“ Facebook wasn’t originally created as a company. It was built to fulfill a social mission - to make the world more open and connected.” These words belong to CEO Mark Zuckerberg and he mentioned them in the letter to the Securities and Exchange Commission shortly before Facebook knocked on the door of the Stock Exchange on May 18, 2012.
And yes, some things may not have changed: Zuckerberg still wears his trademark T-shirt, employees still rate their company and its founder highly, and Facebook still talks about its grand mission of making the world more open and connected. But in 2013, changes began to take place at Facebook, and they have become increasingly noticeable.
Facebook is a company, in fact a huge company, with a market cap of over $60 billion, and a staff of around 5,000 employees. Its database contains over 1 billion active users. But more importantly, it now has to report to its shareholders, not just its users. This simple reality has had a noticeable impact on Facebook, both in how its employees operate and in the new features it has released.
More Focus More Money
For much of its history, Facebook didn't seem particularly concerned about monetization, but that changed when the company went public. In the same letter to the Securities and Exchange Commission, Zuckerberg tried to make it clear that he was much more interested in making money than some people thought.
“Most great people are primarily interested in being a part of great things, but they also want to make money,” Zuckerberg wrote. “Through the process of building a team — and also building a community of developers, advertisers, and investors — I’ve developed an understanding of how to build a strong company with a strong financial engine. Strong growth can be the best way to align and solve important problems.”
As it turns out, this wasn’t just a letter of intent. In the third quarter, Facebook began shifting its strategies for monetizing its products. This operational shift coincided with the start of Facebook’s experimentation with a series of new products.
Facebook has started charging users $1 to send messages to the inboxes of people they don't know, and the price is getting much higher for sending messages to celebrities. To send a message to Zuckerberg will cost $100. Another source of revenue for Facebook is the $7 fee for those who want to promote a post to their friends' Timelines and beyond.
And of course, let's not forget the advertisements that are now everywhere.
Last May, Facebook introduced mobile ads after installing the app that served ads based on users' browsing habits, search results, etc. There are ads on the right sidebar, ads in the News Feed, and ads in the mobile app, and if recent rumors prove true, there will soon be video ads on its users' walls.
It's hard to say now whether Facebook's big innovations are designed more for users or for advertisers – the odds are probably 50/50.
Facebook began rolling out a completely redesigned timeline in March, giving users more space for images and the ability to organize their feeds. But the company also made room for larger, richer ads in the News Feed with the redesign. Industry experts have said the redesign will also bring the inevitable introduction of video ads.
Facebook has become a mobile-first company
While users complain about these changes, Facebook is evolving and seems to be focusing much more on its users' mobile devices.
Facebook was born to exist on computers, but with the explosion of smartphone applications, and the voices heard from analysts and investors, the social network began to turn to mobile, especially after the release of HTML5.
Facebook's new iPhone app, built from the ground up to be faster, has been getting frequent updates in recent months to make it even better. Internally, Facebook has gone to great lengths to ensure its employees are mobile-focused: At one point, executives banned access from the company's desktop browsers.
Brain Drain
It's not uncommon for companies to experience resignations from their first hires when they go public, but the brain drain at Facebook has been particularly noticeable. In the first three months, Facebook lost its CTO, its platforms director, and its head of marketing.
Since then, Facebook has lost several other prominent employees, including Joanna Shields, VP of Europe, Middle East and Africa, general counsel Ted Ullyot, director Blake Ross and most recently, longtime communications chief Larry Yu.
Facebook, of course, continues to poach top talent from other tech rivals, such as Google and Apple.
A more relaxed Zuckerberg
It's not just Facebook that has changed. The company's founder has changed a lot. While Zuckerberg still wears T-shirts, he's stopped speaking in hacker slang. He's become noticeably more polished when he speaks to the public since his company went public, whether it's during an interview, an event, or an earnings call. That's certainly no coincidence. AllThingsD reported in September that Zuckerberg now has people helping him edit his words before his public appearances. Now that Facebook is a public company, Zuckerberg's every word and gesture will have to be scrutinized a lot more.
The article was published on mashable.com 18-05-2013
