I know you’ll succeed on a massive scale, that’s if only you know this.
Success in single means success in multiple. That’s what Dr. Tension told me a few months ago. I struggled to understand what he really meant.
I will ask you to meditate on it and tell me what he meant by ‘Success in single is success in multiple’.
Tekedia Mini-MBA edition 14 (June 3 – Sept 2, 2024) begins registrations; get massive discounts with early registration here.
Tekedia AI in Business Masterclass opens registrations here.
Join Tekedia Capital Syndicate and invest in Africa’s finest startups here.
Anyways, as a curious person I asked him what he meant by those complex and vague lines.
He started to tell me about some fantastic stories of great companies and their founders.
Let’s talk about Facebook inc and its founder Mark Zuckeberg. This guy actually had the idea of online socialisation. At that time he was pursuing a degree program in Harvard.
It may also be true that aside from the online socialisation idea, he had other plans to pursue plus his education at that time.
Look, he forgot other things and focused on the realisation of the Facebook dream. He devoted his time and effort to build the company. He only had a promising social media site without messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram.
What happened next? He succeeded in building Facebook into a million dollar worth company. That’s what I mean by success in singles.
Then he proceeded to pursue other goals such as acquiring other similar companies such as WhatsApp, Instagram and he built other features such as Messenger on Facebook. That’s what I mean by success in multiple
Truly, great entrepreneurs of today actually had success in one pursuit and the chain reaction was always success in other pursuits.
That’s the way to go by pursuing one first when you succeed you’ll have the capacity, experience and resources to pursue multiple dreams.
That’s why this analysis is about a new innovation on Facebook called the Messenger Room.
We shall draw many insights from the business strategies of Facebook which will be of immense help to your business and career.
The Facebook Strategies for Messenger Room Videoconferencing
The new feature launched by Facebook which forms an integral part of the Messenger is called Messenger Room. The messenger room is Facebook’s innovative response to the videoconferencing competition in the tech industry.
The Messenger Room is a feature on messenger that can be used for hosting free video meetings for both Facebook users and non users.
Here are the strategies that Facebook is leveraging on to develop this new value proposition on Facebook.
Already existing market
According to Statista an estimated 1.73bn people use Facebook on a daily basis. That’s absolutely mind blowing as digital businesses thrive on traffic. This is not just users to Facebook instead it is its core asset and infrastructure.
On Facebook we have messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram. Users can chat, upload both images and info graphic materials, call and do video calling etc.
The video, audio functions on messenger and WhatsApp are actually potential markets of video products to be explored by Facebook.
So, there is an already existing market for the video meeting feature. It’ll be easier to host meetings on Facebook than on other places since almost everybody is on Facebook. All they need to do is to join without downloading a new app.
Second Mover Advantage
I used to believe in what is called the first mover advantage until I noticed that sometimes the second mover advantage can be a very beneficial strategy in business too.
The second mover advantage is the advantages and benefits you have when you learn from the mistakes, loopholes, milestones and limitations of the first movers in the market.
This is exactly what Facebook is doing. In this time of coronavirus pandemic, zoom has been the videoconferencing market leader.
The Zoom application has some technical and security flaws. This had brought massive criticisms and negative reviews to the business.
According to Mark Zuckerberg in a livestream while launching the feature said that the company has been “very careful” and tried to “learn the lessons’ ‘ from issues with other video conference tools in recent months.
Second mover strategy allows an entrepreneur to leverage on the research, knowledge and limitations of the existing players in an industry for his business innovation.
Freemium Strategy
In one of my analyses I wrote why freemium is not strategically free. As you know already that some of the big tech companies leverage on freemium as means to an end.
Facebook is completely free to use provided you have an account with them. Instagram and WhatsApp too are also completely free to use provided you have the mobile applications and you are registered.
The aim of freemium for Facebook is to mine data for their advert revenue model which is how the business makes money.
So, the same strategy is applicable to the messenger room. The service is free for 50people meeting and it’s unlimited time. It can be used for free by Facebook users and non Facebook users.
With this Facebook users will increase and the service will also record high usage.
An Expansion of Already Existing Niche
Bringing people together online to achieve a particular goal has been the business of Facebook since the first day the platform was launched.
So, with a messenger room, Facebook will succeed in bringing people together for the purpose of holding meetings virtually.
Entrepreneurs are people that are really needed in every economy because of one simple thing they do which is solving problems through innovation thereby keeping the fabrics of the economy running.
We can see how entrepreneurs are developing solutions to help businesses, teams and individuals stay in touch virtually which is a response to the social distancing measure for covid-19 containment.
Truly, success will be massive in scale when we learn to succeed first in one thing.
You may also be interested in How the Zoom business model fits the coronavirus economy.