The 15-year-old Silicon Valley giant is experiencing unprecedented anxiety and difficulties, and Mark Zuckerberg urgently needs to find an antidote.
Will it be blockchain?
Produced | Odaily (ID: o-daily)
Produced | Odaily (ID: o-daily)
Yes, Facebook is going to issue coins.
According to sources quoted by the New York Times, Facebook is developing a cryptocurrency, the token name FBC, designed to allow users to send money directly to contacts in its messaging system, just like PayPal's online cross-border remittance transactions.
Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg published a long article titled "Vision for Privacy-Centric Social Networking" on March 6, stating that "the vision of building a privacy-centered messaging and social networking platform and principles", which draw people's imagination.
Everything has been foreshadowed.
In late February, Zuckerberg said in a video interview that he was seriously evaluating the potential of the blockchain, and that a truly distributed thing might replace services such as Facebook Connect, which allows Internet users to log in to various platforms through a set of credentials. services without relying on third parties.
According to CCN, in February this year, Facebook acquired Chainspace, a blockchain company founded by researchers at University College London. The Chainspace website describes its project as "a planet-level smart contract platform" that uses a "distributed network, for scalability, speed, and privacy."
On March 8, on Facebook's official website recruitment page, Odaily searched with "blockchain" as the keyword, and it showed that there were 20 related positions such as product manager and data software engineer.
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Not only issuing coins, Facebook also needs to do encrypted communication
On March 6, Facebook founder Zuckerberg published a long article, which attracted a lot of attention. This article titled "A Privacy-Focused Vision for Social Networking (a privacy-focused vision for social networking)" conveys Facebook's latest philosophy on protecting user privacy.
A week ago, the New York Times reported that Facebook would issue the stable currency FacebookCoin (FBC), which aroused public attention. According to reports, FBC has the following three alternative distribution plans:
The first potential solution is that Facebook has communicated with some exchanges about the sale of FBC. At that time, FBC will anchor the US dollar 1:1 and operate as a subsidiary.
The second option is that FBC will be linked to the U.S. dollar, euro, and renminbi (another news is the Indian rupee), and reserve the above three currencies at the same time in the company's international account linked to the stable currency.
The third solution is completely different from the first two "collateralized stablecoins". It is a "mixture of credit currency and mortgage currency". The value is generated through "behavioral mining + user recharge". The currency is generated by the legal tender of the user's own country.
"In the final analysis, the issuance of FBC is mainly for the needs of Facebook users for instant payment." Steve, the founder of the communication public chain TOP Network, told the analysis.
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"I'm willing to pay the price"
Currently, among the three major communication applications (Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram) in the Facebook system, only WhatsApp uses encryption technology.
In 2014, Facebook bought WhatsApp for $19 billion. One of the great things about WhatsApp is that it is social for acquaintances, while Facebook is a social app for strangers.
Today, when the number of Facebook users has grown to more than one billion, Facebook’s product managers have become more and more simple and crude in managing user data, which has become outdated when people pay more and more attention to privacy. Therefore, Zuckerberg hopes that Facebook can match WhatsApp.
Zuckerberg described it this way, even though we have built into WhatsApp the features that allow for wider sharing, it is still not so public. When creating a group, people can set a limit to ensure every interaction is private. When we posted the story on WhatsApp, we limited how far he could go in public areas, we were worried it would erode the sense of privacy.
In order for Facebook to bring people such a sense of security, Zuckerberg listed several product guidelines in the article, including increasing personal space in the network, encrypted communication, data destruction, service security and data security storage .
For example, encrypted communication means that people's private communication should be end-to-end encrypted, and no one other than the two parties in the communication (including Facebook) can see the content of people's access to communication.
Another example is data destruction. Zuckerberg doesn't want people to worry that what they share will hurt them later. So Facebook doesn't keep the messages for too long, only the ones you want to keep.
