Bloomberg West got two Facebook investors on camera this past Friday: Sean Parker and Yuri Milner. Both addressed the same issue independently: Facebook has a product issue!

Sean Parker said that there is “remaining work around the product” especially “evolving the product and keeping up with the other competitive products in the market place”. Interesting what other “competitive products in the market place” he meant keeping in mind that Facebook is by far the market leader in Social Networks with around 800 million users worldwide. In the interview Sean Parker made it clear that Facebook is competing for the leisure time of its users. So in this case all media would be the competition? Or did he mean other companies that are using social interaction (and potentially by-passing Facebook)?

Yuri Milner in the light of the Facebook IPO said that every day challenges on “the product side are far more serious than the IPO challenges”. Unfortunately he did not specify what he meant by that.
But even today Facebook is evolving the product to an extend that people might abandon it, as the product itself got more complex, more functionalities are integrated, more ways  to generate money are pushed ….

So yes, Facebook has to stay competitive but at the same time reduce the complexity and increase the user experience.  A challenge -  interesting to watch.

Sean Parker on Bloomberg West on Facebook @ 4:40

Yuri Milner on Bloomberg West on Facebook @ 5:30