Ed Note: Pardon my current technological shortcomings, for the time being. You might have to click on the pic to open the full size photo of the website. Currently, I am having trouble having them display full screen in the blog post itself. Pardon that. Cheers!
I know, no matter how people excuse it, you can’t use flash anymore. It’s not even a conversation, and when I am forced to have it… I get frustrated. I also know you need to have a mobile page. Please, neophytes or luddites, *please* understand a mobile-optimized website is *NOT* a hotel specific branded app. You don’t need the latter unless you are one of the big 5. If they don’t know your brand, or boutique concept, they won’t know to search for it. Don’t let giddy marketer buzzwords excite or cloud your understanding of these complex technological trends. I only say complex, because, as the old joke goes, we hotel people are not pioneers specifically because pioneers were shot in the back with arrows. We have always been behind the curve. Always. The innovators have always been long term and conservative. We have some colorful characters in this business, as well (looking at
Chip [who's site isn't too bad, either] or
Ian, particularly…), but the classics have always been plodding and broad scope visionaries like
Stan Bromley.
I also know you can’t get burned on poor SEO anymore. On top of that, you can’t slap so much keyword content into a site that it becomes aggravating and overwhelming for people to navigate around, limiting possible consumption of your hotel. That is when content becomes a liability. You want content to match your hotel… in my case, you want the initial experience and interaction with the brand to be one that is relaxing, soothing, entertaining, etc. People used to say that your desk agent was the front line of brand representation. Then snarky marketers said the doormen, or valets, were the first representative experience with the brand. They are right, but no fair moving 30 feet from the desk to the door and calling it an innovative thought.
Ritz Carlton and Oregon’s
Allison Inn & Spa in the Willamette Valley (full disclosure, I work with the latter), have had this “employee face forward” down pat, for years. But I still didn’t think, in regards to employees intoning brand, that that is where the introduction starts. Back in the 20th century I was one of the only people really concerned with how the PBX operators, with lazy speech or chewing gum, were representing the brand. If you immediately hear lip-smacking with a disinterested ”HOLD PLEASE?” when you call a hotel… well what does that say? It would make me cringe, and service training immediately started under my watch. =)
But now, it’s not an employee, and your entire brand and hotel experience is intoned within LITERAL SECONDS of arriving at a website. Not only does Google consider load times for SEO, but the flash experience of waiting for something to happen isn’t as seemless or natural an experience as a guest needs. You need to lull them into a serene, content & excited disposition, as well as appease their need for confidence in your brand.
I didn’t want to ramble too much, so I will leave it to you.. the hotels, the brands, and the designers. The below websites, simply, are not cheap. Finding an affordable design group that will work outside of the norm (box), is rare. Access to them is even rarer. It often seems you only have 3 or 4 choices for hotel website design, and that simply needs to stop. There needs to be more competition, and more innovation, so that we can differentiate our brands, instead of homogenizing them.
The simple laundry lists of new website design trends for hotels? No flash, simplified User Interface, topical and enchanting music or nature sounds, large, vibrant pictures, less obtrusive offers/deals, and more integrated and highlight social presence in relation to content production with blogs or videos. In fact, it won’t be too long before video is front and center on the main page.
So.. I think these are the best practices for our industry. What do you say? What are your favorite sites? Brands… Hotels… why do you think your site is a stellar example of a cutting edge hotel & travel site?
**WARNING: THE FOLLOWING SITES MAY MAKE YOU SPONTANEOUSLY BOOK TRIPS YOU WERE NOT ALREADY PLANNING**
Our group of hospitality professionals and hoteliers believes these sites to be representative of best practices and future trends in website design. [In no specific order:]
1)
Carre D’étoiles - albeit an animation, as soon as you hear the nighttime nature sounds, and see the shadow of a mischievous bunny hopping along the soothing terrain, you have such a definite sense of place and experience that it immediately lulls someone towards the hotel brand, and leaves them wanting to know more. I have had this as an open tab for nearly two years, just listening, and making my day more peaceful. This is an eco-lodging concept where they literally drop-off the above modular cubicle for you to stay in, in the middle of nowhere. Think of it as uppity glamping in France. Oh wow I cannot believe I just said that. At any rate, telescope and star gazing skylight included. One of the many “full screen” website experiences you will see trending in the industry, and on this list.
