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The Trojan Horse is a tale from the Trojan War about the stratagem that allowed the Greeks finally to enter the city of Troy and end the conflict. In the canonical version, after a fruitless 10-year siege, the Greeks constructed a huge wooden horse, and hid a select force of men inside. The Greeks pretended to sail away, and the Trojans pulled the horse into their city as a victory trophy. That night the Greek force crept out of the horse and opened the gates for the rest of the Greek army, which had sailed back under cover of night. The Greeks entered and destroyed the city of Troy, decisively ending the war.

– Source

A few days back Facebook released the Facebook wordpress plugin which allows sites using wordpress to implement a whole host of social features into their website. These features include things like commenting, recommending, liking, mentioning, sharing, and posting to your timeline. Sounds awesome right? Completely harmless you say? That’s what the people of Troy said. And just as the ancient Greeks left a Trojan horse filled with soldiers for the city of Troy, Facebook’s wordpress plugin is one big Trojan horse left at the gates of Google. I believe Facebook’s wordpress plugin could just be the thing that destroys a part of Google’s business model, particularly Adsense and sets the stage for dethroning Adwords. And here’s why.

Phase 1: The Like Button

Go ahead push it. You know you want too.

Facebook has been getting webmasters comfortable with implementing Facebook into their sites via the Like button. Every single site you go to has Facebook’s Like button plastered to it now, it’s reached ubiquity. I remember when the Like button was first unveiled, it felt like we were entering phase 1 of the Zuckerberg takeover. I thought to myself, “Wow this is how they are going to change the game from links to likes”. Remember Google’s whole game is based on links: The number of links a webpage receives, the more “votes” it has, and therefore the higher it ranks on Google. Of course, Google has refined this over the years to include a whole bunch of tweaks since spammers figured out how to game the system, but nonetheless the concept remains the same. Facebook said, “Hey instead of basing popularity on the number of links a page has, which can be easily gamed, why not have it based on Likes, which can’t be so easily gamed?”. Facebook’s Like button was so game changing that Google responded by putting all their resources into creating a competing social network, Google+ complete with its own Like button, the +1 button.

Phase 2: Facebook WordPress Plugin

Now Facebook is entering phase 2, waving the carrot of more traffic in webmasters faces via Facebook’s network effect, they are using this plugin to gain more intel. Specifically, they are getting an idea of how much load an external advertising system is going to place on their servers and employees. Think about it? There are 75 million sites using wordpress and I bet a huge number of them are monetizing with Google Adsense, it only makes sense to go outside the walled garden. It is in Facebook’s interest to first figure out how much resources it is going to take to run a competing ad network and a perfect place to start is with a feature rich wordpress plugin. How are they going to do this?

The Trojan Horse

Thank you for lowering my bounce rate.

It seems innocent enough but the recommendation bar that pops up on the right side of your screen to recommend you relevant articles could also be used to serve up relevant advertising. How would this play out? Since Facebook knows who you are via your profile information and Like history, they can now use the website your visiting as another variable to figure out how to better target you. For example, say you’re a CEO of a startup and you’re reading an insightful article on Mavenface about how not to hire an SEO, Facebook can say to itself, “Do we have any advertisers that are marketing to this person?”. If they don’t they will serve you ads based solely on your Facebook profile, which they have been perfecting for the last few years. But if they can get an advertiser whose included Mavenface in their list of websites to advertise on and that also fit a certain demographic (Male, CEO, Over 35, Palo Alto, Standford Grad) they can serve you an even more relevant ad, so in this case you may see ads from SEO companies.

Will Facebook Destroy Troy?

Why would Facebook want to create a competing product to Google adsense? Considering that Facebook is closing in on one billion users, it is pretty safe to say they have signed up every single person that’s going to sign up by now. They have reached mass market penetration. Your mom is on Facebook, your grandma is on Facebook, your great grandma is on Facebook. The problem is old people die and young people have to wait until their 13 to sign up. This means that Facebook will have to wait 13 years to attract a whole new generation, who knows what platform we’ll be using by then. In the meantime, Facebook needs to grow their revenues, they’re a publicly traded company that is going to have to meet Wallstreet’s unreal quarterly expectations. Facebook can’t grow their revenues without getting more page views and they can’t get more page views without getting more users. But we know they can’t get more users fast enough, unless a massive Alien spaceship lands on Earth and millions of aliens decide, “You know what, we need a Facebook profile”. Until then, Facebook will have to leave their walled garden, sneak their way past Google, and into the hearts of webmasters enticing them with both money and visitors, the latter something Adsense can’t. The only question is will Facebook pull it off?