Facebook is Going To Disappear in Eight Years Analyst Say...



Don't expect to find your Facebook inbox full of friend requests eight years from now -- it's likely Facebook is going to disappear. At least, that's the future according to Eric Jackson, founder of investment firm Ironfire Capital.
Jackson appeared on CNBC’s "Squawk on the Street" on Monday to discuss Facebook's inevitable demise and how web companies strive to evolve.
"In five to eight years [Facebook is] going to disappear in the way that Yahoo has disappeared," Jackson said during a phone interview on the show. "Yahoo is still making money, it's still profitable, still has 13,000 employees working for it, but it's 10 percent of the value that it was at the height of 2000. For all intents and purposes, it's disappeared."
Jackson described three generations of web companies. The first generation was dominated by websites like Yahoo, which aggregated everything you need to know in one place. Those big web portals, which Jackson dubs Web 1.0, were followed by the dawn of social networking sites, including Facebook. The current generation is composed entirely of web companies focused on monetizing the mobile platform.
Jackson said Facebook's struggle lies in a web company's inability to easily move from one generation to the next. Take Google for example. The web giant reigned supreme in Jackson's designated first generation, but struggled to move into the social networking realm, with several failed models. Google+ may be the most successful of Google's social networking efforts to date, but its more than 100 million active users still does not rival Facebook's astounding 900 million.
"When you look over these three generations, no matter how successful you are in one generation, you don't seem to be able to translate that into success in the second generation, no matter how much money you have in the bank, no matter how many smart Ph.Ds you have working for you," Jackson said.
In Jackson's view, Facebook cannot effectively create and monetize a mobile platform by simply buying up as many mobile apps as it can muster. Sure, Facebook can purchase Instagram for $1 billion, but that will not transform Facebook's core business model. At its heart, Facebook is a social networking site, not a mobile company.
"[Facebook] can buy a bunch of mobile companies, but they are still a big, fat website," Jackson said.
The bottom line behind Jackson's comments is that Facebook may be stuck in the social networking realm forever. And as we've seen with Facebook predecessors like MySpace and Friendster, there will always be a new competitor on the horizon.
"Facebook is not going bankrupt. I think what's going to happen is something new is going to come along that we haven't seen yet," Jackson said, and "people are going to be fascinated by it and attracted to it."
From the Huffington post.

8 Tips to Clean Up Your Small Business in the New Year

 

Spruce up your work by chucking these eight productivity pitfalls. No Swiffer required. Original post from Entreprenuers.com

1. Scattered day plans.
Failure to plan their days is the No. 1 reason business owners waste time, energy and money, says New York City-based time-management expert Julie Morgenstern, author of Never Check E-mail in the Morning: And Other Unexpected Strategies for Making Your Work Life Work. By not planning their days, they tend to become reactive and distracted, diminishing their productivity and the revenue they can generate. Although a daily to-do list is a start, Morgenstern recommends planning a three-day arc. By looking at a three-day period--and the meetings, deadlines and other demands on your time--you can make better decisions when surprises or emergencies arise. A three-day plan also gives you a clearer idea of when you can postpone activities without overbooking your future. Morgenstern advises spending at least a few minutes each day updating your three-day plan.

2. DIY syndrome.
Morgenstern estimates that 75 to 80 percent of the small and midsize businesses she consults with waste employee salaries, including their own, by not focusing each person's time on the optimal task for that person. Kristin Marquet, founder of communications firm Marquet Media in New York City, found this to be her experience. When she mapped out how she was spending her time, she found she was devoting about 10 hours each week to administrative tasks. At her hourly rate of $100, she estimates she lost approximately $10,000 by trying to do everything herself. After that realization, Marquet hired a bookkeeper, writer and website designer, who cost one-forth of the revenue she would have lost if she had handled the tasks herself. "Although you may feel as if you don't have time to train anyone, spending six hours training someone on a two-hour-per-week task saves you nearly 100 hours per year," Morgenstern says.

