One of my friends posted a status update today on Facebook asking about “a pantone color for white”. Five minutes later, she updated the status stating that she has found the answer.
So I asked her why she didn’t try to find on her own in the first place, and her answer was that she was trying to save time, and was hoping that someone would have provided the answer before her Google search. Even though she didn’t really save any time in this case, but sure enough, her friends answered her question and they had a discussion on the topic all within 1 hour after it was published.
I think there is something significant happening here. And it’s important for brands to understand that perhaps Google is losing its ground on “finding answers for people”,aka, search. And it’s not to the obvious competitors like Bing or Yahoo or even Wikipedia. It’s to Facebook.
Now I understand Google is extremely good at what they do, which is, to organize all the information in the world and display it in a way that makes sense to its users. That said, it’s not the same getting an answer from one of your friends whom you know and trust versus some random website.
Does this mean that Google will soon lose its biggest (and only) revenue stream? Hardly. But it’s kind of nice knowing that you now have some other options (e.g., try to get people to mention your product when they answer their friends’ questions on Facebook) than simply spending $30,000 a month on one keyword for AdWords, isn’t it?
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