Is Facebook Losing Sight of Their Company Mission?

It’s been a big week and even bigger year for the social networking monster that is Facebook. With several acquisitions like Wit.ai and QuickFire Networks, Zuckerberg and his team are equipping themselves with an army of innovative tiny tech companies aimed to strengthen Facebook advertising. 

Of the more recent acquisitions is ecommerce search engine, TheFind. With the launch of multi-product ads, it’s not surprising to learn that Facebook is slowly entering the e-commerce market. However, the announcement has certainly created a lot of chatter around how this will impact advertising features and functionality. Will Facebook roll out a “Buy” button? How will this impact the retail advertising space? With the demise of organic reach, is Facebook now nothing but an ad publisher for businesses? 

We all know about Facebook’s big IPO letdown, but since last summer’s shift to becoming a mobile- and advertising-focused business, stock prices are at an all-time high. Great for stakeholders. Great for social marketers. Seemingly great for Facebook users, as long as users are interested in looking to Facebook for purchase-making decisions and commerce. Right?

As a CMO, you’d think that I would be thrilled about this evolution; it’s only natural that Facebook looks to compete with companies like Amazon and eBay. While I’m eager to see what happens next and learn how these changes will impact my clients’ social strategies, I do have one major concern: Is Facebook losing sight of their company mission? 

Founded on February 4th 2004 (a day after my birthday) created the following mission statement:

Facebook’s mission is to give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected. People use Facebook to stay connected with friends and family, to discover what’s going on in the world, and to share and express what matters to them.

Your mission is about people, Mark, not companies and certainly not about advertising. Perhaps it’s time to put a little more energy into the social part of social media.