What's Next For Facebook

Thursday was a good news/bad news day for Facebook. In its first earnings report as a public company, it reported that revenue was $1.18 billion, up 32% compared with the same period last year (and in line with analyst expectations). It also reported a $157 million loss for the three months ending in June, and share prices fell to a record low in after-hours trading.

So what's next? The BrainYard gathered some opinion on the topic, and, more importantly, we'd like to hear what you think. We welcome your comments at the bottom of this page.

Michael Raanan, president of Landmark Tax Group and a former IRS revenue officer, has seen evidence of Facebook frustration. At a recent tax and law forum he attended, many of his colleagues said they feel that Facebook does not serve a significant advantage for business owners and that other social networks are filling the gaps.

"Facebook limits actions that owners with business profiles can take, such as 'liking' other pages and posts," said Raanan. "Twitter does a great job of providing a way for businesses to advertise in real time, and Pinterest provides a way for businesses to leverage advertising and marketing with a more visual element."

Gina Schreck, president of SynapseConnecting, is also seeing what has become known as "Facebook fatigue." Part of this, she said, can be attributed to users' desire to try what's new, but Facebook also isn't doing enough to engage individuals or businesses.

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"I do see trends that point to Facebook burnout--one being more and more young people moving away from Facebook activities and discovering Pinterest and other new kids on the social block," said Schreck. "I also hear more adults talking about Facebook exhaustion and businesses tiring of trying to engage fans to beat EdgeRank. As much as Facebook says they are focused on helping small businesses thrive in Facebook Land, charging to promote posts to the fans you already have, and still not having a fully functioning mobile app to manage business pages from, shows they still are not listening to the majority of their users."

Dr. William J. Ward, a professor at Syracuse University's S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, agrees that Facebook must move the platform--and its users--in a more business-oriented direction.

"Many business are still learning how to do social media and Facebook well," said Ward. "The Facebook of the future will need to continue to evolve the ecosystem to harness it for e-commerce, transactions, B2B, and other professional and enterprise purposes. Continued growth will require Facebook to move consumers' brand perception beyond a backyard barbecue-only style of social media."

It's not all doom and gloom we've been hearing. Matt Karolian, social media manager at advertising firm Arnold Worldwide, sees a bright future for Facebook in e-commerce (although one that might sound a little scary to privacy-minded users).

"One area I don't see many people talking about is the potential for Facebook to move further into commerce," said Karolian. "Right now, Facebook has many of the pieces already in place for commerce to work in a big way--they are just not really connected yet. They have verified IDs, they have hundreds of thousands of local business owners set up on the platform, they know all of your preferences. Facebook Connect is the primary means of signup for many online services--they know your location, and, with very little work, they could probably know all of your account balances. It is really all there."

April J. Rudin of the Rudin Group sees a social evolution that will affect all platforms. She predicted not which platform will "win," but that there will soon come a day when we will be engaging with many platforms from a single hub. "Why must we be on so many platforms--Facebook , LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+, etc?" asked Rudin. "Eventually, I predict, each person or business will have a central 'hub' on the Internet through which all messaging goes, including voice."

In any case, with a fickle public that can move among social networking platforms at little cost, frustration with Facebook's many changes and lack of a strong mobile component, as well as new accountability to shareholders, Facebook truly has its work cut out for it. What do you see in Facebook's future? Please comment below.

Follow Deb Donston-Miller on Twitter at @debdonston.

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