Facebook

General Introduction

Facebook is a social networking website that allows users to create profiles, upload photos and video, send messages and keep in touch and communicate with others. Once a user creates a personal profile they are able to “friend request” other users. If the friend request is accepted, then the user is able to see the content of the friend’s profile and communicate through different methods.

Each user has a personal profile comprised of several features enabling users to stay connected and communicate with each other. There are “about me” and “personal information” sections where users can display information such as likes, dislikes, relationship status, and other background information. The “wall” is a virtual bulletin board. Messages left on a friend’s wall can be text, video or photos. All messages left on a wall are public, so anyone who is a friend of the user is permitted to see the message. A virtual photo album allows the user to upload photos to be stored online, with no limitation on quantity. A feature of the virtual photo album allows the user’s friends to make comments on each other's photos and “tag” or identify people in the photos. This way if a friend uploads a photo of you, the friend can tag you as being in the photo and then the photo will be included into your virtual photo album. Another profile component is the “status update”, which is a feature allowing members to broadcast short announcements to their friends. All public interactions are published in a “news feed”, which is distributed in real-time to the member's friends. This enables the user to quickly see what all of their friends have been up to without searching each of their friend’s profiles individually. There is also a communication option called a “message” that is private between the person you are communicating with. Sending a message works the same way as sending and email does. A part of the message feature is “live chat” where friends can have conversations in real time.

Purpose

According to Mark Zukerberg the mission of Facebook is “to make the world more open and connected.” Or phrased another way “help people connect with the people they want and share what they want, and by doing this we (Facebook) are extending people’s capacity to build and maintain relationships.” The general purpose I have for using Facebook is I am able to stay connected with friends. Facebook solves my problem of not being able to be aware of what is happening in my friend’s lives because we are separated by distance and inhibited by lack of available time to communicate through traditional means.

Use in Business

Facebook is different from other social media platforms because it has features to make its use for businesses easier. Similar to personal profiles businesses can make a Facebook “page”. According to Facebook.com “Pages are for businesses, brands and organizations to share their stories and connect with people.” Users can “like” the Facebook pages of businesses and doing so will put the business’s page activity into the user’s news feed. Pages enable businesses to communicate with their customers the same way friends communicate with their profiles. A customer can be made aware of things the business is doing, such as: sales, promotions, new product launches, new store openings, product recalls, community service projects, etc. A business can also advertise on Facebook for a fee. Facebook will strategically place the ad on user’s profiles it determines are most likely to purchase the advertised product.

Zukerberg explained Facebook’s application to business this way.

“We think a more open and connected world will help create a stronger economy with more authentic businesses that build better products and services.

As people share more, they have access to more opinions from the people they trust about the products and services they use. This makes it easier to discover the best products and improve the quality and efficiency of their lives.

One result of making it easier to find better products is that businesses will be rewarded for building better products — ones that are personalized and designed around people. We have found that products that are “social by design” tend to be more engaging than their traditional counterparts, and we look forward to seeing more of the world’s products move in this direction.

Our developer platform has already enabled hundreds of thousands of businesses to build higher-quality and more social products. We have seen disruptive new approaches in industries like games, music and news, and we expect to see similar disruption in more industries by new approaches that are social by design.

In addition to building better products, a more open world will also encourage businesses to engage with their customers directly and authentically. More than four million businesses have Pages on Facebook that they use to have a dialogue with their customers. We expect this trend to grow as well.”

Zukerberg points out with his statement in addition to consumers being able to stay connect to a business, Facebook, allows a business to connect with consumers. A business being more connected to its consumers enables the business to be more responsive to consumer needs.

During my research I discovered Facebook offers assistance to businesses to create a page, create an ad, identify an audience, create compelling content, advertise, measure and adjust strategy. I found this page to be very helpful to a lay person when it comes to what Facebook can offer businesses. I would recommend everyone take a quick look through it! Social Media Examiner also has a good article about how to use Facebook. The links for both are at the bottom of this blog post.

Assessment

Of the social media platforms I have assessed so far (blogs and Twitter) I believe Facebook is the best social media platform for a business to use. Facebook has features similar to other social media platforms but offers all those features in a single platform. This plethora of features to utilize will give a business the ability to customize their message in a more specific way. Facebook also has more traffic. According to sproutsocial.com, Facebook averages 968 million active users daily compared to Twitter’s 316 million monthly users. However, my opinion is biased because I am most familiar with Facebook and have used it longer than any other social media platform.

Despite my favorable assessment of Facebook compared to other social media platforms I still believe businesses should avoid any substantial investment into the use of Facebook. As I have sited in my pervious blogs there is no way to calculate the ROI for the use of social media. A business should only use Facebook in the various ways described above to promote their brand, market their products, and connect with consumers; but should not expect Facebook to contribute to their bottom line in a notable way.

My Experience

Overall, I have a very high opinion of Facebook and my experience using the product has been favorable because of the things it allows me to do and the ease I am able to do them. I have been using Facebook in 2007. Since that time the purpose I have for using it is still to stay connected with friends who I am separated from because of distance and lack of time to communicate. Without Facebook I would have lost touch with many people I am still close with and forgotten numerous memories I am able to recall when scrolling through my profile’s history. There are also numerous secondary benefits Facebook offers to me: keeping track of birthdays, storing photos, being an online address book, easy organizing of group activities, and others. One negative aspect to having a Facebook profile is how past posts can be used to reflect negatively on a person today. I have heard stories of people not getting jobs because of content they posted to Facebook years prior. I am not sure how I feel about Facebook being used to check up on people but it does occur and it should be a consideration when deciding to have a profile or not.

References
Facebook's Wikipedia Page
Mark Zuckerberg's IPO Letter
Statistical Data
Facebook Logo
Facebook Business Page Set up
Promote Your Business with Facebook-Social Media Examiner