Goodbye, Facebook. It’s over for you

Facebook Inc., with revenue of almost $86 billion and profit of $30 billion, depends on one thing and one thing only. It is one simple thing. A pixel.

It is the one pixel which is embedded in every site you visit and in every mobile app you download to your mobile phone.

Every company wants to know their customer profile so they can find more customers like you. The beautiful thing is, that they are getting it all for free, courtesy of Facebook. And Facebook makes sure that it finds as much about you as possible.

Have you ever wondered why your Facebook profile page allows you to put your relationship status (It is complicated), your favorite books (the cheque book) and movies, or your high school? To find like-minded people to connect? Perhaps. But mostly to create a profile which this pixel ties together. The pixel tells Facebook what (not who) you are.

With one pixel, they’ve built an empire. But this point of strength has also become a point of failure. Facebook’s weakness was highlighted by Apple CEO Tim Cook at the 2021 Computers, Privacy and Data Protection conference.

Before we get to what he said, let’s look at what we can see, Apple is now emphasizing that its brand Apple = Privacy and Trust. Apple fully understands its customers, without spying on them. Instead, it learns about its customers and delivers value for which the customers gladly pay, with 60% margin. If an Apple customer starts thinking about leaving the comfort of the Apple paradise, the emotional question comes: 'But what about your privacy and security?'

In his conference keynote, Cook took on the problem of Facebook without actually mentioning their name: 'The fact is that an interconnected ecosystem of companies and data brokers, of purveyors of fake news and peddlers of division, of trackers and hucksters just looking to make a quick buck, is more present in our lives than it has ever been.'

And to make his point, Apple is introducing a new feature in the upcoming iOS 14, where the customer will be able to control how any application will be able to track any activity. Apple, aligning with EU's GDPR (privacy protections) laws will have a government ally who is all about protecting the privacy of its citizens. Facebook will become a casualty.

You can imagine how Mr. Zuckerberg is not happy about it. It is exactly the one place where not only it hurts, but can kill the whole company. Just picture the Death Star.

Facebook was constructed on a misleading premise to provide value by connecting people. It worked for a while. Now it is coming to the end. Facebook had the time and certainly the money to innovate and start providing real value to its customers. It didn't do it.

Companies that don't provide value are no longer around.

And that's the recurrent pattern.