Facebook for Business: Web 2.0 Tools

Introduction of Facebook the Company

Facebook is one of the world’s most used social networks and has a global presence and it’s used by so many people for both communal purposes and individual functions (CrunchBase, 2009). At the time of its invention by Zuckerberg Mark in the year two thousand and four, it was only an exclusive network for Harvard students (Crunch Base, 2009). At the time of its initiation it rose to attract so many users that by the time two weeks had passed, half of the population of Harvard students had began actively using it. Mr. Michael who was the founder on realizing this urgently brought on board his long time friends Chris Hughes and Moskowitz Dustin in order to work as a team to enhance Facebook to get a global look, and after several months, the network had added a magnitude of users (Crunchbase).

Facebook the name originated from Phillips Exeter Academy which was Mr. Michael’s former high school. Facebook in this school was passed to each and every student in order to let the students be acclimatized to each other. At this time in Phillip Exeter academy, it was a mere paper of a book until Mr. Zuckerberg Michael decided to reform the whole Idea into what it is now.

After seeing where facebook was heading, Hughes Moskowitz and Zuckerberg decided to rent a premise in Palo where they also met the former director of Napster who is called Sean Parker and they embarked on a serious mission of putting their heads together to move the idea into an enterprise. Parker and his three colleagues then approached Peter Thiel who was at that time the founder of PayPal and also a member of the management of The Founders Fund. After forging a clear strategy, Mr. Thiel decided to boost the growth of facebook by pumping into the company a whooping five hundred thousands dollars.

After the company started to achieve drastic growth, Mr. Friendster tried to buy the company for a whooping ten million dollars but facebook decided not to dispose their fortune and denied the offer but turned to searching for funds from other sources in order to invest more and create more impact (Eldon, E., 2008). Facebook successfully secured twelve million dollars funding from Accel Partners in order to implement its growth strategies (Kazeniac, 2009). Facebook opened its doors to people incorporating high school students in 2005 and being able to please many people who immediately decided to join it and dominated their usage of photo sharing features of the network. By the spring of the year 2006, facebook received twenty five million dollars more funding from Grey lock partners and also some more funding from Peter Thiel and Accel Partners (Kazeniac, 2009). The company subsequently ventured into offering work networks and amazing enough twenty thousands work networks was formed. In the year two thousands and six, September, the company decided to open its doors to anyone who had an email address (Kazeniac, 2009).

Facebook’s corporate growth has amazed so many because by the end of the year two thousand and seven, over one million users joined the network on a weekly basis and approximately two hundred thousands people joined it on a daily basis (Eldon, E., 2008). This totaled over fifty million users. By the beginning of the year two thousand and eight, Facebook reported that it was having almost forty billion pages viewed every month (Paolo, 2007). Eleven percent of users of this network are over the age of thirty five, and the fastest growing age group category of the users is over the age of thirty years. Fifteen percent of Facebook’s users are in Canada. There is unbelievable loyalty, passion and addiction of users to this network and there is more than half use of the network by the members every particular day and the members usually take almost nineteen minutes each day using the products for this network (Paolo, 2007). Despite its fame, several organizations have banned it to encourage worker productivity (Benzie, 2007). Studies have shown that Facebook is the sixth United States of America’s most trafficked web site and it is the number one sits for photo sharing activities and it records four billion photos uploaded onto it (Paolo, 2007).

List of Web 2.0 Tools for the Low Budget Communication of Facebook

Web 2.0 tools are the kind of applications which are utilized in facilitating social networking, crowdsourcing and integration (Mapping the web, 2007).

The following is a list of the common web 2.0 tools used by facebook to run its functions:

• Blogs
• RSS Feeds
• Wikis
• Podcasts/ Vodcasts
• Mashups
• Micro blogging
• Tagging/Folk sonomies/Social Bookmarking
• Social Networking
• Web-based desktop application/document tools
• AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML
• Widgets
• API (Application Programming Interface)
• User-Generated Content (UGC)

Web 2.0 Applications in Facebook to Support the Innovative Marketing Campaign

Throughout the year reformation of marketing strategies has also remained so vital in order for a particular business to retain its competitive advantage. When web 2.0, come into place in the business spheres, business management and marketing has taken a new a technological direction (Scott, P., 2009).Through the use of web 2.0 tools such as blogs, wikis and so on there has been a formation of a virtual environment which does not only affect the way marketing is done but also changed the way business strategies are formulated and implemented (Scott, P., 2009).

Facebook uses web 2.0 tools such as youtube, wikis, blogs and so on to directly have an impact on the behavior of consumers of different spectrum of products in a new different way (Mapping the web, 2007). Facebook has been able to use this said tools to help the consumers to obtain the necessary knowledge from numerous sources in order to help them to make informed decisions around a broad spectrum of brands (Hershey, 2009).

The web 2.0 tool used by facebook that is widely used by organizations and customers to get in touch with each other is the use of blogs (Scott, P., 2009). Webblog are web based diaries where customers and producers post their information through the web (Mapping the web, 2007). This helps people to send comments, compliments, suggestions and other necessary information to either the producers or the customers in order to sustain their loyalty to a particular product (Hershey, 2009; p30).

