Publicado em 03/03/2014 no site HBS.
Today, we follow Facebook and update friends on our doings. In the not too distant future, predicts Mikolaj Piskorski, Facebook will follow us and call half the planet customers.
Editor’s note: Now 10 years old, Facebook’s growth is starting to slow. That’s one reason it purchased What’sApp last month in a jaw-dropping deal valued at $19 billion. What might the next decade be like? Harvard Business School Associate Professor Misiek Piskorski, an authority on why and how people use various online social platforms, makes some predictions.
In the first decade of its existence, Facebook, aided by the broad adoption of mobile devices and fast internet connections, emerged as a virtual Cheers bar where people share their lives with a legion of geographically dispersed friends and acquaintances and reconnect with faces from the past. First college students, then Millennials, and soon after, their parents and grandparents were drawn in by the allure of this pioneering social network that effectively shrank the world down to a portable and vibrant community.
The company recently celebrated its tenth anniversary, and for much of that time, Facebook’s stunning growth—more than 1.2 billion users worldwide—has been the story. That said, the core Facebook functionalities have remained essentially unchanged for the past several years, and so pundits wonder whether Facebook’s attraction has peaked. The apparent disappearance of teenagers from the site has made these concerns even greater. I disagree with this conclusion. Teenagers will return to the site when they are older, and Facebook will continue to grow in size, particularly in India, Indonesia, Brazil, and Africa.
Continue lendo em http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/7467.html