What Should Facebook Do Next?

Following last week’s blog post, I’ve had some hands on time with Google+. Though I consider myself to be a relatively mild user of social media, its already become clear that Google’s enthusiasm for conquering social media has not been dismayed one bit but all their failures. In fact, it seems that their mishaps have merely strengthened their resolve at finally cracking this media market. I have absolutely no way of knowing if this latest attempt will finally succeed (although I can say from my limited experience so far, its yet to disappoint me), but I am pretty confident in concluding that succeed or fail Google will be banging on this door for quite some time, and its reasonable to assume that at some point they will have some form of measured success.

Which then got me thinking, if I was a Facebook executive what on earth would I do next?... The answers I believe are pretty straightforward:

• Go public... ASAP! Facebook has had a meteoric rise, but is yet to reap any true financial rewards. Given that the 500Ib gorilla of technology wants a piece of its action, I would stop all the hesitation today, and pull the trigger on the IPO. Who knows when this window of opportunity will close?

• They copied your product, and you should copy theirs. Its obvious that Google liberally ripped off Facebook’s highly regarded spartan-yet-functional design layout. If I were Facebook I would be dissecting and lifting all those nifty features Google seem to be hanging their hat on. The best of which are, segmenting your friends into groups that you can individually share things with, and the ability to conduct group video/ text chats.

• Prepare for the worst, and prepare to fight... Perhaps all the biggest mistakes ever made by technology companies have really only ever boiled down to one thing, they never took looming threats seriously enough. IBM, Dell, Palm, Myspace all failed to really guard their territory with equal ferocity to their baby-faced competitors. Facebook have the home court advantage, they are the current masters of this field, and they should be doing everything humanly possible to guard their territory against this possibly gathering storm.