Triggers and Contingencies

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ENVIRONMENTAL SCANNING 2

Environmental Scanning

Student’s Name

Institutional Affiliation

Environmental Scanning

Environmental scanning refers to the way through which companies identify and analyze external trends that affect the business. Various common environmental analysis trends affect businesses. These trends include economic, political, social-economic, demographic, technological and regulatory trends. Many companies have been caught up in the trends and failed to come out because of a lack of the ability and skills to analyze them before they delve into businesses (Abraham, 2012). Facebook is one of the biggest and famous social media platforms, with more than 3 million active users worldwide. The company became operational in 2004. The company has had various founders such as Zuckerberg, Chris Hughes and Eduardo Saverin. Despite the company being a successful entity in the media industry, Facebook faces many challenges in the technological category.

The company is facing a lot of technological challenges in its operations. For instance, data safety and expansion issues are the biggest hindrances to the company's environmental trends. Data security is a serious technological issue for this company (Abraham, 2012). The company needs to be responsible for the protection of the private information of the users from hackers. The company is facing stiff competition from other platforms such as Instagram, hence, hindering its expansion because many people are switching to Instagram because of short videos and pictures.

Currently, Facebook is facing privacy issues from third parties. Many people have launched complaints regarding their private information being made available to third parties. However, Facebook is still the most used social media platform among a vast base of consumers. The platform is projected to address technological issues shortly for it to remain competitive. More so, it has the opportunity to expand and reach more people shortly.

References

Abraham, S. C. (Ed.). (2012). Strategic planning: A practical guide for competitive success. Emerald Group Publishing.