Facebook.com

Janice Li

Hue Luu

History

Founded by Mark Zuckerberg, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes [1]

Launched in February 2004 [1] Private entity [1]

The Need

To have a media that helps/enables people to maintain relations with others (whether they be acquaintances or close friends)

What it does

Serves as a social networking utility that enables users to interact with their friends, family, and co-workers. [2]

What it does (continued)

Photo albums[3] Events [3] Gifts [3] Applications [3] Marketplace [3]

What it does (continued)

Commerce value chain Attract: free social networking utility for

individuals and builds traffic for advertising revenue

Interact: features provided enable users to facilitate their relationships with others

Act: enables users to constantly update their profiles and view updated profiles

React: allows users to keep in contact with acquaintances

Screen Shots…

Menu bar to access the different parts of your personal site. Includes messages and a link to friends who recently updated their profiles.

Menu for your privacy settings

Shows the latest from your friends, such as new pictures, events they’re attending, or if they change something on their profile

Shows the different applications you can have on your personal profile

Ad for Facebook’s revenue

Latest Activities

Applications

Friends

Allows you to enter any information you want the public or your friends to know.

Allows you to join groups and permit people to see the groups you are in.

Allows your friends on Facebook to write comments on your wall.

Innovation

“[To] create a universal online database for college students with social-networking functionality ”[4]

–Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook CEO Revolutionized social media Allow users to connect with each other

differently Exclusivity

Customers

College students (February 2004) [5]

High school students (September 2005) [5]

Individuals in the workforce (May 2006) [5]

Everyone (September 2006) [5]

Statistics (May 2007) [6]

Target Audience Statistics (May 2007) [6]

Prior to 2006: college students Currently: college students, high school students, and young

professionals

Marketing Strategies

Focus on authenticity [7] Word of mouth Opened up its platform to developers [8] Customizable yet visually consistent

profile pages [9] Enables communication between

Facebook users and non-users [10]

Internet Strategy

Digital Distributor• Enables acquaintances to stay in touch

• Reaggregates services such as e-mail, event invitations, and the sharing of pictures and videos

Successes General growth

• More than 40 million active users [11] • More than 200,000 new registrations per day [11] • An average of 3% weekly growth [11]

User engagement• 6th most trafficked site in the United States [12] • 2nd most traficked PHP site in the world [2] • Most used people search engine on the web [11]• One of the top 20 search engines on the web in

terms of number of searches [11]

Successes (continued)

Applications• #1 photo sharing application [13]

Facebook Platform• Over 2,000 applications built [11]

• More than 75% of the members have used at least one application [11]

Competition• Growing three times as fast as MySpace [14]

Viability of Facebook

Promising if• Continue to focus on being a “social utility”

• Continue to listen/respond to customer feedback

Potential pitfalls• Too many advertisements

• Too many features

• Too many unnecessary e-mails sent to users

What Facebook Does Best

Respecting people’s privacy Facilitating communication between

people Listening/responding to customer

feedback Constantly adding new features Informing users of the latest updates Effectively posting advertisements

Suggested Improvements

Decrease or limit publicized personal information

Make the visual presentation of profile pages less of an eyesore

References [1] http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?timeline [2] http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?factsheet [3] http://www.facebook.com/press/product.php [4] http://www.seomoz.org/web2.0/interview/facebook/2006 [5] http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1640380,00.html [6] http://www.techrunch.com/2007/07/06/facebook-users-up-89-over-

last-year-demographic-shift/ [7] http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1644040,00.html [8] http://developers.facebook.com/

References (continued) [9] http://facereviews.com/2007/07/06/facebook-growth-trends-behind-

the-numbers [10] http://www.seomoz.org/web2.0/interview/facebook/2006 [11] http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics [12] http://www.facebook.com/jobs [13] http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/115/open_features-

hacker-dropout-ceo-facebook-numbers.html [14] http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1644040,00.html