2)
Villa Amor, in Sayulita, Nayarit, Mexico. Here we have a rotating slideshow of unbelievable imagery – each combines nature, and colors, and experience with a skillful & somewhat subtle marketing – each page has obvious quotes from trusted, established travel magazines and journals, such as
Travel & Leisure or
Sunset Magazine. This sleepy & family friendly fishing village north of Puerto Vallarta is a relaxing beach and surf community of U.S. Ex-Pats, and tourist friendly Mexicans. Villa Amor does a phenomenal job of immediately drawing the guest into their experience, and with the slideshow keeps them there and learning through sight and trusted soundbites versus endless copy. The quotes could be a little more prominent, but all in all… this is a slam dunk regarding conversion of eyes to reservations.
3) Pacific Grove and Monterey Bay host a phenomenal National Park lodge experience with
Asilomar Conference Center & Grounds. Although slightly busy of a site, the large picture firmly anchors your awareness in experience. What’s more, they have the weather available to plunge the website viewer into the real world experience – what is Asilomar like at *this moment*, and what would I be feeling walking along that beach? Knowing about the foggy days there (I was born in Carmel), it’s fairly brave… but it’s a nod towards transparent cultivation of community. They also have the reservation widget front and center – so that there is as little barrier to booking conversion as possible. Another nice aspect is the bar of photos as menu headings – the visual excitement one has for a specific photo (map vs bicycling) will lead people to relevant parts of the site, and much quicker. An embedded widget of photo and video content is also immediately available, so a website guest gets a sense of place, as well as remains on the site garnering the experience of what Asilomar is.
4)
Shell Hospitality’s dedicated “Black Friday” Travel Sale page. This was one of the most exciting discoveries we have seen. Although not a brand or hotel specific page, it is a brazen page full of irreverence, delight, and fun. It immediately intones the brand’s image while still offering endless playful moments for people to learn more. The
Face”book” page on the bookshelf, The
youtube TV, The
flickr Frame, the
Tweety Bird, and more. The fireplace is with sound and is crackling, so you are immediately given a sense of warmth, with levity. It was one of the most novel website experiences I have ever had, and I wish brands would learn to be more daring and excited about their passions and business. This is a great example of a company I would like to book with, or even work for. It’s imaginative, and creates a sense of unexpected joy.
5)
Little Palm Island. Wow. A Huge picture without borders that makes the user fall into the island itself. It’s hard to ignore the allure of an all enveloping experience as soon as you reach the website… it begs how amazing an experience the island will actually be, once you arrive. We do
*NOT*, in any way, endorse splash screens at the beginning of a guest’s user experience on a website (like this has); it is far and away *NOT* a best practice. But, the way their specials & info boxes are quickly relevant, and then slink quietly to the background to become less obtrusive is a phenomenal tactic… your eye is literally led to where those boxes will exist – ignore them if you like, but if they are relevant to a specific user, you still have immediate awareness as to where those boxes live. When they slide away, they become inherently unobtrusive, and you immediately get back to the experience of what it would be like to be in that much blue. This picture seems to expand beyond the borders of my screen.
6)
Peter Island Resort & Spa. *THIS* is Peter Island, indeed. If you are immediately taken to a land of sexy sport and endless beaches-to-oceans-to-horizon, then you are not looking at the same picture that I am. Peter Island’s site also has an “X” out splash screen when it first loads, but after that you are shown a slideshow, with music, of the island, then accomodations, and then we have this sizzling nod [see pic] towards the types of activities you may enjoy, or encounter, upon this island. Albeit highly suggestive in this specific picture, we do know what sells, and if this is your niche, and you are looking to bring a specific market to your hotel… you have to go after it. In this case, Peter Island has immediately scored with a High Res, and stunning, slideshow – capturing a potential guest from picture to picture and making it harder to escape. It’s an impressive experience with full screen, high quality pics, soothing music, and simple interface. The navigation at the top of the screen is worth a visit to the site, itself. The days of infinite old & stale copy, cluttering up the field of vision, seems to be marching out the door.
7)
Winvian Cottages of Connecticut. This is a subpage for the website, but if you note – the simple interface that has been created for an exceedingly complex site map, streamlining the headache of listing a vast array of lodging options. This is always a challenge for hotels, especially historic properties, who have complex and varied options for rooms. The scroll type of map creates a real tone and texture that intones the brand itself, while this simple, beautiful watercolor not only aids to the sense of place, but it fully resolves a complexity with an incredibly simple user interface.
