To put a bit of back story to this posting, I’ve recently had social networks on the mind. The big ones, to be exact; Facebook, MySpace, to some degree, Flikr and the others, but mostly Facebook. After all, it has set itself to challenge the reigning champ for the premier place to be on the web: Google. How has it done so? Look at the recent news; Facebook made it’s first acquisition with the purchase of Parakey, a start-up company from two guys of Firefox fame. Blake Ross and Joe Hewitt are the two behind Parakey, but exactly what they are behind is a bit of a mystery. Their website is cryptic at best, stating,
“Give your computer the bird. Computers are frustrating. Creating documents, finding files, sharing information— why do everyday things still seem so tedious and counterintuitive? We will send you an e-mail when Parakey is available. We hope that Parakey will make your life easier.“
So what the heck does that mean?!
Well, it seems Blake Ross’ own statement sums it up best:
“Parakey is a Web operating system that can do everything an OS can do.”
Actually, I think Blake means GUI, but even still, if that is what I think it is, we’ve got a big deal on our hands, and Facebook has a potential ace-in-the-hole. Remember ThinkFree Office? The office client you could take anywhere because it is based online? Well, it’s not only an office client, but it involves rudimentary file sharing and some equivalent of social document sharing; in any case, it’s more than capable, except is suffers from a lack of exposure. Well, Parakey could be much, much more than ThinkFree’s software, if only because it encompasses more. Your iTunes library, your documents, your bookmarks, your chat client, all these things could potentially existing on this new GUI. Not to mention, with 30 million users, it will get the exposure to young, tech-inclined youth, college students looking to ease file transfers, and other assorted groups.
It’s also no secret that Google, while having acquired multiple companies and having talent spread over everything from video, searching, maps, and email, is still a one-trick pony. Google’s attempt at a social networking website, Orkut, doesn’t register on Nielsen’s ratings for the top social networking sites. Froogle, a price-comparison search, works, but is no where near as robust as things like Shopping.com or Amazon.com price comparisons. AdSense, the little box that shows up with advertising links relevant to page content (you’ll see one somewhere here in this post), has been working well, but they’re behind the trend: they have only recently thought to acquire an outside ad agency, leading online agency DoubleClick, for $3.1 billion. In comparison, if the merger with Parakey goes well, Facebook could court a competetive ad agency to set down a concrete scheme for revenue growth. With 30 million users and 4 million more being added each month, that’s a pretty sizable foundation for ad revenue. One more thought: Facebook is only 3 years into it’s lifespan and already, as of this post, ranks inside the Top 10 for site traffic on Alexsa. It’s growing rather quickly.
But back to the Parakey situation; if Blake and Joe do well with Parakey, we could start to see erosion from sites like Flickr and del.icio.us to the Parakey GUI. It’s highly likely most of the users utilizing sites like Flickr and del.icio.us and Blogger have a Facebook or some semblance of interest in acquiring one. With a robust GUI that could replace multiple website as an “all-in-one” package, the transition from a similar site to Facebook could be expedited. That scenario really depends on how inclusive Parakey ends up being, as I must remind myself, nothing regarding this platform is set in stone yet.
With or without a smashing success on the part of Parakey, I’d say it’s safe to assume Facebook isn’t content with staying an exclusively social networking site; sure, it’ll be their core operation, but branching out was bound to take place with a company who seems to be unable to quit growing. It’s the combination of growth, desire to branch out, and youth the company still has that seems to make Facebook a growingly dominant power on the Internet. If I were the big web conglomerates of today, I’d watch my back. They may end up finding a spunky startup company from a college student has revolutionized the Internet of tomorrow.
Pictures courtesy of: Parakey, Facebook, Google;
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