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Finding an "Antidote" in Difficulties
"Twitter, Facebook and Instagram have too many fake accounts, deceiving followers to steal digital currency."
In April last year, Vitalik Buterin, the founder of Ethereum, said with emotion that he had reported fraud to the platform, but these platforms allowed these "imitators" accounts to continue to exist without deleting or processing them.
In addition to the fake Vitalik Buterin on Facebook, there are fake "Iron Man" Elon Musk and even Donald Trump.
V God said that there are currently only two social media platforms - Twitter and Reddit.
The number of people who don't use or abandon Facebook like V God is increasing.
Facebook has an estimated 15 million fewer U.S. users than it did in 2017, according to a March 6 study by Edison Research and Triton Digital. The decline was most pronounced among children and young adults, with a 17 percent drop in usage among the 12-35 age group.
According to a 2017 eMarketer analysis, these young people have migrated to Snapchat and Instagram, which is owned by Facebook.
According to Facebook's 2018 semi-annual report, since Q2 2016, the growth rate of Facebook's daily active users and monthly active users has shown a downward trend, especially in Q1 and Q2 of 2018, both growth rates have dropped to 2%.
At a Facebook staff meeting on November 16, 2018, Eliot Schrager, Facebook's former vice president of global communications and public policy, said: Facebook is currently in a difficult cycle.
Facebook’s revenue mainly comes from advertising. According to its annual report, the company’s advertising revenue accounted for 98% of its total revenue in 2017.
Advertising has always been Facebook's Achilles' heel. He brought Facebook $39.9 billion in revenue in 1 year (2017), and Facebook has been criticized.
According to the Odaily Research Institute's research report on blockchain social communication: "From a business point of view, social networking with the Internet as the underlying infrastructure still has an "original sin". People have been using Internet social products for free, but we found that , the price paid for free is that personal information is sold as a platform commodity. Because the main profit model of Internet social media is to analyze user behavior data and provide advertisers with accurate advertising.”
In March 2018, Facebook was exposed by the media, and the information of more than 50 million Facebook users was leaked by a company called Cambridge Analytica (CA). Sexual online targeting of political ads to sway the U.S. presidential election, which is completely controlled by Facebook.
Facebook stock then fell 6.8 percent, wiping $50 billion off its market value within a week. As a result, Facebook has to face lawsuits filed by 80 million users, as well as congressional hearings and investigations by the Federal Trade Commission.
The world's largest social networking site is mired in a crisis of trust.
On May 25, 2018, the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) came into effect, which brought new challenges to Facebook, a model that relies on obtaining personal information to achieve accurate advertising.
Before and after the 2018 U.S. midterm elections, Zuckerberg posted lengthy posts on Facebook, declaring again, “For 2018, my personal challenge is to focus on the most important issues facing our communities—whether this will stop election meddling, Stop hate speech and the spread of misinformation."
The 15-year-old Silicon Valley giant is experiencing unprecedented anxiety and difficulties, and Mark Zuckerberg urgently needs to find an antidote.
Will it be blockchain?
As early as 2009, Facebook launched its own virtual currency Credits, hoping that users could use Credits to buy virtual goods in the game, but it ended without a problem in 2012.
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Potential to broaden the virtual currency market
How will Facebook's coin issuance affect Facebook or reality?
On the one hand, this may change Facebook’s revenue model. At present, most of Facebook’s revenue sources are advertising fees. When Facebook Coin is released, it may open up the payment market that Facebook has never had the opportunity to enter.
"Because of the mature credit card system abroad and concerns about personal information privacy, the vast majority of users will not trade on social networks." An industry insider said that Facebook has always wanted to try to do payment and finance, but failed.
But blockchain seems to be the solution to this problem.
If FBC is a stable currency capable of global payment and privacy, which eliminates users' trust doubts, then Facebook is likely to charge a certain transaction fee for it.
On the other hand, Facebook will likely expand the virtual currency market and increase the number of currency holders.
