As the media has went from a modest simmer to near complete boiling over of Facebook’s change of privacy, founder Mark Zuckerberg is facing a sharp pendulum of public mistrust, a failure to recognize what made it successful and an aging corporate vision.

The success of the company, built upon the template provided from the original form from the Phillips Exeter Academy yearbook, explicitly tapped into a youth market but from the subtle twist of the present day decorum. Key to its growth was a freshness that represented a youthful coming of age in 2005 but in many way’s, or at least it appears as such in hindsight, it was simply by accident. It was “here”, “now” and not your parent’s dowdy yearbook with the requisite photos of band and a pimply faced world but was uniquely successful because its content was inherently by its readership.

Facebook’s success came via endless strains of interoperability the connected its users but with an honest edge that was contingent upon privacy. Though it seems impossible to believe now, the site once had a “pulse”, which drew you into the allure of the “right now”. Those halcyon days are long gone as the portal has either forgotten its youth or simply aged from the corporate top down.

The gavel has not sounded yet on Facebook but far off in the distance the gallows are under construction. The youthful dalliances that turned Facebook into vibrant source has shifted to the polar opposite, as the fastest growing demographic is women over the age of fifty-five and the site rarely edges towards key market information, much less the sales close. Though the company is quick to point out that active users are surging, the backlash over lowering privacy is creating a storm of deactivation but equally a testament to its changing feel. The issue of deactivation and even privacy is a debatable point on a company ready to launch an IPO in the next eighteen months with a value estimated to be US $11 billion but what is a problem is its usefulness, its connection to the youth and recognition of growing trends.

In an era where information moves fast and businesses hit the “tipping point” in a blink, Facebook is looking very much like a company that grew in its youth but is now weighed down with age and a burgeoning waist-line, complete with old brown shoes. The once powerful informational stream of the 18-24 market is a faint heartbeat and replaced by agricultural daydreamers and applications with a debatable flow through to a business bottom line. The company’s engineers may be ushering in a series of changes to features but their connection to the youth seems long gone. Mirroring the errors of MySpace, where the endless spam of bot-driven sites made personal walls and bulletins useless, Facebook is nearing a point of return if does not regain its youth, it will become a very modest vehicle for savvy businesses.

This should come as no surprise because like all businesses they must maintain a timeliness and exist within the knowledge of the present day market and forward thinking. With one glance at the iPad and the variety of competitive tablets, along with assorted applications, it should be clear that the shot across the bow has been made. Someone has recognized trends and along with making them, staying neck and neck with a vision of tomorrow, today.

Prepared by J. Davies
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