Ever since Apple hit on the wonderful marketing strategy of keeping its new
products under tight wraps and releasing them at big media event launches with
fanfare, Facebook has adopted a similar strategy with its launch events as well.
This January 15, everyone is speculating on what Facebook has up its sleeve now.
Facebook has gone through several changes and overhauls, which tried and tested
customers have either welcomed or openly rebelled against, but no matter what it
is, it affects their customer base and they are always eager to hear what new thing
Zuckerberg has to offer them.
This launch event is no different, with several ideas and rumors already surfacing
about what could possibly be announced. One of the wildest and most improbable
ideas is that Facebook has moved into the hardware sphere and is about to launch
the first ever Facebook phone. It is unlikely that the company has taken such a
paradigm shift though.
Other more likely options on the table include an IPad messaging application,
which would be exclusive to IPad users. For those of us that don’t have IPads,
Zuckerberg has dropped hints over the last year about a new search engine that
utilizes all the information Facebook has collected over the years and uses it to
answer questions of interest.
Everyone knows that it costs a cool $100 to message Mark Zuckerberg in his
personal inbox, but it will be interesting to see if Facebook opens up a service that
charges customers for the privilege of messaging friends who are not members.
However, this alone is unlikely to be all Facebook is planning to launch at
tonight’s event and users may be in for an overhaul of the Timeline or tweaks to
the way it’s designed. Whatever Facebook has planned, they have managed to
keep it a secret until now and the world is waiting with bated breath.