Abstract
This paper is on the Facebook and the platform it has provided to its users. The first section of this paper will discuss the ideas shared by the authors about social media sites especially Facebook. The second section will cover some f the important points made by the authors in their article. The next section will have reflection and understanding from the research paper. The final section will discuss the use of learning from the research paper in working environment.
Introduction
Social Networking sites like Facebook, have allowed many people to stay in touch socially though their personal profiles and communicating privately or publically with their family and friends. Facebook has helped users to identify and offer ability to restrict information from people available on the social media site. By the year 2011, social networks were the leading destinations for internet users, with 60% of the United States population having a profile on one or many social media sites (Emarketer, 2011).
In 2012, Facebook registered their billionth user; this cemented their position as the largest online social network worldwide. Since being founded by Mark Zuckerberg in the year 2004, Facebook has helped users share their thoughts and information with their friends.
Facebook users have taken advantage of Facebook functionalities such as uploading pictures, commenting, liking and adding friends. The site has also attracted a large variety of cultures and age groups together, which is an unprecedented success of their appeal. Facebook through their free profile pages to individuals, companies and interest groups have helped as a platform for sharing information, promoting products and invite people. In addition, Facebook platform has enabled third party developers to develop games, applications that are the most common reason for Facebook footfall (Protalinski, 2012).
Important Points
When Harvard Garduate Mark Zuckerberg and his two roommates started to build Facebook as an alternative for Harvard’ printed student directory, he planned it similar to other social networking sites where users had profiles that connected members through friendship. However, it was different as it restricted membership for only those who had .edu e-mail address. The key factors which have supplemented in popularity and success of Facebook over the years have been its special features which separate Facebook from other social media sites. Some of them are News Feed, timeline, Facebook Ads, Facebook Platform (Applications, Social gaming, Facebook credits) and Open stream API. Along with its popularity and success Facebook has also face privacy concerns. When Facebook started, users shared their information to their social network at school. This changed after expansion as, once it was open to all anyone from any part of this world could connect with each other.
With larger audience Facebook also created several tools that helped users to manage their personal information. They could limit their updates and pictures to groups, friends or even individuals. As Facebook implemented new features, it kept on adding better privacy measures for their users (Helft & Wortham, 2010). After two years of Facebook’s existence, Twitter was launched. Twitter gave its users interaction opportunity on with anyone else using the service. Users posted short messages about themselves, their thought or latest news.
In addition to that, Facebook also had to compete with Google, with their social media platform called Orkut. It was created as an independent project by Turkish software engineer Orkut Büyükökten at Google.
Opinion
Facebook has come a long way from its beginnings in 2004 from a Harvard dorm to the most popular social media site worldwide. The two reasons which have supplemented the success of Facebook over the years are; firstly, Facebook offered free profile page to their companies for posting information about their products, services, invite fans, liking and responding to comments. Secondly, Facebook platform enabled third-party developers to build games, applications that have attracted almost half of the users to the social media site. This article gives insight into the strategy, competitors and success factors of Facebook and the also gives a peek into the future for the social media site with its IPO. In 2011, Facebook annual profit was $1 billion and $3.7 billion in revenue, almost 85% of this revenue was generated from advertising, which gets displayed alongside user provided content. The other 15% came from third-party developer sales of virtual goods through the Facebook Platform (Cutler, 2012).
Use in Workplace
Almost a decade ago, Facebook was just another coding project started from a dorm room. Nowadays, it is a global business making $4 billion of revenue and is used by huge chunk of worldwide population. Facebook started to operate there were many social media sites serving the same opportunity, with passage of time Facebook won and the other lost.
Learning from this article can be used in any company or corporate culture. It is important for a company to review if they are moving fast enough or if they are making changes according to the industry climate and customer needs. Also, does the company have the constant obsession of making products and service better or if the company is competitive enough and is making the positive moves in market. These are questions which Facebook has answered over the past few years as they competed, defeated, upgraded, bought, sold and won. Facebook’s philosophy is reminder to every organization to make quick decisions and choices and remain aggressive in overcoming the intertia of completion.
Conclusion
Power of Facebook in global ecosystem is growing larger with the passage of time. Ease of use is encouraging users to access details and information about products and stay in touch with friends. Facebook has proved its worth as platform for business for application and game developers. The future is now directing towards mobile commerce with most users accessing Facebook through their Smartphones. Facebook is now free to integrate their most successful and useful products in their core platform and offer to users more widely.
References
Piskorski, M.J., Eisenmann, T.R. & Smith, A. (14/3/2013). Facebook. Harvard Business School.
Protalinski, E. (2012). Facebook: Over 955 million users, 543 million mobile users. Retrieved 10 Jan 2014 from, http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57480950-93/facebook-over-955-million-users-543-million-mobile-users/
Helft, M & Wortham, J. Facebook Bows to Pressure over Privacy. Retrieved 10 Jan 2014 from, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/27/technology/27facebook.html?pagewanted=all,
Cutler, K.M. (2012). Zynga Contributed 15% of Facebook’s Revenue In Q1, Down From 19% A Year Ago. Retrieved 10 Jan 2014 from, http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/23/zynga-made-up-15-of-facebooks-revenue-in-q1-down-from-19-a-year-ago/
Emraketer. (2011). United States Social Network Usage – Demographic and Behavioural trends. Retrieved 10 Jan 2014 from, http://www.emarketer.com/docs/eMarketer_US_Social_Network_Usage-2011_Demographic_and_Behavioral_Trends.pdf
