Thanks for describing the differences between content sharing and community. Super helpful! You talk a lot about Discord. Is there still a place for Facebook groups? Why or why not? Would value your expertise!
There's definitely space for multiple platforms to provide community spaces. In terms of Facebook groups, the difficulty is in incentive alignment.
Facebook makes money when people are in Newsfeed, or on Watch (videos). These surfaces are where it can serve ads and earn revenue. These surfaces are NOT where people engage deeply with one community. Within a community, Facebook's monetization rails aren't quite there. Sure, in Facebook Groups, there are some beginnings of monetization features, but given how long it's had to do this, the company is clearly not focused on this, and that makes sense given the would-be opportunity costs.
The way Facebook Groups has to prove value to the company is to show that people's engagement in Groups is making them more engaged and retained -> they spend incremental time getting impressed with ads -> revenue. That's the challenge of working on a community product within a company whose revenue is not aligned with community.
From the consumer perspective, it just doesn't seem like Facebook is the "it" place to go to for much anymore. The company has massive brand perception battles to deal with. At the same time, smaller, more incentive aligned companies who are focused on communities are able to move much more quickly to serve the latent needs in the market.
Thanks for describing the differences between content sharing and community. Super helpful! You talk a lot about Discord. Is there still a place for Facebook groups? Why or why not? Would value your expertise!
There's definitely space for multiple platforms to provide community spaces. In terms of Facebook groups, the difficulty is in incentive alignment.
Facebook makes money when people are in Newsfeed, or on Watch (videos). These surfaces are where it can serve ads and earn revenue. These surfaces are NOT where people engage deeply with one community. Within a community, Facebook's monetization rails aren't quite there. Sure, in Facebook Groups, there are some beginnings of monetization features, but given how long it's had to do this, the company is clearly not focused on this, and that makes sense given the would-be opportunity costs.
The way Facebook Groups has to prove value to the company is to show that people's engagement in Groups is making them more engaged and retained -> they spend incremental time getting impressed with ads -> revenue. That's the challenge of working on a community product within a company whose revenue is not aligned with community.
From the consumer perspective, it just doesn't seem like Facebook is the "it" place to go to for much anymore. The company has massive brand perception battles to deal with. At the same time, smaller, more incentive aligned companies who are focused on communities are able to move much more quickly to serve the latent needs in the market.