Is This the End of Facebook?

Video ads. They're inserting fifteen-second video ads into Facebook newsfeeds soon, a plan that is expected to cause such a backlash among the user base, that the implementation has been delayed twice already. Currently, the expected launch date is sometime in early fall. And yet, Facebook is moving forward with this idea, the latest of many recent attempts to monetize the social networking service. Apparently the money being offered by advertisers is just too good, and the pressure to generate more revenue from Facebook is just too great. Bloomberg reports they're charging $2.5 million per ad.

Facebook is already inundated in ads, particularly if you've impulsively been clicking those little "Like" widget buttons for various products and services. Some of those buttons automatically subscribe you to official feeds for those products and services that will send you ads and offers unsolicited. I've often looked at the little messages telling me that one of my girlfriends has "liked" a particular restaurant or book and wondered if they really meant to broadcast that "like" to every minor acquaintance on their friends list. There are already plenty of complaints about the volume on ads on Facebook, and nobody ever appreciates that they're all tailored especially for each particular user. Not a day goes by that I haven't heard more reminders about checking privacy settings or someone suggesting Adblock.

Of course, Facebook's continued existence depends on those who are tolerant enough of those ads not to automatically change their settings or seek work-arounds. I expect that number is likely going to shrink dramatically when the video ads start going, because video ads are about the most intrusive form of marketing there is. Video eats up bandwidth, it's much more difficult to ignore, and the targeting is much more obvious. The Facebook ads will play automatically, but without sound until the user clicks on them. They will also be limited to only three appearances a day for any user - at first. It's easy to imagine those numbers and the length of the ads creeping up over time, until we're looking at full television-length ads popping up right between cute pictures of our cousins' kids and our old college roommates' selfies.

Now I understand the ad revenue is vital long term to keep our favorite social media sites going. It's a hassle, but it may be necessary to keep these services afloat. However, I worry that this may be a step too far for Facebook. They've managed to keep from losing many user to competitors like Google Plus, but they aren't expanding at nearly the rate they used to and that botched IPO really hurt their standing. Moreover, the general consensus seems to be that Facebook is losing the interest of the users that it already has. Sure, some people consider it a necessity for social interaction, and it's certainly useful for keeping in contact with a large number of people, but I don't know many people who actively spend a lot of time on the site anymore. Blogging and Tweeting and Instagramming, sure, but updating Facebook? Is anyone really checking that feed more than twice a day?

I still maintain a Facebook page but I find that I'm not on the site very often. I log in there maybe once a week to respond to an alert that someone sent me a friend request, or to follow up on something that was posted to my wall. There was a brief fling with the Candy Crush Saga game a while ago, a fling that abruptly ended when I reached the end of the free levels and discovered that the option to bother three friends to keep playing didn't seem to be available to me, and I wasn't willing to pay actual money to continue. So that was that. I have a lot of friends and family who are fairly active on the site though, and there's nothing except very general information in my own profile, so I'm happy to keep it active and keep neglecting it.

Would I watch a video ad every time I visit to be able to maintain that Facebook profile, though? I'm not sure. I would for LinkedIn, and I would have in order to keep Google Reader, which I miss terribly, especially because I made the mistake of jumping to The Old Reader as a replacement, which collapsed in spectacular fashion a few days ago. Facebook, though, is not really a priority. Since I'm there so infrequently, I think the answer would be yes, ironically, because watching the ads would be rare enough for me that it wouldn't bother me much. For people use Facebook frequently, though, the answer may be very different. The worry is that the ad-averse are going to leave the site for some alternative, install filters, or reduce their activity until they become much more casual users like me.

I can just see the headlines now: "Video Killed the Internet Star."
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