Established in February 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook is a privately-owned social networking website that helps people and companies communicate, socialize, understand, engage and transact more efficiently and effectively with friends, family, colleagues, employees, customers and relevant targets. Facebook is the dominant social network in over 100 countries and has more than 1.19 billion monthly active users, it's growth of members in the past few years has been phenomenal (only less than 10 years). Facebook has a powerful business model. Even though the most active group will however be the 16-45 year olds, Facebook’s diversification is an ingenious growth strategy. This is because it not only has the largest growth of members but also has the largest percent of active users. This is what will drive the importance of using social media marketing strategies that Facebook offers businesses within their social site.
Industry environment: It involves five factors that influence a firm, its competitive actions and responses, and the industry's profit potential.
The threat of new entrants:
The threat of new entrants who want to enter the social network industry is very low. As the Facebook is the biggest social networking site with more than one billion active users and it will be very difficult for a new entrants social networking site to get to a place where the Facebook has reached. Google+ is the only competitor who working hard to come up in the race.
The power of suppliers:
Users also are the suppliers because Facebook would be nothing without its users. The quantity of information the users gives to Facebook (by likes, shares, comments, posts, picture uploads) are used by Facebook advertisement to push advertises to the u...
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...y by facilitating the free-flow of ideas.”
The company’s culture was based on open communication and transparent decision making. As Facebook was into networking, the culture was more oriented toward improving user experience rather than revenue generation. With a strong leader like Zuckerberg at the top, the culture was young and performance-oriented. It was a developer-driven culture wherein the management structure comprised only developers with no hierarchies.
The internet segment is also very competitive in the sense that high growth startup firms are often acquired in infancy by larger companies. Where Mark Zuckerberg had many opportunities to sell the startup to technology firms, he decided to continue investing his time and energies into its growth.
Facebook has users from all over the world which makes it attractive to people who have international friends.
One of the most important things to point out the impact of social networks in the business field is e-commerce. In older times companies project their advertisements either on the television or in newspapers or billboards. It was just an one way communication, which did not yield attractive returns from the consumers. But now companies use social media platforms as a two-way communication medium. For instance, we can see in documentary movie “Generation Like”. Companies are now turning the Facebook ‘Likes’ into the good money. ‘Likes’ button on the Facebook has a great importance. More the likes you have more the value you gain. When one like something online, a product, a brand or a celebrity it becomes part of the identity that they broadcast to the world in free. Companies are getting free advertisers in the form of their consumers (Generation Like). Social media profile information is really valuable to the advertisers for the promotion of their product. This help the companies in market research. Some companies tend to outsource their social media asset management to their advertising partners. By acting social networks as stepping stones, social media marketing can gain a lot of benefits including relationship building, brand building, publicity, promotions and so on. So, it can be concluded that social media marketing proposes several opportunities for entrepreneurs, small businesses, midsize companies and huge
With social media websites being the main hub of personal information, advertisers are consistently monitoring our social media activity, having the ability to look into our personal information. In the article "Advertising and Consumer Privacy: Old Practices and New Challenges." by Justine Rapp states, “Fueled by advances in capabilities and interconnectedness of computer based technology, advertisers are able to collect and assimilate information on consumers like no other time history” (51). Facebook has become the number one, social media website around the globe. It is the most popular website used by personal and business users in today’s society. In the article “Using Social Media to Reach Consumers: A Content Analysis of Official Facebook Pages” by Amy Parsons states, “As of July 2011, the social network site Facebook claims to have over 750 million members and in the terms of activity.” (27), making it easy to meet and connect with others. Facebook is considered the “hot spot” for online social activity, however, it exposes personal information about its consumers to
The rapid growth of the social media networking makes life different. According to the real time internet live statistics, the internet users in the world are now more than 3,338,000,000 and keep rising every day (Internet Live Stats, 2016). Social media like Facebook, Sina microblog (Weibo), Twitter, Instagram and YouTube are defined as the online communities which allow users to create and share their own content (Bolton et al., 2013). The faster and easier information exchange brings a new trend of marketing communication established and makes traditional peer to peer word of mouth spreading go online. Social media provides a platform for consumer to engage in electronic word-of-mouth. It can be either positive or negative statement on the product brand or service which made by potential, actual or experience users on the internet (Themba & Mulala, 2013). Facebook is one of the fast developing social media. It brings up a new trend of social media marketing. Facebook influenced customer behavior and suggested to be one of the most critical metrics of social media usage (Schultz, Schwepker & Good, 2012).
