Saturday, December 3, 2011
FACEBOOK in India!
Facebook Hyderabad www.facebook.com
I had
the pleasure of taking my last meeting in India with Facebook India located in Hyderabad. The Facebook offices here in Hyderabad are
very new and have only been established for little more than a year. I met with Kirthia Reddy, a Stanford Business
Grad, who is the Director of Online Operations in Hyderabad, Abishek Nag, who
is just completed business school in Bangalore, and is the head of Platform
Operations in India, and Kevin D'souza who is the International growth manager for India.
I was particularly excited to meet with Facebook for the obvious
reasons of the company being our generational and probably most innovative icon
for communication and social media. In
addition I was very curious about what Facebook would like to or is
contributing to the growing global conversation about the digital divide
epidemic that plagues communities all over the world. I wasn’t sure what to expect. Would they be
young, would they be open to conversation about this issue, what did the
offices look like?? All of these questions were spinning in my mind.
All that being said, when I walked into the offices I was definitely
not disappointed. The Facebook office
was filled with young, eager, hip, cool, trendy programmers, operators,
executives, etc….having a good time working for one of the most recognizable
companies in the world. The office was great and split up into two floors. The main lobby was very cool. Brick walls, a
TV blasting with videos of Mark Zuckerberg speaking at Facebook company
meetings, graffiti on the walls, a bright and colorful cafeteria. It was a
basically more of a playground than an office. I LOVED it!
Kevin and Abishek demonstrated an interesting new mobile communicating
form that Facebook is testing using a SMS ( texting) platform called USSD. (Look up).
It is a way of allowing users the ability to access the internet without
having a web browser attached to their phone.
Ideally it is best for use by underserved users who either only have a
low cost feature phone or do not have access to internet. The USSD platform will allow users to access
Facebook content and offer the ability to have an “entry point” for the
internet and break the barriers of initial connectivity to Facebook content
through mobile phones.
Something that I thought was interesting about this conversation was
that Facebook hasn’t actually strategized about who they wish to participate in
the digital divide space. It was
acknowledge during our conversation that “some people don’t even know what the
internet is, but they know what Facebook is!”. Wow. When that was said I just
sat there and shook my head in total utter agreement. Mostly because the statement is just so true
and on point. There are many users out
there who even if they do not know anything about the internet, ie….what to do,
how to use it, how to research, its power, its significance….if they know
anything about “online access” it is definitely Facebook that they are sure to
be aware of, how to use it, and how to connect to friends and family all over
the planet.
I think this was the reason why I definitely wanted to meet with the
Facebook team. I think I just needed to hear that they are one of the most
relevant players in the industry and yet, they have no real plan to connect
users to content, jobs, life enhancing opportunities, etc…, at least not yet
;-)
The conversation ended up with the four of us having a good
conversation about the social vitality
of social media and the use of social platforms offering access to compelling
content and making the internet more relevant for those who have been
underserved for years, even without their knowledge.
It was a great discussion and I was thankful to have it. I await the moment when Facebook takes their rightful place within the national and global coalition of broadband reform. Until then, we will all keep "friending" with pleasure!
B
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