Gadgetory

hi everyone I'm Kara Tsuboi and welcome to the future of a show where we take a look at a major tech company and where they might be going next year in 2013 today it's all about Facebook and who better to talk to us about Facebook than executive editor Paul Sloane so Paul yes next year what will change with Facebook as far as the user is concerned yeah I think you're going to see more of what we've been seeing the last few months which means more ads great I mean they've been rolling out adds a lot of mobile they say they're not it's not overkill but it's starting to get a little you know a little crowded and cluttered but this is where they're making money and this is where their focus is and as much as Mark Zuckerberg talks about you know this sort of social mission of connecting the world the fact is they're now a public company as we all know and the pressure is on and his employees want the stock to go up and that means more advertising and the question is how much more can they do before they upset people absolutely before the users start to you know turn off just go to another site yeah I mean I've talked to the one of the head designers at Facebook who designs for mobile and he says the biggest battle that he has is that little button that takes you to the home screen he lives in fear of how many seconds it is before someone just checks out interesting so something we've also seen developed in the latter half of 2012 is Facebook gifts do you think that's going to grow yeah I mean this is a great sort of niche business for facebook that i actually think could become less niche and quite big they're adding more and more partners I think it's mostly smaller brands they have some like baby gap and they have you know some known brands and this wine and there's sort of but they're not they don't have you know the huge brands out there because they don't need facebook and they don't want to pay Facebook but it does make Facebook some money obviously sure they take a cut they take a cut through every true every transaction if it's your birthday and I decided to send you a gift you know and once once you accept it it Facebook and I put in my credit card information which is another thing facebook wants is a lot of credit cards on file yes they take a cut the cut varies depending on the on the merchant or the retailer but you know it could be a billion-dollar business what it'll be by the end of next year I don't know it off would be quite that but it will add up in 2012 we saw facebook buy instagram a pretty big acquisition what types of acquisitions do you see in 2013 you know it's hard to imagine the making big acquisitions people have wanted and I would love to see them by Spotify I know they've you know it makes sense sean parker's involved with Spotify he was the founding president of Facebook sure in a lot of ways Spotify is really tied at the hip with Facebook however I can't imagine it happening just because of the difficulties of negotiating with the record labels and Facebook sees itself as this platform it wants all this stuff to happen via and on facebook and doesn't want to be the source so it might want to lead you as a place to buy things but it doesn't necessarily mean it wants to be amazon right it doesn't want to have to fulfill all it doesn't want to you know be that part of the equation and i think it's the same thing with music is that it is entertaining as it is the idea that it would buy Spotify I also think it would be interested in Pinterest for different reasons I don't think pinterest would want to sell I think Pinterest has its eyes and going public yeah and growing bigger and yeah yeah and they're too though it's you have to ask just because you're really successful on pintura de they're very successful on Facebook does that mean Facebook has to own them or can they just use the traffic use the engagement and use the data which is really what they want that's credit card numbers quite well more than that they want to know your age your gender what you shop for when you give to how much you spend they want to know everything so that when you're walking around in your phone since facebook's mobile mobile mobile it knows what to target you with 2012 is a huge year for Mark Zuckerberg not only did his company go public in May but he got married he kind of came out as a businessman this fall what's next for him well he turns 29 yes let me die old man you know there was a lot of doubt after the messy IPO about whether Mark Zuckerberg was the right man for the job that really changed in early September when he gave this one lock particular live interview in which he just sort of went from being this guy with the social mission to this guy who was coming out strong as a businessman he hit on start of talking about the thing that everyone was worried about which is mobile and he just kept talking about mobile it suddenly mobile wasn't a problem for facebook as it was before the IPO and around the IPO but it was an opportunity which is all they talk about now is mobile at mobile as an opportunity yeah and you know he just he just kept talking about how the user experience could be great and we could make a lot of money and Wall Street wanted to hear that and really since then there's been ups and downs but you know the company has been doing quite well in the stock last month or so is done really well I mean it's still you know ten dollar shy of IPO price but it's going the right direction and so I think you know Zuckerberg just has to keep the campaign up and be really vocal about you know commitment to Wall Street right the mission to move forward yeah well obviously a lot to keep our eyes on next year with Facebook clearly millions of us around the world will be so thank you so much for the predictions sure Paul Sloan I'm Kara Tsuboi thanks for watching the future of