewed land-of-reconnecting-and-happiness kill your Facebook strategy? My guess is Facebook referrals are going down a bit.