Those are my favorite sites in recent memory…. and I am sure there will be more. I hope this can aid people about to sign a contract with a form and template style of internet marketing group. Frankly.. you need to tell them what *you* want. It should never be the other way around, and you can feel confident in excusing those awkward exchanges. These groups work for *you*, and not the other way around. If it looks like a boring template, tell them so. I note a lot of the big boys internet marketing groups are getting lazy, and all of our industry hotel websites look identical. It’s a problem, and it’s time to evolve out of that line of thinking or operations.
If you don’t have the big bucks to make a fancy site, at least you can make a HTML5 site, without the expense of paying too much for too little from the other mid-high range developers. In this sense…. if you want a nice site, while not having the money to build it, you might try
Buuteeq. They are new, and instead of the agency plan of charging for websites (billed hours ad naseuom and confusion), they have tiered plans. Right now, they are doing some interesting things, and it’s one of the only groups who can give you what you pay for… a competent, optimized site with mobile ready pages to boot, without hassle or hidden costs.
Until we win the lottery and make our dream hotel websites, let the little nuances and aspects of these above sites inform your decisions. If you know of any other sites, I am very interested in learning about them. Please share in the comments section!
Tags: allison inn, asilomar, best of, best practices, best websites, buuteeq, carre d'etoiles, chip conley, eco-hotel, eco-lodge, eco-lodging, facebook, flickr, glamping, hotel website, hotel websites, ian schrager, islands, large photos, little palm island, mobile, nature sounds, peter island, resort island, ritz carlton, shell hospitality, stan bromley, twitter, villa amor, winvian, youtube
Download a PDF of the article for your Kindle or Ipad (right click and “save as”)
Facebook lost 5-6 Million members in the US in May 2011, mention of $100 Billion IPO comes same day.
Facebook Today
- Are Facebook Users Making Their Own “Dislike” Button
Facebook – what was a fun little site, the entire business world has turned into the Holy Grail. This is troubling, because it’s not the site that is amazing, but the new social comm technology that connects people. I crunch some numbers here, and it’s obvious people aren’t interacting with brands on Facebook. Why are we losing sight of this? It’s just a platform, and membership does not attest to equity. Equity is where the internet is happening, and the internet is not happening on Facebook.
Facebook might have a $100 Billion IPO, for Q1 2012. Why would they let this ridiculous evaluation slip the same day it is announced that they also lost 6 Million people in May, via WebProNews. Gizmodo says 5 Million. A Facebook insider says “nearly 6 million”.
It seems interesting, especially because one would hope that a whopping $100 billion would drown out the measly figure of 5-6 million members. It’s notoriously difficult to cancel an account, so what’s going on? Was the drop a culling of the notorious spam that poisons social media? Is it businesses finally deleting their profile they built before the advent of pages? I know of a couple that have done so in the recent weeks. It’s a bigger, more frightening, trend than this.
The Social Media World watches as Groupon readies an insane IPO
I know LinkedIn. LinkedIn was a friend of mine. You are no LinkedIn.
I want to have a quick aside, and remind you that we all know Groupon is insolvent. In fact, it’s safe to suggest that Facebook is aware that the social media darling is in crisis, having the market panic about feasibility as they approach an IPO. An important IPO – one that tests the waters in a much deeper way than LinkedIn, a relatively conservative and successful no brainer in this 2.0 world. It is also fair to acknowledge that whatever consumers do not know about Groupon, as Wall Street eyes Groupon’s likely failure as a business, other businesses are beginning to have a deep awareness of its flaws, which I documented here (with endless citation and evidence), but Techcrunch excellently explains it here. Businesses wariness to sign up, coupled with Groupon’s balance sheet, makes that look like another disaster, and this is only valued at $20 Billion, one-fifth of the murmured Facebook IPO. Do you think Facebook is watching Groupon’s “road-to-IPO” closely?
Facebook is failing, but it depends on how you want to define that. At User Interface? At listening to consumers? At facilitating connection, communication, discussion? Helping create a consumer environment for our businesses? This is something that is going to be defined by every individual angle – social media, individual people, business… but it’s safe to say they are failing everyone.
The Filter Bubble Problem
Mark's savvy with the Press knows no bounds.
