If personal fortune is any indication of how successful your business is, then very recently, it was reported that Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg is now richer than the Google bosses – Larry Page & Sergey Brin.
However what if we talk purely about the contributions that the respective ‘organisations’ have made to its ‘consumers’. Is it even fair to compare Facebook & Google considering the nature of their services? Its like comparing NOKIA, whose major revenue comes from telecom services, with Samsung Electronics, which is just one of the subsidiary arms of the Samsung group . So relatively, Nokia maybe a leader in mobile devices, but as an organization Samsung is much larger.
Despite that, why the ‘Facebook VS Google’ debate still seems relevant is purely due to their environment – the virtual world. The internet is still an unorganized space where things have just started to jostle up. There are no written rules, no blanket like censorship. Nothing is defined here. Web has its own language, its own grammar. For users, internet is a single handed communication tool.
So, while Google opened up the world on a ‘window’, Facebook has taken it to the next level by making the web aggressively interactive. We are not just fence sitters anymore, we knowingly or unknowingly, are actively participating in shaping up the future. Opinion makers are not in television studios or on the radio. They are at home, sitting in their chairs. If anybody still has a doubt about its potency, just Google ‘Arab spring’ and read up how, and where else the revolution book flace…haha..took place!!
A 2009 Nielsen Media Research report indicate degrees of consumer trust in different kinds of advertising. It suggests that “consumer comments posted online” is the second largest form of advertising that helps in building a brand, next only to “word of mouth”. This speaks volumes about how the things have changed in the past few years. Two way communication has balanced out the market dynamics like never before.
The more open a market gets, the more competitive it becomes. In an era full with communication tools, our attention span has been compressed significantly. Instant information, instant entertainment, instant action – who doesn’t want access to those needs in this age? Of course, the answer lies within that discourse itself.
So how many of you have heard about ‘Google+’ already? Surely not those who still only listen to radio or watch television. ‘Google+ Project’ , still in its testing phase, is Google’s attempt at social networking service that could threaten to eat up in the share of the biggest fish in the pond. The ‘Facebook VS Google’ debate may finally be settled then. Will Google succeed like Gmail did in unsettling Yahoo & Hotmail? Only you will tell!
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