This is an interesting, short article that talks about whether Facebook will be a competitor or complement to Google in the near future. The question is posed "will Facebook take volume away from Google or push more volume to it?" This question gets to the heart of the consumer buying decision process which we reviewed in Chapter 6. With the growing popularity of Facebook, more people are connecting with friends/colleagues/family on a local/national/global bases. Input from fellow Facebook friends provides a defacto search engine and potentially helps influence a person's awareness set of initial products to consider during the purchase process. Does it stop there? Or do people use input from friends to do more searching for information on Google. Questions to consider:
1. Will facebook pull volume away from Google (i.e. will information received from Facebook friends lead to more or less Google searches during the buying process)?
2. What core competencies does Google possess to protect their brand and prevent loss of volume to Facebook.
3. How does the increasing popularity of Facebook influence a company's brand messaging?
Matt, I think that Google and Facebook complement each other. I believe they provide 2 very different services. Where as Facebook is a social connection, google is a fact finding tool. Google's core competency is to provide effective search enginer options which facebook will not want to compete with from my perceptive. There is only so much infomration people can pass between facebook. Utilately they must use google to find the details.
ReplyDeleteFacebook's core competency is networking: connecting people ( C2C), people to business ( C2B), business to business(b2b). Google's core competency is to search information on the web and connect to the user. Facebook and Google are connecting the information to people only difference is in which manner. These days there is information overload due to the technology today. People prefer to read and know only enough and trusted information. Facebook achieves this very effectively. I remember even seeing adds that made it very obvious that google spits out whole lot more irrelavant information in a search. Hence I believe that facebook would be taking volume away from google. There are even websites like yelp, tripadvisor etc. that are designed to share opinions and feedback regarding restauratns and places etc. Facebook has pages from stores like DSW and business like Eaton performance products. May be not alone facebook but facebook along with other websites like yelp.com would be taking away google share.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, there are people that do not want to join facebook as it has negative implications on the job and may not feel as open to share their opinions due to the fear of who might be reading their comments. Facebook is more common in young generation than senior or more adult members. Though google will continue to exist but it's market share will decline due to the emergence of networking/sharing experience sites like facebook.
Google competitive advantage has been to 'find what you are looking for easily'. if it turns out that you are looking for your friends/family, then Facebook is a competitor.
ReplyDeleteGoogle's new competitive advantage is to provide a simple 'open' solution for closed systems. i.e. Android, Chrome OS, Google Talk/Voice. At present, Facebook does not directly compete in the Operating System platforms. If Google sticks to technology I think Facebook would be a compliment, not a competitor.
Facebook is starting to overlap Google with its search algorithms and programs which allow people to connect with other people, businesses to connect with customers. If Google wants to compete in this market, then they will have to go head to head with Facebook.
Google is trying to reinvent itself from a web search tool to something more. Facebook is growing beyond the scope of a connection tool/friend circle tool. If these reinventions overlap, then there may be some fierce competition between the two. If their respective markets can remain complementary, then they may benefit from the others success.