Facebook has made made it so you can hide everything you dislike about the site. You can hide people or pages, you can hide causes, games, specific api’s that post, specific phones, and more. These are the filters that Eli Pariser speaks about – the filter bubbles driving us apart, creating a homogenic environment, and limiting true connection and democratic discourse – and the resulting ethical issues involved. These filters are meant to be a response to Facebook users’ dissatisfaction of the interface and lack of proper privacy controls. Users tire of mindless advertising and spam; being inundated with extraneous applications or attempts at monetizing the user base are finally wearing thin. These filters are simply a way for you to shut down the site little by little, bit by bit. By developing these tools, Facebook has expressively admitted that the whole network is spam. I spoke about these hidden streams, overposting, and attention curation as equity, and you know that I do not consider Facebook a network in the traditional sense of the word. If I don’t know who has hidden my business, then I don’t know who my network is, and therefore it is essentially defunct.
Could you imagine the statistics on overall users or pages hidden? Have you ever hidden anything on Facebook? I think it is completely unstable as a network, and assume Facebook will at some point have to unhide everything to fix some of the problems of “community”. I had hoped I wouldn’t have to post about Facebook again, but it isn’t just about narcissism and the challenge of pages.
Monetization
Facebook doesn't seem to work with dollar signs
Facebook is constantly altering their UI & architecture, so as to generate constant cash flow. These attempts at creation of revenue wholly disregard the individual users’ privacy & bungles the process constantly. Beyond Zuckerberg’s slip ups, and horrid PR, Facebook adds confusing, unstable layers to a flawed structure/network that is based off of variably meaningful geo-connections. Social connections should *obviously* include *immediate* social circles, but the strongest online connections are based off interest, and do not necessarily involve family or educational institution, the latter which connects similar classmates across broad social, economic, and political backgrounds. Until Facebook figures this out, their dominance is tenuous. You cannot create a solid network based off of loose interests. Topics/Subject matter drive content creation, and content creation drives social networks.
Facebook’s slapdash and immature attempts at monetizing a site with enormous architectural flaws have made it a broken network, and now they are bleeding users…. there are so many meaningful, topical driven sites, that people simply don’t need it anymore. With the rise of topical boards, Facebook is moot. You can still check in on your grandkids, or your college ex-boyfriend’s family on Facebook, but most people seem to feel more comfortable generating content in like minded communities, which also includes Tumblr and Twitter. Tumblr has stolen an entire generation of younger kids, Twitter has mid 30′s parents and professionals who don’t have the time for the vacuousness of Facebook, or the time to figure it out. This is where Facebook’s content is being generated – elsewhere. Everyone still has a Facebook account, but you may be interested to know where the internet is really happening.
Where The Internet Happens
No, not those kind of boards.
The internet happens in the open. It happens in an unregulated environment that business has little interaction with. Foodies have Chowhound or Eater to talk recipes, cuisine, and what’s hot. Sports fans have their dream team forums or ESPN boards & an entire industry of social sites. Movie fans engage in sites like IMDB, Netflix, and Rotten Tomatoes, all rabid posters writing shining reviews or debating camera angles. Entertainment blogs have members on sites like TMZ or Gawker, where posters gab ad naseuom about the plastic world of their interest. These people *might* share on Facebook, but often the people that you know in the real world aren’t interested in the same hobbies or activities. Techies on Techcrunch or Engadget have devoted commenters espousing their applicable fanboydom. Relevant social sites like Mashable or open forums like Yelp Talk cover a bevvy of topics and retain interest from users. Traditional national and local newspapers cover the entire gamut of local events and allow a wide spectrum of commentators with insane devotion (sometimes literally). This doesn’t cover the existence of any millions of hobby or enthusiast boards for everything from offroading (based off the specific make and model of your truck) to knitting clubs or book clubs on small blogs or local sites to large sites like Amazon or Ebay. Even boards like 4chan create content and relevance that makes other sites pale in comparison. All this is an indication that social media has blossomed in a way that makes Facebook completely irrelevant. The walled garden, with too many privacy holes in the fence, leaves a lot to be desired, and users are finally leaving Facebook for greener, rolling pastures. It’s an apt analogy.
