From the monthly archives:

March 2009

Is this the beginning of the end for Facebook?

Some reactions to the new version of Facebook, March 2009.

Some reactions to the new version of Facebook, March 2009.

Things aren’t looking good for Facebook right now. The new changes have had some pretty fierce negative reactions. Take a look at the comments on the Facebook blog for a sampling of the current mood amongst Facebook users.

Of course negative comments to change are often far from being representative. Whenever a social platform makes significant changes it always kicks off a wave of negative reaction, and then usually settles down into calm acceptance. This was certainly the case with the last Facebook update in 2008.

However, this time it’s different. As many commentators have noticed, these changes are pretty obviously a response to Twitter’s recent phenomenal growth. This is the first time we’ve seen Facebook on the defensive, the first time that Facebook has been reactive rather than proactive. And that’s not a good sign.

Facebook still has a huge edge over Twitter – some estimates suggest over 120 million users worldwide. No-one knows Twitter’s global audience yet, but with 7 million in the US it’s likely to be less than 10 million globally.

Nevertheless Twitter is growing fast, and the balance of power has a habit of changing rapidly in the social networking space. As Steve Rubel has pointed out, historically only a few community sites have had any staying power.

Whether this is the beginning of the end for Facebook is too early to say, but we can be sure that the social networking space is going to look very different at the end of 2009 to how it did at the start.

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2009 is Twitter’s year already

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We’re not yet a quarter of the way into 2009 but already it’s clear that, if 2008 was Facebook‘s year, 2009 is Twitter‘s.

In January 2009 Twitter saw a 10-fold traffic increase in the UK over the previous year, and this was before Jonathan Ross announced it on his Friday night show and Phillip Schofield talked about it on GMTV.

In the US the social media phenomenon has just hit the mainstream, as Jon Stewart’s piece on the Daily Show demonstrates (see video below) and the same is happening here in the UK.

Given that Twitter users are also Facebook users, could this be the start of a move away from Facebook?

Facebook still has a vast lead in terms of unique users and continues to grow rapidly. But look back to over a year ago and the same was being said of MySpace, the previous leader.

It’s clear that, despite high engagement, loyalty is fragile in the social networking space.

Nevertheless, I don’t think Twitter will disrupt Facebook’s position, as they both fulfil different social functions.

Facebook is about personal identity, a place where friends can share photographs and videos and keep in touch with each other’s lives.

Twitter is more of a micro-blogging tool and virtual water cooler.

Not that Facebook isn’t responding dramatically. Despite last year’s failed takeover of Twitter, Facebook is continuing to pursue aggressive growth, and the new real-time format that it’s launching right now has more than a whiff of Twitter-style functionality about it.

Finally it’s worth noting that the continual adoption of new social tools can’t go on indefinitely. I currently manage a range of online social tools for various aspects of my life, and while they all have their uses it’s getting close to the limit for me. It’s getting to the point where I’d have to ditch one to adopt another.

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Web design: why I chose the WordPress Thesis theme for this site

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When I set up this personal site, I decided straight away to use WordPress as the platform. I’m a huge WordPress fan, not just as a blogging platform but as a general CMS. It’s very easy to use and flexible, which makes training and maintenance easy, and for many of the projects I’ve worked on it provides a great solution to most content needs.

One of the big decisions when setting up your own blog is to decide how it’s going to look. Basically you have three options:

  • Use one of the many free themes available online (see lists of links below for some good examples).
  • Pay for a premium theme.
  • Hire a designer to design a theme for you.

I’ve taken all three of these approaches in the past and they all have their merits. For this site I decided  to start by seeing if I could find any suitable free themes. Here’s some of the places I looked:

Keep an eye on the excellent Smashing Magazine for regular new collections of free high quality themes.

I experimented with many of these, and although some looked great, there was nothing that offered the right balance of minimalism, optimisation and flexibility that I required.

Looking into Premium themes was my next step. I found some great looking themes at the following:

But I finally settled on the excellent Thesis theme, by Chris Pearson. This theme (and if you’re reading this on my site you’re looking at it now) has a simple elegance that makes it aesthetically perfect for my needs. It’s also very well optimised for search engines and provides great flexibility for creating new layouts without getting into CSS or PHP coding – check out the gallery of blogs using the theme to see how much can be done with it.

I think what also sold it was that my favourite blog expert Darren Rowse used Thesis when he launched TwiTip last year. If Darren uses it, it must be good!

All in, it’s well worth the $164 price tag ($87 for just the personal option), and I highly recommend it.

I’ve set up quite a few self-hosted WordPress sites in my time, so if you want any advice on how to do this, or you are having difficulties, drop me an email and I’ll see if I can help.

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