According to an interesting Reuters article, Facebook may have already become a technological “lock.” Let’s go straight to Reuters’ description of why Alyssa Ravasio stayed committed to Facebook despite her annoyance at the social networking site’s unpredictable privacy settings:
Tech-savvy Ravasio, a 21-year-old UCLA student designing her undergraduate degree around the Internet’s impact on society and communication, is irked by changes privately owned Facebook has made.
But for now, she says, Facebook is keeping her allegiance because of a concept called “technological lock-in.” In other words, the site has become an essential part of her life.
“I think Facebook is the most valuable Internet commodity in existence, more so than Google, because they are positioning themselves to be our online identity via Facebook connect,” Ravasio said.
“It’s your real name, it’s your real friends, and assuming they manage to navigate the privacy quagmire, they’re poised to become your universal login,” she said. “I would almost argue that Facebook is the new mobile phone. It’s the new thing you need to keep in touch, almost a requirement of modern social life.”
While this may not sound like marketing, I would argue that this type of lasting brand affinity is the highest form of marketing there is. One part of this equation is the cost of switching services. According to the company’s official stats page, the average Facebook user has 130 friends. There may be another service which is marginally better, but, before changing social networks, users would have to ask themselves whether such an improvement would be worth rebuilding a friend list.
But there’s another issue at play here. Facebook has managed to become a part of people’s lives, part of their daily routines and conversations. As Ravasio makes clear, Facebook is essential to her. The social networking site has created a committed audience and a way to reach them. This is marketing. It’s important to keep in mind that what we think of as marketing–the hard sells; what audiences think of as marketing–has a tendency to make people defensive. The more subtle ways of communicating value look like simple methods of service and engagement, but they are extremely effective. As we’ve seen with Facebook, sometimes the best marketing comes down to making your service essential.
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