For example, my business is travel and hospitality. My entire industry is suffering devastating groupthink – and every conference or social media mention is about Facebook, driving revenue, ROI. I wanted to mention them, but don’t want to damage the conference economy built around Facebook. I will just say that I know there are those of you out there nodding your head (ed note: thank you for the emails). Do you want to know how I can be so brazen about this, and why your company’s efforts on Facebook are misguided? It’s painful to admit, but the real internet and real consumer isn’t on Facebook, and never planned to be. As soon as they are on Facebook, they are a sister or a grandmother or a college chum. But when those same people leave the site – they are consumers on flyertalk, tripadvisor, yelp, and any other consumer site referencing the interest they have at that moment. Someone can be on Facebook loading vacation pics one moment, and that can have zero relevance to the fact they are a consumer searching reviews for a hotel on Tripadvisor, a moment later. The two are not related. ”Consumers” do not exist on Facebook, because when people are on Facebook, they shed the role of consumer (or at least they think they do, which is all it takes). A friend told me to be patient, but he was speaking to me about being patient in the business realm, that the facebook user will eventually be “born” a consumer. Well, I am not so sure the users have that sort of patience, and looking at their fickle migration patterns of the past, coupled with their distrust of Facebook management, I don’t think my patience will have anything to do with it.
Our Groupthink and What Your Business Needs to Ask
It's not pretty when it happens, and sometimes we can't see it.
The groupthink throughout industry is to talk about how to leverage Facebook, and not whether it’s truly worth the effort or has intrinsic value. Everyone is so self interested that they won’t admit that it’s not the wonder it appears to be. The general rule is that you have to be where people commune, but it doesn’t mean it has to be anything more than a landing page. I went so far as to ask fans of some of our hotels what they thought of brands on Facebook. Informal test of 4 hotels was unanimous – everyone overposts, and it is tantamount to spam. The more you post, the more people hide you. Great… you got 5 comments!!! Then it’s likely, as 90% of people are lurkers, that even more hid you. You are losing attention every day with your Facebook pages.
Outside the US, along with Twitter, Facebook has been the only available tool with the reach to successfully organize people, and the result has been powerful and moving and undeniable.
But, inside the US, it has been co-opted by brands and marketing agents who attempt to exploit it and utilize it for business. This is all at the behest of Facebook, who is trying to monetize the hell out of the user base and define and reinforce the concept of “user equity”. Of course, businesses haven’t taken the time to realize there is almost no ROI, and when there is – it’s rare and far between. Why did they lose 6 million people in May? Is that real people, or is Facebook flushing out the coffers of spammers that are littering every corner of that network? Outside of this loss of users, how many existing accounts of the 700 Million members are spammers or multiple accounts? Dead accounts? How do they measure usage?
Define a successful campaign on Facebook? Define a successful business situation in regards to Facebook? Is it about money? brand building? interactivity? I have heard minor successes on Facebook, but no consistent, overwhelming victories as you may have heard from sites like Twitter. You know what would happen if any single hotel took their page off Facebook? Absolutely nothing. Facebook is a pass through. They interact with your brand on other sites like user generated review and rating sites, or topical boards where they can get advice from like minded people with expertise enough to answer tough questions. Uncle Harry or your high school prom date isn’t likely to be able to do that for you. People “like” and move on in Facebook, it’s a throwaway, passive activity; otherwise people don’t “like” anything because they don’t see the point, or don’t trust the process, even if they actually like something. It’s obvious there’s a flaw in this system as a trustworthy & equitable model for making business decisions. Facebook’s compulsion to legitimize the ad model structure of their social business has marginalized the ability for people to meaningfully connect. This erodes trust, and now people are finding other places to commune meaningfully online. People are still using Facebook in a personal manner, so they wear brands like fashion, for status. They aren’t interacting with the brand so much as showing it off as they might Gucci sunglasses or a Prada purse. There isn’t the compulsion or awareness by normal Facebook users to create commerce, or interact with businesses as they would on a review site, or topical network. The closed network based off random, extinct, geographical connections (school, etc) stifles ability to congregate and commune around brands or specific concepts. The groups and pages don’t work properly, because they were an afterthought to the original intent of Facebook.
Is what your organization puts into Facebook worth what is coming out of it?
The End of Facebook
Heaven's to Murgatroyd, Facebook may exit stage left, even.
