Let’s take the latter to start with, media buzz. Every time they change their homepage everyone hates it. They go from something that works and people are used to to a complete change. This also appears to gradually hide more and more functionality. So everybody hates it and complains, blogs, sets up Facebook groups devoted to going back to the original, etc. This generates a lot of buzz, particulary with the mainstream media that pick up on the story, more people join Facebook, and so on. So they get a lot more users. Although I would be interested to see the actual figures.

Ok, now to the other reason, keeping it fresh. And the simple answer to this is a question, “What else can they do?”. They offer a very comprehensive suite of core functionality that simply just works. Everyone can understand it and use it effectively. That is part of their success and the main reason for continued use. They’ve also opened the platform to third party developers who can build anything they like within the policies. And when you’ve got millions of developers producing applications, it becomes very difficult to offer anything that they have not already done. It also means that it is pretty much impossible to compete with that number of developers, preventing Facebook themselves from “doing it better”.

I was talking this through with Phil Peace who raised the question why the ads were so bad on Facebook. Which is true. He said with a ga-zillion users you’d think they’d have better quality ads instead of “get rich quick” and “local girls in your area” type ads. Which if you take the other points I’ve mentioned into account produces a simple answer. It’s pretty much their only revenue stream.

The users on Facebook don’t pay for the service, applications are free to install and use, there is just the ads. And with an open platform for development and thousands of free add-ons it makes it virtually impossible to monetise the platform further. For instance, you can’t offer a premium service.

So with a ga-zillion users you need a ga-zillion ads to keep people clicking links. And that means you need all the ads you can get. To keep people interested and clicking, you need to keep it fresh.