Jane called me from Facebook today at work. [I'm changing her name, and you'll see why. Her real name is also common and also has only four letters.] I assumed it was a cold call. She wanted to talk to me about advertising on Facebook and asked me if I had time to talk. Remember that.
It so happens I have a project that may involve Facebook advertising. I told her I wanted to talk, but I needed to schedule a time. She said she was west coast, so we agreed to talk 4pm eastern, my time. She said she would call me then. I scheduled: “Jane Facebook 4pm.”
Now I didn’t really think she was with Facebook. I get a lot of cold calls. I figured she was a contract sales person or with a company that does lead qualification. Our company actually sells such a service. I’m sympathetic to cold calls. Still, I wanted to talk to her about advertising on Facebook. I’ve done some work with Google sales, made some small purchases, and it is all fascinating.
About 3pm, I returned to my office. I had a message waiting from Jane who told me an emergency had come up. She apologized and hoped we could reschedule. She gave me her number and then paused and said… “Or you can drop me an email. My email is jane at fb dot com. Let me know! Thanks.”
If you are in the business to any degree, you may recall how Facebook opened up email to members using the facebook.com domain. Individuals and groups can have @facebook.com addresses. I have one. My extended family has one for email posting to a private facebook group: thegreatfamily@facebook.com. (Yes, I changed that, too.)
When Facebook did this, they wanted to keep company email private, so they adopted @fb.com. That’s an insider email address.
So I just got a call from a person who has an email address that is a common, four-letter, first-name-only @fb.com address: jane@fb.com. Jane is part of a small elite group. She is either an early employee or a high ranking employee. In their west coast office they have approximately 3,600 employees. After a company grows to more than a couple hundred, it just isn’t practical to standardize on first name email addresses.
I also have to say she sounded real. She did not come across as scripted or overly eager or polished. Nor did she sound bored. Not sure how to explain my point, but it was one of the reasons I agreed to talk to her.
That’s when I thought… she’s going to be rich. Why is someone who is about to be a millionaire in two weeks calling me? Emergency? I would think so. Facebook is about to go public. Mark and the crew are pitching to top investors this week to help make the most of the IPO. Wouldn’t you think every firstname@fb.com employee is really really really busy right now?
Why did jane@fb.com just call me?
Maybe the week isn’t going well with investors. Maybe the month hasn’t gone well. In fact, maybe it hasn’t been a great year so far. Q1 revenue growth slowed and profits were down.
I started connecting the dots:
1. My mom has largely quit using Facebook. This is someone who loves to be in the know, but some of the unintended exposure of Zuckerberg’s open philosophy bit her too many times.
2. My very clever wife is confused by the nuance between a Newsfeed and the new Timeline. Why do her posts sometimes appear on her Newsfeed and sometimes not? She and her friends find themselves double posting because it isn’t clear the post “took.” Her technical husband (me) tried in vain to explain the differences. Honestly, I don’t get why, either. Our kids just roll their eyes, but I’m not sure they have an explanation.
3. My youngest, 17, recently started aggressively cutting back her 600+ “friends” to get down to something closer to 100. She has both time management and privacy concerns. While doing this, she noticed many on her list had set themselves to inactive status.
4. My 19-year-old college student just set her account to inactive last week. Privacy concerns. She’s off Facebook for now. Facebook was invented for college students!
5. One of my good friends in the media had over 1,000 friends (fans) but found the whole thing too much to manage. He apologized to everyone, and then cut his friend list down to 40+ just to maintain his sanity. I was proud to make his short list. He’s a wonderful guy.
6. My engineer brother quit Facebook because of intrusive advertising that he was convinced leveraged personal data he had not provided. Creepy factor. I’ve heard a number of people talk about Facebook’s creepy factor.
Those are just six people in three generations that I know. I know others like these six.
But back to Jane. Or more importantly, back to Jane’s boss, the founder. Why did Mark Zuckerberg really buy Instagram so quickly? He made the offer and decision very quickly himself and informed his board after the fact. One of his board members, Marc Andreesen, was in Zuckerberg’s house when the deal was closed. Why didn’t Zuckerberg walk down the hall and say… “Hey Marc, I’m thinking about spending $1 billion right now on zero-revenue Instagram. What do you think?”
Oh, here’s another dot to connect… some of my co-workers have been Instagram addicts for a while, but here is an actual quote from just today: “C: Instagram has become nothing but a collection of self-absorbed teeny-boppers. N: Yeah, ever since the Droid users came in. C: That made it worse, but it happened before that.”
Was the Instagram buy just a fast way to get membership growth and activity because so many people are starting to make decisions like my 1 to 6 list? Facebook knew about 1 to 6 before I did. There is nothing good about 1 to 6 for advertising revenues. Facebook needs advertising revenues, and they need a bigger pipeline. I think that’s why Jane called me. She wants to put me in her pipeline.
So remember how Jane wanted to know if *I* had time to talk? I just hope she has time to talk this week. I’ll send her an email. I’m still interested in knowing more about Facebook advertising. I don’t mind being in her pipeline if I don’t have to sign anything. But in the light of 1 to 6, I’m going to ask for a coupon, which won’t help the IPO.
And not that I was planning to jump in, but I’m now even less interested in buying Facebook stock. That won’t help the IPO.
At dinner tonight, my youngest said, “All my friends are switching to Twitter because it works better with smart phones.” (She doesn’t have a smart phone and likes to remind me.) She’s not helping the IPO. I’ll have to mention this to Jane.