3. Disorganized direction.
To make the delegation process more effective and less time-consuming, Bakersfield, Calif.-based business growth consultant Russell S. Allred, co-author of Best Practices of High Performance Entrepreneurs, recommends creating task-related systems and processes. Write a list of steps for each task you perform regularly in your workplace and the best practices for completing those steps. Many people learn through observation, so ask your employees to shadow you to see how you perform the tasks, he says. For maximum efficiency, create process sheets for as many activities as possible, and try to train more than one employee in each. If the employee who usually handles the task calls in sick or leaves, someone else can fill in--or, at least, you'll have an easier time training a replacement.

4. Untamed distractions.
A survey by home and office product company Brother International Corp. in April 2010 found that an estimated 38 hours per employee are lost looking for misplaced items in the office each year. And let's not think about how many hours are spent watching cute animal videos online. Many people have no idea how to manage the overwhelming amount of communication that comes their way on paper and electronically, says productivity consultant Kimberly Medlock, founder of Productive Matters in Olive Branch, Miss. To cut down on distractions and time-sucks, clean up your act, she says. Develop hard-copy and electronic filing systems to help locate important papers and information more quickly. Limit e-mail check-ins to certain times of the day so that you're not constantly interrupted by the "ping" of a new message, and unsubscribe from any recurring e-mail you don't need. If social media is a problem, look into tools such as Anti-Social or RescueTime, which put up a wall between your computer and distracting sites for blocks of time.

5. Leaky expenditures.
By checking his monthly expenses closely, Eli Mechlovitz, co-founder of GlassTileStore.com, an online glass tile retailer, found a variety of unwanted subscriptions, warranty programs, fee-based website analytics programs, utility bill errors and other incorrect or unwanted charges. Eliminating these budgetary leaks has saved his Brooklyn, N.Y., company approximately $4,000 per month. "It's so easy to add a subscription here and there or a small program that doesn't seem like it costs much. But over time, these things add up," he says. Every quarter, be sure to review where the money is going, he advises, and discontinue or fight unnecessary or incorrect charges.

6. Collecting (all) customers.
Maria Marsala, a business coach in Poulsbo, Wash., finds that many of her clients waste time and energy serving the wrong customers. She encourages them to define their "ideal" customer--the person or entity that will pay a fair price for their product or service, value their business, return and buy from them again and generate referrals. The greatest marketing investment and effort should be devoted to finding and courting those ideals, she says. Marsala initially marketed her coaching services to all small-business owners. She decided to define her niche in the business-to-business world serving established business owners who didn't balk at her fees. Then she created an opportunity to sell to a different audience by developing a series of CDs for startup or more cash-strapped business owners.

7. Energy-sucking employees.
When Mechlovitz has trouble with unproductive or negative employees, he tries to move them into positions that better suit their skills. In one case, a warehouse worker who wasn't good at picking orders turned out to be an exceptional packaging team member. But if an employee isn't a good fit or is miserable, he says, you have to end the relationship--quickly. A negative employee "sucks all of your creativity out of you and leaves you drained," says consultant Allred. "And why? You're the boss. Why are you messing with this person?" Of course, it's more complicated when the individual is a family member or close friend. Have a frank discussion to find out why the person is unhappy and what can be done to change the situation. At the very least, you need to stop the person from spreading the negativity, he says.

8. Persistent procrastination.
If you constantly avoid tasks or put off work until the last minute, you need to figure out why, Morgenstern says. Burnout could be from being overworked, but she often finds that procrastination is rooted in uncertainty or intimidation. If a project seems too big, procrastination can be a coping mechanism. She suggests breaking the task down into manageable steps you can do in shorter chunks of time: "You don't get eight hours to focus on something anymore. You'll get a 30-minute or one-hour window. Learning to chunk your work so that you can look at the time you have and figure out what part of the project you can finish in that time will help you find a place to start to get it done."

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