I am getting really annoyed with the constant posts all over the blogosphere about how Facebook should 'take control' and launch their own music service, up against the hugely successful music community/application iLike (over 5m monthly active users on Facebook).
We already know that Facebook is developing a payments system. This will allow any application to sell ANYTHING (a real shopping mall, with unlimited shops) and Facebook will get a cut. This includes music, digital items, real items. This will make them a lot of money. And they won't have to disrupt their core focus (being a social platform), or seriously piss off one of their biggest application partners. They also avoid scaring off the prospect of any serious VC money going to social app developers (instead, by placing their trust in developers to create and sell the content, whilst providing an easy monetisation route, they'll encourage investment; creating more successful applications selling things through their platform; creating more money).
Facebook is a business, with a clear focus; to be the social platform of choice. They clearly differentiate themselves in this way from Bebo and MySpace, which have more of a content focus. Their strategy has been working, and they recently overtook MySpace as the biggest social network in the west. I'm really dismayed to see well-respected blogs in the social media space write articles saying Facebook should do this, without even mentioning the upcoming payment system (which Facebook first started talking about almost 10 months ago). So much so they won't even get my links.
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