On December 20, 2018, Morgan Creek founder Anthony Pompliano tweeted: "If Facebook launches a stable currency product, it will become the most used product."
According to the New York Times, Facebook coins may be used in three applications: Messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram, which have a total of 2.7 billion users worldwide.
But these 2.7 billion people accept Facebook coins, which also broadens their awareness of cryptocurrencies and makes it easier to accept other cryptocurrencies.
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Impact the blockchain social field
When Facebook's currency issuance becomes a reality, what kind of chain effect will it cause?
The first to be threatened may be those blockchain projects engaged in social networking.
According to the Odaily Research Institute report, there are currently at least 11 blockchain communication platforms such as Telegram and 19 blockchain social platforms such as Steemit.
Internet giants including Facebook, Telegram, and Signal (an encrypted messaging service app) plan to launch new cryptocurrencies next year. In addition, Line and Kakao, the two largest instant messaging applications in Japan and South Korea, are also promoting their own cryptocurrency projects.
The entry of Facebook and FBC will make this blockchain social or blockchain communication battle more intense.
Is this still an Internet-style "big fish eats small fish" monopoly game?
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in addition,Odaily Research Institute ReportFrom the perspective of user needs, blockchain social networking mainly addresses two needs: first, privacy and security requirements in the process of end-to-end instant messaging, and second, ownership and storage of information property rights produced on social platforms.
From the perspective of user needs, blockchain social networking mainly addresses two needs: first, privacy and security requirements in the process of end-to-end instant messaging, and second, ownership and storage of information property rights produced on social platforms.
From the perspective of business model, the decentralized operation mechanism and fuel currency model of the blockchain system provide a new business model.
A social battle about blockchain encryption is about to start. Can Facebook stand out?
"A big question for Facebook is how much control it will retain over its own digital currency. If Facebook is responsible for approving every transaction and tracking every user, it's not clear why it would use a blockchain instead of doing one like PayPal. traditional centralized systems,” says The New York Times
On the other hand, Telegram, an important rival of Facebook, issued a letter to investors in January stating that 90% of the key parts of the main network have been completed, and Gram (the name of the Telegram token) will be available for these parts. Telegram completed two rounds of private placements totaling US$1.7 billion in February and March 2018, setting a record for the highest ICO financing in history.
Telegram has about 300 million users worldwide, but its daily activity is declining. According to the monitoring data of Rating Token, a third-party big data agency, on February 27, the number of active groups in the Telegram blockchain project decreased by 21.73% compared with the previous month, and the news sentiment continued to decline, and the news sentiment was generally negative.
It is conceivable that there will be an inevitable fierce battle between the ICO chronology project represented by Telegram or the blockchain project and traditional Internet giants such as Facebook.
In addition, Mark Zuckerberg may face his arch-nemesis Jack Dorsey. In addition to being the CEO of Twitter, Jack Dorsey is also the founder and CEO of the mobile payment company Square.
In November 2017, Square tested Bitcoin transactions in its payment application Cash App. At that time, Square’s stock price was about 37 US dollars. Today, Square’s trading price has exceeded 74.11 US dollars, with a market value of 31.1 billion US dollars, exceeding Twitter’s market value (230.97 One hundred million U.S. dollars).
In addition to the great success Square has achieved in the field of commercial payments, it is also well-known in virtual currency payments. Currently, Cash App has long been ranked among the top 10 free versions of the App Store in the United States, and a key introduction of the App is "Buy Bitcoin". customer, attractive.
And, once regulation is loosened, it's hard to deny that Jack Dorsey won't be bringing the Cash App's cryptocurrency functionality to Twitter. At that time, there will inevitably be a confrontation between Twitter and Facebook.
"Move fast and break things." That was Facebook's motto in its first decade. If you're not making mistakes, you're not moving fast enough, Zuckerberg said.
This blockchain social melee will test Facebook's speed even more.
