Forget about your dollars and cents, your euros or your monopoly money, there’s only one currency that’s going to matter in the future… Facebook currency.
Not content with revolutionising the way we communicate and accelerating the decline of face to face interpersonal relationships, founder Mark Zuckerburg and his minions are about to dictate the way we spend our hard earned coin…our hard earned virtual coin that is.
At the f8 conference in San Francisco on April 21, Zuckerburg announced that the social networking giant are to ramp up their Facebook Credits programme, which is already being tested with over 100 applications in beta format.
The programme aims to simplify online transactions by allowing users to use just one source of currency, instead of entering separate bank or credit card information for every online purchase. ‘Credits’ allows users to purchase virtual currency through Facebook that can be used to purchase virtual goods across multiple applications.
At a Digital Landscapes conference held in UCD earlier this year, head of the Facebook group’s European operations, Colm Long, explained just how lucrative the virtual currency could be to the company, using popular Facebook games such as Farmville and Mafia Wars as an example.
“Think about the idea of virtual currency – billions of dollars are being exchanged on virtual goods. People are buying virtual tractors on Farmville and guns on Mafia Wars like you would not believe.
“If you make money from growing corn on Farmville you can take that currency and buy a virtual or physical gift on any part of the platform and Facebook will take a cut. This has the potential to be bigger than our ads business over time,†he said.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerburg speaking at the f8 conference
The virtual currency is currently limited to platforms such as games like Farmville and Mafia Wars, but the possibility of users buying clothes, concert tickets and such via a Facebook currency in the future doesn’t seem beyond the realms of possibility.
Facebook’s quest for global domination does not end at their creation of a virtual currency however. They are currently working on expanding their ‘Connect’ programme, which links almost all websites directly into user’s Facebook accounts.
As an example of the scope and ambition of the Connect programme, Facebook want every website to have a ‘like’ button similar to the one accompanied by the thumbs up logo on their page. Each time you indicate that you like something on a website, the information will be fed to Facebook and to the website you are on, enabling you to see, for example, what restaurants, bands or movies your friends like, both on these external websites and on Facebook. In fact, you have probably noticed it on a number of websites already.
The Connect and virtual currency programmes show the extent of the influence that Facebook as well as the likes of Google now wield on our day to day lives. 700,000 people in Ireland, half of the total users in this country, use Facebook every day. 400 million people worldwide use it, a figure that is constantly on the increase. For God’s sake, my mother even asked me to set up an account for her the other day. I declined, citing an imaginary rule that doesn’t allow people under 40 to sign up.
The effect that the site has had on the privacy of their users is a sore point amongst many critics, but for the way they have changed the landscape of social networking, you have to give them credit. And if their virtual currency idea goes to plan, you will be doing just that in the very near future.
Conor Heneghan
