- Facebook Like Button: The facebook like button was the greatest trojan horse in history. We'll give you free traffic, just put this little snippet of code on most pages on your website. It's still on most pages despite the fact that facebook has taken most of the utility away from it. When was the last time you've seen a post about your friend liking something off facebook? Yet there it remains telling facebook what sites you visit and deepening the amount of knowledge of your habits that they already have.
- Facebook Pixel: The facebook pixel is the second greatest trojan horse in history. At least it provides value to the website owner but it tracks people all the way through the purchase and gives details on items sold, amount spent, etc.
- Facebook Messenger: Facebook is trying hard to make this an essential part of your everyday life. Anecdotally my wife and I use it as often as we text.
- Instagram: Facebook has shown that they can clone parts of the Snapchat experience into Instagram. Snapchat may be the Hydrox cookie and Instagram the Oreo in this scenario. Being first doesn't mean you'll win.
- Facebook Ads Manager: It gets better all the time. Pinterest, Yahoo, and Twitter have proven that the Ad management interface and ability to target is more important than having a large audience to target when it comes to non intent based ads (meaning anything other than a paid search ad).
- Third party app developers: There are lots of companies working hard to make the Facebook experience even better for advertisers. These companies stay 1 tiny step ahead of Ads Manager and Facebook gets free R & D and customer service for its user base.
- Moments: The Facebook Moments app is a magical experience IMO. I can't believe they don't push it more. It's basically private Facebook. My wife and I use it to share pictures of our kids because we know most of the people on our friends list don't really want to see that and also we aren't the type of people to share everything with the world. I am not sure why they don't push this app more but it seems like an unmined gold vein.
While these things can change over time it's a gigantic lead that Facebook has built and I don't see Snap beating them anytime, ever.