I'd sell facebook and then go sip a pina colada some place where I'm not scrutinized by everyone about how I should be running things.
I think mark is doing a good job, sometimes immediate profitability isn't always the best route. He's been taking risks by redoing their APIs a few times over, attempting borderline privacy attempts like beacon, etc. I think once the business finds the cash cow, their executives are not going to attempt risky moves that might jeopardize their end of year bonuses. I think it's a good thing that a company as large as facebook is still trying things that might fail.
Meta-comment: It's actually a good way to increase your site's popularity; invent a game to take advantage of people's inclination for playing monday-morning quarterbacks without providing any real value, but feeling productive (gee, I thought real deep on this one!) nonetheless.
Kudos to netsetter for developing a good marketing tool.
I would know what NOT to do... Don't sell out with so much advertising that the site becomes unusable (myspace) and don't get too Orwellian because people may not value their privacy as much as they did a decade or two ago but there's still a line you can cross.
I'd focus on strong inbuilt support for band pages and giving bands all the features they want. Bands are one of the last pieces of the puzzle, they still appear to me much more active on myspace.
I'd probably give bands the ability to within limitations customize there page layout, as in they may have to keep the same box structure but can add additional graphics and background.
Also taking this route if successful would greatly help integrating a music business, possibly even acquiring a company like spotify or similar to complement.
focus on getting more and more people on facebook. The value of the social network will increase the more people are on it.
Facebook should pursue a strategy similar to operating system companies and focus on becoming the market standard. Facebook should focus on becoming the standardized social media platform on the internet.
Also another ultimate goal is to focus on making facebook the new desktop. So when a person first turns on his computer, he opens browser and then facebook. And all internet interactions are done through facebook. watching and discovering content, ecommerce, social interaction should all be done through the facebook platform.
I think mark is doing a good job, sometimes immediate profitability isn't always the best route. He's been taking risks by redoing their APIs a few times over, attempting borderline privacy attempts like beacon, etc. I think once the business finds the cash cow, their executives are not going to attempt risky moves that might jeopardize their end of year bonuses. I think it's a good thing that a company as large as facebook is still trying things that might fail.