The Death of Facebook (or Why Google is Way Better at Everything)

(I promise this will be my last "Death of..." article!)

The article in The Economic Times (India) "Why you should look at Google and not Facebook as a model to stay ahead," by Vivek Wadhwa, really struck a note with me. 

Google is nice.

The article asserts that Google has built a healthy company by setting aside shares, and has built Google Fiber and Google's wifi balloons. They're making the world better.
tremendous goodwill by doing things to build real communities. They have community-betterment projects like

This goodwill has enabled them to stay in a positive light in the eye of many groups of people. When Microsoft got big, the author argued, there was a lot of general dislike and distrust that comes along with Big Business. Google has grown and is (relatively) loved.

The author was saying that Facebook is dealing with a lot of pressure from shareholders, and is really trying to squeeze some money out of this product that they built. The thing is, though, Facebook wasn't built with money in mind, at least at first.

Throughout my MBA program, I've thought a lot about businesses, and especially internet businesses. This is a crude simplification, but there are either businesses that sell products or services (any e-commerce site or SEO consultants, etc), there are innovative companies who create new ways of generating income while delivering huge value (Google), and there are companies who have built great things... but then are a bit confused as to how they'll monetize them (Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, etc.)

The first two that I've listed are basically what you find in regular businesses too. The third, though, is so interesting because it's NEW, and everyone is trying to figure out what to do with it.

I have been (and still am, albeit less proactively) faced with a similar issue to Facebook with Busan Awesome, my city guide website. I built a community of users and now it's a trusted site in the city of Busan. But I built it for fun (kind of like how Facebook was built), and now it's like well... what do I do with it? It'd be a shame to let all those users go on without monetizing it in some way, right? I mean I'd at least want to cover my hosting fees!

To try to monetize, I've tried to contact local restaurants, bars, and tour companies, but there are all sorts of issues. I'm no longer in Korea, and a lot of them just want to give me cash under the table for advertisements. Many of the companies have been SUCH A PAIN to work with that I've had to fire them as clients. Yes, I've had some problems.

So I guess I can either try to continue dealing with this the Facebook way, and try to squeeze out some cash from advertisers. Or I guess I could try to do things the Google way. Assuming I was still in Korea, of course, I could launch community outreach events, partner up with local businesses to hold events and other fun things in the city.