Creating a Facebook page for your business is a mainstay in social media marketing. It’s not everyone’s target market, but even if it’s not a key arm of your communications strategy, it’s almost a given to, at least, have some basic presence on this giant of social media. And, naturally, Facebook — the company behind the platform — has its own Facebook page too, so you can declare yourself a fan of Facebook on Facebook.
If you navigate to that page, the news feed of Facebook Co is populated with posts on its engagements with small business, the donations the platform has facilitated in 2020, and a news post about a discussion between founder Mark Zuckerberg and Anthony Fauci, director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
Like any company on the platform, Facebook Co offers a carefully curated and positive picture of itself to its avowed fans. What isn’t present on that feed, though, is the flurry of news items about the company you will find in media coverage of the firm: movements in stock prices; looming competition cases; and various countries’ steps in regulating news publishing on the platform.
The contrast is particularly interesting this week, as news items about the company have been coming thick and fast to a screen or paper near you. For example, Bloomberg is reporting that Zuckerberg’s behemoth is the subject of several lawsuits expected to be filed in the US this week. Anonymous sources said a group of attorneys-general (CNBC says at least 20 to 30 states could join in) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) are preparing antitrust lawsuits that should land imminently.
Cash split
And the shots are coming from all sides. In Australia, new laws introduced in parliament will cause the Australian Broadcasting Company (ABC) to retain its public funding and the revenue it will now get from Facebook (and Google). It has been included in the group of media organisations the tech companies will now be required to negotiate with Down Under, including ABC, Nine Entertainment, Seven West Media, Guardian Australia and News Corp Australia. These direct negotiations will determine how much Facebook pays for the news content used on its news feed and Google Search (but not on Instagram and YouTube, which are owned by Facebook and Google respectively).
The legislation does acknowledge that media companies benefit from reaching a bigger audience through these channels, so it’s not totally one-sided, but the cash split between them is dramatically skewed away from media. The Australian federal government has estimated that Google gobbles up about $53 of every $100 spent on advertising, with Facebook pocketing $28, leaving news media to survive on just $19 of the original “hundy” between them.
It’s not all doom and gloom though, as Facebook’s other darling, WhatsApp, announced on December 8 it would be adding a new feature to the app — a shopping cart — that will facilitate purchasing via the app ahead of the biggest shopping season of the year. Business accounts on WhatsApp, TechCrunch says, “already process messages from more than 175-million people”. WhatsApp wants to see more of its 2-billion users shop at independent merchants through them. This is in line with a general push towards commerce on the communications app recently, which is not yet a revenue source despite its gigantic reach. The feature is expected to be available globally shortly, but at the time of writing there was not yet an update for iOS users on the SA App Store.
Also making headlines is the announcement from Facebook Financial that its cryptocurrency, Diem (previously Libra), and wallet are due to launch in 2021. But a hurdle to the launch remains: regulatory approvals. Speaking at the Singapore FinTech Festival, the head of Facebook Financial (F2), David Marcus, said regulators should give Facebook the “benefit of the doubt” in terms of giving it the approvals it needs to move ahead with the cryptocurrency. But that’s no small hurdle as various regulators are making clear just how they feel about Facebook’s ambitions nowadays.
Between these fingers-in-pies, and — thanks to the 2014 acquisition of Oculus — being the world’s largest maker of virtual reality hardware, Facebook is becoming a hydra that may just prove impossible to contain. All eyes on the FTC then.
• Thompson Davy, a freelance journalist, is an impactAFRICA fellow and WanaData member.
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