Facebook is Telling Stories

I have wondered about Facebook’s revenue model in the past - because we all know ad revenue is great, but not really effective on a site like Facebook - but a recent interview in the Wall Street Journal with Mark Zuckerberg gave a tiny hint of where Facebook may be going in the future. And just because I know most of you don’t have a subscription to the WSJ, here’s a little snippet of the article:

I don’t get the sense Mr. Zuckerberg is a big fan of traditional media. He was famously photographed at a big media powwow wearing Adidas flip-flops. I snuck a quick glance down and noticed he still had them on. “Actually, I don’t have a TV but I do read newspapers. But how I read them is important. I don’t pick up a physical newspaper — I’ll get sent a link. The experience is very different, given to me by different people. What my friends sent to me or what other people think and send to me.”

In effect, Facebook works in a similar way, only on a grand scale with software helping pull out relevant information. “In the next iterations, you’re going to see real stories being produced. ‘These people went to this party and they did this the next day and then here’s the discussion that was taking place off of this article in The Wall Street Journal. And these two people went to this party and they broke up the next day.’ Whatever, you can start weaving together real events into stories. As these start to approach being stories, we turn into a massive publisher. Twenty to 30 snippets of information or stories a day, that’s like 300 million stories a day. It gets to a point where we are publishing more in a day than most other publications have in the history of their whole existence.”

If Facebook truly is in the business of creating stories, then this kind of ‘personalized news’ - and the subsequent ability to charge for these stories - may be what makes Facebook a viable business instead of just an awesome Web 2.0 application. In my brief encounter with Zuckerberg a few years ago, I could see that he had aspirations to make Facebook more than just a social networking site, and a movement towards this kind of ‘relevant journalism’ may fit into his vision quite nicely.

UPDATE: I just found a great post on GigaOM about Facebook becoming the new publisher, where Liz Gannes sums it up quite nicely: “So watch out, gossip rags - you’re Mark Zuckerberg’s next target.”