Growing Pains: Will Facebook last longer than the sitcom?
Sustaining a startup is a difficult task, especially with the contiuned emphasis on growth. VCs want a larger ROI; founder’s seek to alter the world; employee’s relish the chance to impact a company at an early stage; fifteen competitors are releasing similar solutions…there are countless of factors demanding continued growth in startup culture. Indefinite growth, however, is problematic with business, structure, or organism.
A perfect illustration of the limits of growth is my capped height of 5′8″ - but I will use Facebook as a slightly more relevant example. The company made noise several months ago with the release of their API, and prior to that, with the decision to open an exclusive college network to the masses. Both strategic moves flooded the platform with innovation and ultimately enabled the advertising initiative introduced today (or follow the discussion on TechMeme).
So what will Facebook unveil next to propel growth? Considering the monstrous 2007, I predict Facebook will enter an oft ignored, but imperative phase in the startup world known as “maintenance.” Signifiers of a “maintenance” phase are apparent with Matt Marshall of VentureBeat stating:
“Large Facebook application developers like Slide, RockYou, iLike and Flixster may have embraced the Google-led OpenSocial movement so fervently earlier this week because they learned of these developments.”
Kristen Nicole of Mashable echoes the sentiment with the following assessment:
“After having a platform for Facebook developers, it looks like Facebook has done its market research and will be implementing its own version of information-based applications that prove most useful to both users and brands.”
After tapping the data and ingenuity of millions of users, Facebook is apparently making sense (financially and logistically) from months of unrestricted creativity. Assuming the new advertising platform with branded sites is effective, the Facebook story may be a lesson in single tasking…Growth and Financial Success are entirely different, demanding tasks for resource strapped startups.
Filed under: Infonalysis