It is interesting to explore, based upon a clear purpose-based mission statement, how Facebook might select or reject projects and which projects are more likely to be sustainable and valuable. The trick with any company, but especially an internet company like Facebook, is to prioritize projects
Facebook’s Mission Statement states the following:
“Facebook’s mission is to give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected.”
Consistent with its mission statement, Facebook is all about providing the platform for people to share.
In the company’s earlier days, the question was how it could make money doing this, and the answer has been through leveraging the extensive and unique information about the users of the platform. And that, it seems, is the key to identifying the projects that make most sense based on the mission statement.
Good Projects
Facebook will favor projects that further solidify it as the platform of choice for sharing - and that leverage the platform and data for revenue. I think this would include:
- Projects that help facilitate communications and collaboration in any way possible, such as developing new features on the platform or assembling and empowering teams to monitor and be a catalyst
- Projects that focus on generating more and better market information, which is where the economic value lies
- Infrastructure – hardware, software, and organization - to support, extend, and improve the platform
- Any project that supports selling information and access to marketers
Bad Projects
- Machinery and/or hardware outside of what supports the Facebook platform
- Creating content, as Facebook’s role is to facilitate creation of content by others – and on its platform
- Developing and selling software – unless it directly supports encouraging people to use the platform and share more
Consider that projects at Facebook may be relatively fluid, meaning that they may experiment with a lot of ideas and see what sticks. Hence, some seemingly good projects could fall by the wayside because the idea did not pan out as expected.
What do you think? What kinds of projects do you think align most closely with the Facebook’s mission statement, and which not?
This post is part of the series: Influence of Mission Statements on Projects
A series of four articles on organizational mission statements and how they influence the types of projects which are likely to be successful. The articles look at how this might play out at Google, the U.S. Army, IBM and Facebook.
