Facebook owns the fish bowl…for now

“Fish where the fish are.” You’ve heard it a thousand times before.  It’s what we say most of the time when a brand asks whether they should build their own social network or if they should find a way to participate in existing networks.

The idea is that your customers have already made a commitment to at least one other social network (and more likely several), so why try to get them to participate in yet another social network when you can meet them in a place they are already comfortable.  Fish where the fish are.

“Facebook has over 500 million users.” That’s another thing we hear a lot these days.  Facebook is slowly becoming the Internet, at least for certain people.  It’s the first “website” they check when they start their Internet experience and the last thing they check before they sign off.

Btw, if you haven’t read the article in last month’s Wired, The Web is Dead.  Long Live the Internet, you should.  Great piece and that article would argue (I think) that Facebook is not “the web” but is an application that pulls content from the Internet, but can be run in many mediums, not just in a web browser.  But back to my point…

Facebook is slowly quickly taking over the Internet.  And its dominating every conversation that brands have with their agencies.  How do we get more fans?  Do we need our own website anymore?  Do I call them Likers now?!

This time last year, Facebook was still this area of the web that marketers knew was something they should look into, but they were content waiting to see how it played out.  Today, marketers are racing to find ways to get into the game.

The way a brand should participate in a social network is a very delicate thing.  You can’t take the old ways of marketing and slap them on a social network and expect to get the same results.  It doesn’t work that way.  Playing in the social space is much more of an art than a science.

Here’s an example of what I mean.  This is an ad for Trident that I saw as I was on the Wired site pulling the above mentioned article link.  The call to action on this ad is “Check us out on Facebook for a coupon”.  The “landing page” is the Facebook tab with a few different coupons.

Now, I’m not knocking what Trident is doing.  They seem to be doing a pretty good job with their Facebook page.  But fairly soon EVERY brand will be doing this.  Every TV commercial, every banner ad, every email newsletter, will all point to a Facebook page.  Because today, that’s where the fish are!

Remember why we all left MySpace a few years back?  Remember how overcrowded, over-advertised and over-the-top it became?  That’s what is going to happen to Facebook over the next 12-18 months.

A fraction of the brands and agencies “get it”.  They understand that Facebook is a place that a brand can engage with their uber customers.  Their raving fans.  The problem is “the others“.  They are going to be blasting ads and mucking up the experience for the average Facebook user, creating a massive stream of crap that people can’t escape, drowning out the truly engaging initiatives and ultimately sending Facebook users running into the arms of the Next Great Social Network.

Should we still be playing in this space?  Absolutely.  But we should be keeping an eye out for when the tide changes and brands need to be ready to see that change happen and react quickly and accordingly.