Is Facebook the new corporate website?

The development of the browser provided easy and simple access to websites for anyone/everyone. Before then, whilst the language (Hypertext) existed it was not easy to provide a user-friendly front end to sites that people would easily and quickly adopt. Once that easy access was provided, the world and his dog very quickly hopped on the band-waggon.

As did corporates. they saw their customers going online and knew they had to follow. Today one of the first things most new companies do is get a domain name and set up a web presence. Shops and services sprung up more or less taking over the DIY personal space website that had existed previously, even the government got online!

Now, post browser, we're seeing the next broad spectrum access tool arriving on the internet: Facebook. Almost half of the world's netizens use Facebook everyday already and it reminds me of how the web was at the beginning: lots of individuals creating their own little websites where they talked about themselves and their hobbies with maintained centralised lists of websites worth visiting. Not quite as interactive as Facebook, but not really very different. Already forward thinking companies are getting in on the act and setting up facebook pages that people can visit, like, link to or friend (a somewhat odd idea friending a corporate entity, but there we go). Right now, it's clunky, it subverts what is meant for the individual to the corporate requirement and it lacks an easy way of enabling someone to create the equivalent of a corporate website within Facebook. Establish this capability within Facebook and corporations will I'm sure move their online presence to Facebook and follow their customers. Why would they not, particularly when you consider the wealth of information on their customers that they'd gain access to, it's a salesman's dream!

There's work to do to enable corporates to have the same rich environment they have on a website, but it can't be that hard to achieve. Give it three years and it's quite likely that the idea of having a website for your company separate from Facebook could well be as out dated and old fashioned as the land-line. What this will mean for Facebook infrastructure and the very structure and intent of the internet itself is another massive question, but there's nothing as fickle as a customer and they really don't care about how it all works as long as it works and it gives them what they want.

I wonder which corporation will be the first to close down their website and convert to a Facebook page?