It's all about Growth... Or is it?

Mark Zuckerberg recently made comments in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung detailing Facebook's strategy for the next few years. The focus; growth. Zuckerberg's plans revolve around efforts to grow the organisation over the next three years. Whilst growth represents a major strategy for retaining competitive advantage in a time of economic instability, attention must be paid to how ventures will be funded. Even the most innovative of organizations will only succeed if they have the capital to fund their expansions.

Many social media organizations seem to be neglecting the importance of generating capital at present. Whilst organizations such as Facebook and Digg clearly hold contemporary competitive advantage acheived through critical mass, such advantages are only likely to be sustainable in the presence of ongoing revenue generation. Larger organizations, such as Microsoft and Google, have a significant warchest from which to draw funds. These established organizations have time and again proven their dominance in those fields which they choose to enter. As such, firms with a proven track record in revenue generation are likely to prove a very real threat to the contemporary social application provider.

If I were Zuckerberg, I would seriously reassess my situation, and exploit today's competitive advantage to tomorrow's benefit.