Social Media are increasingly popular in the world. Almost everyone has an account in any social media platform, most of us use them to connect with family, friends or to meet new people. We share photos or videos with other to share details of our everyday life, we share opinions and stay update with news and current events. Facebook is the most popular social media platform of all time, within six years, Facebook has experienced dramatic growth; it has reached more than a billion users and is still growing rapidly. For this reason I selected this platform trying to find an answer to the next questions: Why do we need a social network like Facebook? , Which is causing Facebook impact in our lives? , What will be the future Facebook? And what will be the
According to Nair (2011), “The social media property on the web is exploding and fast becoming a necessary part of the arsenal of any organization. It took 38 years for the radio to attract 50 million listeners, and 13 years for television to gain the attention of 50 million viewers. The Internet took only four years to attract 50 million participants, and Facebook reached 50 million participants in only one-and-a-half years. Facebook, which was originally designed for Harvard students and launched in 2004, has become a phenomenal example of social engagement. By 2009, Facebook had already achieved 100 million monthly active users covering age groups from 13 to 65; by the end of 2010, there were more than 500 million users. (p. 46) With so many people connected through social media and since businesses are dependent on people to thrive, they have been impacted both positively and negatively.
Ellison, N, Steinfield, C, & Lampe, C 2007, 'The Benefits of Facebook “Friends:” Social Capital and College Students’ Use of Online Social Network Sites', Journal Of Computer-Mediated Communication, Vol 12, no 4, pp. 1143-1168, Communication & Mass Media Complete, EBSCOhost, viewed 2 February 2012.
If we think about the Nineties, business enterprises used newspaper, television and radio as mediums for publicizing. We have come a long way since then; now companies can ask their consumers to ‘Like’ their pages and ask them to ‘Share’ the page among their friends and relatives. Today social media is the highlight of everyone's lives and we can all thank Mark Zuckerberg for setting up a network of 1.2 billion of prospective friends, Facebook.
The ability for marketers to make use of user generated content from social networking sites such as Facebook enhances the chances of developing personalized and targeted advertisements and promotional content to specific customers, thus increasing profitability through acquisition of larger market share and competitive advantage. Targeted, personalized and interactive marketing helps to increase customer retention and enhances customer loyalty making a company’s products and services increasingly irresistible leading to repeat purchases and higher profitability as well as reduced customer servicing costs.
Facebook is traditionally seen as a website which allows for users to upload their own content. Likewise, although it provides space for advertisers, they are responsible for their own content as well. The problem arises that if Facebook allows certain types of content, it is facilitating certain reactions. This is something that Facebook and other websites must consider as they post adverts. Although Facebook is just a portal through which people can post different content, there has to be some accountability with respect to the fact that they are hosting the content on their servers and making it accessible to
All social media sites provide many advertisements. On Facebook, you are being advertised 24/7. You are always the target audience that different companies try to attract with different advertisements. They can be annoying at times, but now that I think of it, it worked because it got my attention. Companies use it to try to get consumers to remember at least 5 seconds of the advertisement or the product. A good example of this would be when you are playing a game on Facebook because advertisements consistently pop up. There are times where advertisements catch your attention and you decide to read more about them. This then leads to you sharing this post with your friends on Facebook, which attracts their attention. I can relate this to Mary Louise Pratt, Arts of the contact zone, when she states, “He learned the meaning of expertise, of knowing about something well enough that you can start a conversation with a stranger and feel sure of holding your own” (512). This can be related to Facebook because once you find an advertisement that you can relate to or want to learn more about than you begin to have more knowledge about the topic. This therefore causes you to be more likely to spend money on an item you may not have needed. Thus, social media sites attract consumers using advertisements that constantly come
Mark Zuckerberg will go down in history as the pioneer of modern social media with his invention of Facebook. Professional Snowboarder Travis Rice can be quoted by saying “Our lives have become digital. Our friends, now virtual. And, anything you could ever wanna know is just a click away” (Rice). In many ways Mark Zuckerberg is responsible for introducing this social change. Zuckerberg paved the way to the social highway that people use all day long.
If you observe successful marketers these days, you’ll realize that they have taken Facebook strategies very seriously. The reason? Facebook marketing is a powerful strategy that is working well in favor of a business. Around 40% of the world population has access to the internet. Almost every internet user logs into Facebook daily and goes through their news feed. With online shopping being the craze these days, many people are bringing their business onto the world of internet. Online platforms have become successful media for products in order to get potential customers every day. Indeed, Facebook marketing strategy is the hip thing nowadays. Know more of the following
...ions. It has several options like sending messages, updating statues, posting photos and/or videos, pages and groups for organizations and communities, and online gaming. Upon uploading personal information open to public, professionals are able to study their minds and observe their culture, which is later used to refine their business strategies. People from different nations are able to communicate with ease. In case a language is not understandable, translators are used to convert it into the language of preference. A prospective student can gather information about his future university by contacting its students on Facebook. If he wants to study abroad, he can easily contact people living in that area to understand the society and culture. Facebook consequently serves as a dialogic stage for organizations to include their fans and build a dedicated community.
However, most of the businesses who are on Facebook just want to get fans, because they are mostly shops in real life, like a restaurant or a hairdresser and they just want to raise the popularity of their brand.
Facebook is a social networking service launched in February 2004, owned and operated by Facebook, Inc. As of September 2012, Facebook has over one billion active users, out of which 241 million users are from India alone which shows that Facebook has its highest number of users from India. Users must register before using the site, after which they may create a personal profile, add other users as friends, and exchange messages, including automatic notifications when they update their profile.