Why Facebook isn't Google, in 100 words
Cuddly entrepreneur Jason Calacanis shut down the happy-talk at the end of this week's Graphing Social Patterns conference for Facebook developers. In response to TechCrunch chief Mike Arrington's question about the potential for attendees to "monetize Facebook applications," Calacanis launched into a Pacino-esque monologue and slapped down videoblogger Robert Scoble — Facebook ain't never gonna be no Google, paisano. After the jump, my edit of Calacanis's advice, which begins at 6:55 into the clip.
"Social networking is second only to chat rooms as the worst place to advertise. The content there from your friends and your family is more compelling than any advertisement. Google has the greatest advertising in media history — search advertising. When you type a word into the box, we know what you're looking for. When you're on Facebook, we know you're looking to meet a girl or talk to your friends. It's a terrible platform for advertising. The holy grail of e-commerce forever has been that people are going to buy something online because their friends did, or that everybody here is into skiing so we're going to sell a bunch of skiing stuff. It hasn't happened. Plus, e-commerce is a low-margin business. It's nowhere near search inventory."