Facebook Holding Special Event This Wednesday
It's been a big couple of months for Facebook — the site launched its Places feature in August, had a major gaming-focused event two weeks ago, and recently revamped its photos feature to allow for high-resolution uploads (which is a big deal).
Context & Ripple Effects
Facebook has turned the fall into a rolling series of product briefings: the Places feature launched in mid-August, a gaming-focused developer event followed on September 21, and a photos revamp adding high-resolution uploads landed in between. Now the company has called yet another special event for this Wednesday, its third major stage moment in roughly seven weeks.
Unlike the August cycle, when Kara Swisher's BoomTown column guessed in advance that the Wednesday slot would be about location, there is no public read yet on this week's topic — which makes the announcement itself the story: Facebook is scheduling events faster than the rumor economy can pre-cover them.
First-order effects
- Press and partner developers now face a third Facebook product briefing in under two months, on the heels of the gaming event where the company laid out its platform pitch to game makers.
- Whatever ships Wednesday arrives into an audience already absorbing two fresh launches — Places and the high-resolution photos revamp — compressing the attention window for each announcement.
Second-order effects
- The accelerating cadence raises the bar for Facebook's own communications staff, since each successive event must out-shout the last one still in the news cycle.
- Developers in the gaming ecosystem cultivated at the September 21 event get another signal of where the platform is heading, informing where they commit build resources next.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, Facebook normalizes the rapid-fire product event as a standing narrative tool — announcing on its own schedule rather than letting features leak out piecemeal — a structure rivals with slower release rhythms will be pressed to match.
- A steady drumbeat of platform changes through late 2010 also conditions users and developers to treat Facebook as a continuously shipping product rather than a site with occasional redesigns, raising switching costs incrementally with each drop.
The trend: Facebook is shifting from occasional big reveals to a rapid-cadence event strategy, staging its own product news every few weeks through the fall of 2010.