NB: This is a guest article by Matt Zito, a leisure travel product specialist and travel startup consultant, helping companies build, sell and distribute travel products and services.
I was reading Facebook’s S-1 amendment last night as a prospective investor and interested entrepreneur, ahead of its planned IPO on the US financial markets.
For readers outside of the US or those unaware of the mechanics of corporate America, an S-1 document is a public disclosure companies going public must file with the government.
The filing basically informs prospective investors about the good, the bad and the ugly. S-1 filings can be hundreds of pages in length and are written by lawyers so you can find yourself falling asleep really easily trying to read it.
I generally read over three parts: the founder or CEO’s letter, the business and the financials.
Mark Zuckerberg’s letter is the most fascinating part of the S-1 and the centerpiece for this article. Zuckerberg's first sentence:
"Facebook was not originally created to be a company."
Hmmm, well then what was it? Second sentence:
"It was built to accomplish a social mission – to make the world more open and connected.”
More connected, yes, but open? I don’t think so.
Facebook is the world’s largest walled virtual social network with 900 million users, now closing in on one billion.
I will succumb that Facebook is becoming a little more open with the development of Timeline apps built on Facebook’s open social graph platform and will have major implications for the travel industry in how travel is distributed, sold and marketed.
The greatest transformation in the online travel industry since the mid-to-late 1990s is about to take place, spurred by Facebook opening its platform to developers to create "social by design" applications for web sites, mobile devices and desktop programs.
I believe the online travel industry’s distribution system will fundamentally change to a more consumer direct model if Facebook and the new players of the social web have their way.
The social web is currently about peer-to-peer sharing of information. The future will include consumption via social sales and distribution direct to the consumer.
Facebook’s social mission is to strengthen how people relate to each other by building tools that help people share, spread and consume information.
In Zuckerberg’s letter, he adds:
"We think a more open and connected world will help create a stronger economy with more authentic businesses that build better products and services. As people share more, they have access to more opinions from the people they trust about the products and services they use.
"This makes it easier to discover the best products and improve the quality and efficiency of their lives. One result of making it easier to find better products is that businesses will be rewarded for building better products — ones that are personalized and designed around people.
"We have found that products that are “social by design” tend to be more engaging than their traditional counterparts, and we look forward to seeing more of the world’s products move in this direction. In addition to building better products, a more open world will also encourage businesses to engage with their customers directly and authentically."
If Facebook is important to your travel business and or you believe in the future of the social web, Zuckerberg just outlined for us Facebook’s vision of how businesses will participate on the Facebook platform in the future.
Facebook will reward your travel business if your product or service is authentic, personalized for the consumer, social by design and sold direct to consumer.
NB: This is a guest article by Matt Zito, a leisure travel product specialist and travel startup consultant, helping companies build, sell and distribute travel products and services.
NB2: Unlike-Like image via Shutterstock.