So far it’s been difficult to cultivate a social network into a successful long term business. You can’t build a social network, just ask Google. A small network goes viral, then that network spends years garnering users and destroying the site in the race to monetize it, until users move somewhere else. Facebook went viral overnight, but this doesn’t mean it’s a successful platform for business. Until they can offer a meaningful way to show real return or effeciveness, we are wasting labor and marketing dollars on a black hole. The reason they aren’t sharing any of their data regarding site usage is because they know it would hobble their $100 Billion IPO. The data and trends obvious in their private data, coupled with the social world’s IPO craze, it’s seems obvious they know the time is now, while they are jumping the shark. Their talk of IPO is nothing more than a cynical money grab. As Groupon will start the beginning of the 2.0 bubble, Facebook is desperate to cash in before it’s too late.
The sad part is that all these social media conferences and advertising or PR firms, coupled with the rest of big business, have so mindlessly invested endless money and time into developing their presence, they won’t be able to see the forest for the trees….. there is an entire economy that exists around Facebook, and people will have too much self interest to admit it’s time is passing. They will hold on dearly, for fear of having to make new presentation slides, or build yet another business profile on yet another network. Consultants will be frightened of being exposed for how much money they charge for administering Facebook. Operators won’t want to change a thing because they finally got the facebook action committee meeting in place, or the hierarchy of responsibility for posting and replies.
Many people are vested very deeply in Facebook’s success, and I fear that our inherent self interest will allow this IPO to happen without a hitch…. a massively inflated and dangerous number representing an inflated faux economy that could collapse harder than a previous bubble we all should know and remember. In fact, it’s going to happen. Groupon is the start of it. All that conversation about Groupon’s insolvancy and filed IPO papers – Facebook knows this. The collapse will bring greater scrutiny, deeper questions, and demand for much more reporting and numbers in regards to the site. As for now, Facebook stats are piece-meal, unsubstantiated guesswork, and Facebook is very secretive with all their usage stats. Once real data gets out, do you suppose that it will bolster the evaluation, or bring it back down to earth?
I think the answer is all too obvious. So Facebook is getting ready to cash in because they know they have peaked, and the other side of the mountain is a long way down. It’s a precarious time for our economy as well as my personal hospitality and travel world. Will we keep our heads down and keep espousing the genius of Facebook with empty stats and minor successes, or will we be big enough to move on, and realize that another time is passing? I doubt we will be big enough. But I hope this helps to create more of a dialogue that gets us there… ultimately one that protects the future of our economy.
Edit 16th June 2011:
A friend sent this article, “Older users likely to connect with businesses“. It is unfortunate that we are defining “connection” or interaction as something as passive as pressing a button. Users are tired of privacy issues, sure… but they are also tired of 90% of businesses doing Facebook wrong – not allowing user comments to appear on the wall, nor interacting and commenting on their posts. It’s an RSS feed, and that’s spam, and it’s being hidden, and you have lost their attention. When businesses realize the problems with Facebook, the lack of results, and the fact we burned most of bridges in trying to connect with users, ad sales will plummet, and the bottom will fall out. We are still in front of the Groupon IPO, and lessons can be learnt from the Pandora debacle from today. Show’s over, says VentureBeat, as Pandora skids hard. Stay vigil and stay aware, fight against groupthink, and engage your company with open-minded discussion regarding your next move.
UPDATE 30 Sept 2011:
Ed Note: Google Plus’ Open social graph will quickly make Facebook’s walled garden irrelevent. I quote Terrence Lui:
“Those of you reading this right now should realize something. You have a fantastic lead. Everybody who depends on Google to run their business, and there are a lot of them, and is ignoring Google+ right now is a fool. You are in on the ground floor of something that will fundamentally change what is now the foundation of the internet.
So take advantage of it while you can. Stake out your place on the high ground. At some point very soon, the crowd will wake up to the fact that Google is serious about all of this and the flood will come.”
But I think the most compelling and damning evidence is this: Twitter has seen more growth in the last 9 months than the past 5 years. It is vital to be aware of this fact. Since May, Facebook user base growth in the U.S. has completely stalled, while these other networks are growing faster than ever. I am basically done protecting my industry from the mindless groupthink. Let’s let those who are listening gain the high ground. Let’s let the vacuous & self interested, fall by the wayside. Good luck out there guys.
Tags: 100 billion, 100 billion Facebook, eli pariser, facebook, facebook ipo, facebook leveling off, Facebook loses members, facebook loses users, filter bubble, groupon, groupon ipo, groupthink, message boards, pandora, talk boards, talk forums
