The Facebook Federation

Reading over the coverage of F8 this week, one thing is clear: Facebook the social network isn’t very interesting anymore. I think we’re on the other side of its peak, even if we can’t perceive that just yet. The interesting parts of Facebook are now Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Oculus.

They are slowly becoming Facebook. A federation of products, not the social networking stream.

I think we’ll look back and believe that Facebook, like Apple, is a company that did a great job disrupting itself before others could. And they did it all through smart acquisitions — people forget that even Messenger was an acquisition way back when. Just imagine if they had been able to buy Snapchat as well…

It surprises me that more of the giants don’t follow this model. Yes, they all acquire companies, but they should acquire products they believe in, supply them with all the resources they need to flourish, then leave them alone. Ideally, they should be loosely tied. It won’t always work, of course. But it seems to work better than trying to unnaturally integrate and assimilate.

The big question mark in my mind is if Facebook can monetize the new Facebook Federation fast enough to counter the eventual decline of Facebook, the social network.

To be clear, as the network approaches 1.5 billion active users, it’s not going away any time soon. But I’d bet on a slow decline of the main product starting sooner rather than later. (Who knows if they’ll ever admit this though since Messenger users are technically Facebook users and many people I know have Facebook open on their desktops just to use Messenger.)

Yes, people have been predicting this for years. And they’re always wrong. But I think the reality is more nuanced than Facebook dying; it’s morphing. Slowly but surely.