Measuring Social Media Effectiveness

Social Media Outlet: Facebook

Facebook is currently the largest social network we have on earth, initially the website was meant for Harvard students only. The site was founded by Mark Zukerberg assisted by his roommates in Harvard university; Eduado Saverin, Dustin Moskvits, Andrew McCollum as well as Chris Hunges. The initial reason behind the development of Facebook is that the students in Harvard University wanted a site whereby they can compare student’s pictures side by side in order to determine who was hot and who was not, at that time the site was referred to as Facemash. This site was used by students for a while after which there was an outrage by the students who demanded that Zuckerberg should shut the site.

On 4th February, 2004, the 19 year old Mark Zuckerberg launched the then called “thefacebook.com” and this site became an instant hit to the entire world. The controversy behind its establishment began immediately with mark being accused of stealing the idea from his seniors at Harvard University. This led to a lawsuit being filed against Mark in a federal court in the United States of America. It was alleged that Mark entered into an agreement with the Harvard seniors; Cameron, Divya Navendra and Tyler Winkleross to develop a similar site for the seniors and later stall their project while adopting their idea to build on his own website. In the year 2007, a ruling was made by the court, Judge Douglas. P. Woodlock termed the allegations as cheap and further referred to the agreement that Mark allegedly entered as a mere dorm chat. He indicated that a dorm chat doesn’t qualify to make a contract. A year later, a contrary ruling was delivered against the Facebook’s dismissal of the case. The case went on until later it was settled by the parties under undisclosed terms. After the launch back in 2004, the site has grown rapidly and has drawn the attention of many people including Sean Parker, the former co-founder of Napster. Facebook entered its first private investment deal with Peter Theil who was the founder of PayPal for $500,000 which was paid in exchange of 10.2% share of the company. He was also appointed the president of Facebook and was entrusted the responsibility of popularizing Facebook in the campuses and colleges at the United States of America in the year 2004. He did the task very well and this led to a very high rise in the number of registrations in the site.

Facebook dominance has been outstanding as the company grows in limbs and bounds since its establishment, and six years after its establishment, it became the most visited website property online. Facebook acquired The Real-Time News aggregator site FriendFeeed and later expanded largely by buying Instagram for approximately $1 billion. Facebook was declared for initial public offering (IPO) two years ago with the aim of raising $5 billion in capital for investment. Last year, a graph search was introduced by Facebook with the primary aim of assisting users to discover more about what they are interested in and the basis of this was friends and connections. This feature enabled one to search for new people, restaurants music and many more. This is one of the steps that made Facebook to compete favorably with Google in search which were earlier entrants into the market.( Zeevi, D. The Ultimate History of Facebook.)

Many people have regarded Facebook as a waste of time and therefore term it as a distraction to humans from their daily activities. They most often consider the amount of time spent on Facebook and ignoring the issue of whether the use of time in facebook worthwhile or not. Some of the advantages of Facebook include the following;

1. Facebook provides free service – from the onset, users have accessed Facebook for free. This is one of the main advantages of using Facebook, it therefore acts as an encouragement for people to join the site. Even though in the recent past up to now, the site has established some few services which require payments, the payments are not compulsory and users have the freedom to choose the services they need.

2. Facebook has enabled networking – It has helped people to connect and share with people known to them. For example one can search for his or her old school friends that he has lost contact with. One can also search for his or her relatives using the site. Facebook having registered billions of users, it has enabled the users to make new friends from across the world through Facebook chat, pokes, messages and other means. This has led to improvement and maintained peoples’ relationships across the globe.

3. Security in Facebook – this site has provided secure services to users by having top class privacy policies which are simplified and can be easily understood by the users. This aspect has promoted Facebook in that it enables the site to be used by many people without experiencing difficulties thus encouraging users to visit the site more often. The site is also highly spammer sensitive, this aims at securing the user’s gadgets.

4. Improved businesses – With billions of active users it provides an avenue for businesses to thrive in the market. One can sell his or her products online by direct interaction with the potential customers whereby the sellers can persuade the buyers to purchase their product. Similarly a company can create a Facebook fan page which enables it to communicate with its customers and potential customers about matters relating to the goods and services the company deals with, they include; introduction of a new product into the market, the changes in prices of their products, available offers and many more. This enables Facebook to be utilized as a marketing tool for many businesses aiming at expanding their market to increase their sales.

5. Source of entertainment – Facebook provides a range of entertaining applications people can log into Facebook to play games. They can also engage in other fun and enjoyable activities like photo editing as well as horoscope. This feature about Facebook has encouraged people to visit Facebook more often and has made those who have not joined the site to be curious to join in; they will feel that they are missing out on so much fun.

6. Source of information – Facebook is a source of information to many users. Media houses, bloggers, leaders, musicians, sports personnel, journalists and other people or organization use Facebook to pass information fast thus enabling users of the site to get information in real time across the world. Facebook can also be used to kill boredom when one is idle or doing something he or she doesn’t enjoy.

Despite all these advantages, Facebook also has its disadvantages. These disadvantages have discouraged people from joining the site and also from visiting the site often. Some of the disadvantages are discussed below;

1. Addiction aspect - One of the biggest problem with Facebook is that it is addictive and can cause wastage of a lot of user’s precious time. Once one has started enjoying the benefits of Facebook, he or she becomes a slave to it.

2. Fake identities – Many users in Facebook use fake identities, which enables them to cheat and harass people they hate as well as passing negative information. This makes Facebook loose the initial intention of enabling people to meet new people and to maintain or improve people’s relationships.

3. Intrusion of accounts - Facebook has for long been vulnerable to attacks by hackers who invade into someone’s account and edit their profiles as well as uploading virus-attached pictures which are harmful to the users browsing electronics. This makes facebook usage a dangerous adventure.

4. It can ruin the users professional life – during job applications, potential employers search for the applicant’s social networking website’s profile to learn more about the applicant. If they find unethical posts, the user stands loosing the job opportunity thus hindering his or her professional life.

5. Compromised privacy – On facebook, private information is exposed to many people therefore making it hard to keep things personal. (Invstar, T. The Advantages and Disadvantages of Facebook.)

The future of Facebook has never been rosier than now; it holds a lot of untapped opportunities which are yet to be exploited. It has just started to partner with big and small businesses which are enabled to use Facebook for website log in as the main stem of their commenting system. Currently it is only Facebook which has the ability to provide such services among the many social networks. It still shows tremendous growth with its growth rate surpassing all other social websites. It has also started venturing into the mobile and serving businesses, this has a great potential as it helps retailers and local businesses to expand their businesses. This is aided by Facebook’s high engagement level with users across the world.

References