Former Apple chief evangelist Guy Kawasaki supports Facebook’s ability to make money through paid promotion but warns that the social media site should be wary of alienating its user base.
Kawasaki is the author the new book “The Art of Social Media.”
Guy Kawasaki: If I were Mark Zuckerberg for a day first I would buy more hoodies in different colors. Second I would discuss with my senior team the practice of EdgeRank as it impacts people's personal profiles. So vis-à-vis brands where brands are getting less organic views so they have to pay-up to promote, hallelujah. Take them for all you can. You deserve that. But I think that it's kind of dangerous where Trixie and Biff, if they have a baby or if they graduate from college and they put up their graduation picture, I think they think that if they have a thousand followers, all thousands people can see it. And from what I've heard, and I don't know if it's true but if it is true not 1000 people will see it, maybe a hundred people will see it. And I think that if Trixie and Biff start losing confidence that Facebook is the way to post their life story to everybody who has voluntarily followed them that you could be throwing out the baby with the bathwater. And if enough people think this way and they stop using Facebook then you won't be able to charge the brands for promoting their posts. So again, I'm on the outside looking in. I don't know how these algorithms work, if there are any algorithms like that, but I think that's really playing with fire.
Directed/Produced by Jonathan Fowler, Elizabeth Rodd, and Dillon Fitton