Another important web 2.0 tool integrated into facebook in the social networking also known as the virtual world (Scott, P., 2009). This tool in facebook has helped individuals to interact in a form of graphical avatars. Through this feature people can get to associate with each other either as pairs or even as groups and undertake a trade property and services with each other (Hershey, 2009; p31).

Facebook’s utilization of widgets has also enhanced the marketing strategies (Mapping the web, 2007). Widgets have enabled people or companies to create marketing channels that enters to consumer access points through other web 2.0 technologies which enables an influential promotion of products or services and also create awareness among the consumers (Mapping the web, 2007).

Analysis of the Results Obtained by Using Key Performance Indicators

According to “The Long Tail” theory by Chris Anderson, “the internet can increase the number of active players (sellers) in the online marketplace, the latter of which offer valid products/services even to small numbers of customers. This means a wide range of products and services, events and messages is available to more people all around the world. This happens because internet represents a media with the lowest relative cost per contact” (Kounalakis, M & Laufer, P, 2008).

On November 30th 2005, Tim O’Reilly, CEO of O’Reilly Media published an article that summarized the findings behind a new paradigm affecting the scope and depth of the internet today; Web 2.0. O’Reilly then referred to, among other things to the principle of “users add value”, meaning that users are paramount to reaching competitive advantage in the web and “cooperate don’t control” a message that promotes participation on the part of users of the net. This paradigm enhanced the importance of the user experience in the web 2.0 applications such as blogs, portals and social networks, among others (O’Reilly, T., 2009).

It is estimated that Facebook has forty seven million users, up to this month of November, 2009. The facebook founder believes that the company is worth fifteen billion dollars worth. Each one of the active users is worth about three hundred and nineteen dollars (Randy Woods, 2008).

Facebook has an advantage over the other social networking tools because it has allowed business users to sustain their enterprises (Randy Woods, 2008). Facebook unlike the others allows the user to get to someone they do not know to get friendly. The strategy of targeting stores has made the company successful. Instead of using convincing language in a story, the company is able to simply market its brand (Kappe, and Rappin, 2009). This strategy resulted in a six point one percent increase in sales in August two thousands and seven (Kappe, and Rappin, 2009).

Randy Woods (2008) asserts that, “Against both of these metrics, Linkedin and Facebook outperformed the average visitor to the non-linear creations site and Twitter visitors roughly parallel overall traffic characteristics, while both Myspace and Stumbleupon visitors fell below the average”. This can be elaborated in the graphs below:

Average time per visit and pages per visit are essential because they enable a company to scan its marketing success.

Selling Of Digital Gifts as a Market Campaign Strategy for Face Book

By January this year facebook was involved in selling gifts digitally which were worth fifteen million dollars (Paolo Narciso, 2007). These gifts are created by Facebook and it makes a fixed amount of each type of gifts. If the number for a particular kind of these gifts goes down below one hundred thousands, then the number of gifts left is displayed.

By august this year it was found that Facebook had increased the sales of these digital gifts and when the number was tracked, the average found is shown in the table below:

When multiplication of each average was done using the figure of twenty, and then addition of the totals made, three hundred and ninety thousands and six hundred thousands per week. An average of about four hundred and seventy thousands across 3 weeks of gifts was obtained. When taking into consideration the fact that, Zuckerberg stated an estimate of three hundred thousands to three hundred and fifty thousands dollars in output this year (2009), the digital goods on the other hand will be able to raise significant secondary revenue for the success of the company (Paolo Narciso, 2007).

Conclusion

As web 2.0 takes center stage in almost all applications of technology in the modern world, there are few individuals who have critically looked into its advantages and disadvantages. On the other hand still there are still those individuals who feel that this technology will create harm. Web 2.0 has enhanced the production of companies, enhanced knowledge retention, enabled discovery of information, encouraged innovation, increased competitive advantage, enabled a design of modern workplaces, increased transparency at workplaces, and limited the duplication of information (Hinchcliffe, 2009; Mapping the web, 2007). Other groups of people still believe that web 2.0 has a lot of disadvantages such as the need for a specialist to use its appliances and its time consuming. All in all the advantages of web 2.0 outshines its disadvantages and thus its usefulness must be embraced for the success of businesses and organizations.

Reference List

Benzie, R., 2007. Facebook banned for Ontario staffers. Web.

Crunch Base, 2009. Facebook. Web.

Eldon, E., 2008. Growth puts facebook in better position to make money. Web.

Hershey, P., 2009. Social software and web 2.0 technology trends. Hershey, PA: Information Science.

Hinchcliffe, D., 2009. The cloud computing battleground takes shape. Web.

Kappe, D. and Rappin, N., 2009. Harnessing the power of social networking applications with facebook. Web.

Kazeniac, A., 2009. Social networks: facebook takes over top spot, twitter climbs. Web.

Kounalakis, M., & Laufer, P., 2008. Hope is a tattered flag: voices of reason and change for the post-Bush era. Sausalito, California: PoliPointPress.

Mapping the web, 2007. How facebook is bringing web 2.0 mainstreams. USA: Word press.

O’Reilly, T., 2009. A salute to visionary CEOs. Web.

Paolo, N., 2007. The effectiveness of facebook as a tool to increase business. Web.

Randy, W., 2008. Case study: comparing marketing effectiveness of linkedin, facebook, myspace, stumbleupon and twitter. Web.

Scott, P., 2009. Web 2.0 tools. Web.