Now anyone of the world is well aware of Facebook with its great social networking. Everyone has a Facebook account to keep associated with friends, family, colleagues and all that. Undoubtedly, facebook is one of the world most successful companies. Its revenue for year 2009 is even up to USD800 million. Well, now I would like to analyze about the past and current strategies of facebook. Also, I would also talk about if I were the facebook CEO, what strategies I would use in the future.
Past strategies
Facebook is founded by Mark Zuckerberg with his college roommates. Then, facebook website was officially launched in February 2004. In July 22, 2010, Zuckerberg announced that 500 million people around the world have chosen Facebook to stay connected with their friends and family. This would be a great milestone for facebook since it has only spent 6.5 years to achieve this figure. What strategies are used by the facebook in creating this miracle?
1. Social
Facebook has done a great job on its social networking. Facebook users can share their words, video, songs, picture on the wall and it is connected to their friends and family. This make facebook users can always stay connected with their friends and family with the wall posts. In addition, facebook grabs the users’ information through the email address and this info will be used to recommend other people to join facebook or connect the users in facebook.
2. Apps
Facebook allows third parties to develop apps on its website. This increase the enormous of apps have been appearing in facebook. Some of the most popular apps in facebook are Poker, Firmville by Zynga. With poker, firmville and other popular apps, Zynga has successfully generated a huge amount of income from facebook. Actually there is an interrelationship between Facebook and Zynga. Zynga helps facebook by making its users stick with facebook for long time whereas facebook provides a platform for Zynga.
These 2 main strategies have been successfully carried out by facebook. I would say that this is the facebook first step which is to attract people into facebook as much as possible.
Current strategies
Utilize the population
facebook has successfully carried out its strategies by keeping over 500 million users on facebook. Now, facebook is going to utilize this huge population to generate profit. This can be seen from facebook has introduced facebook credit, facebook story, facebook connect, “like” button, etc. Facebook credit enables facebook to generate money from apps or games on facebook. Facebook Story and Facebook Answer utilize the information provided by the users. Perhaps facebook will publish magazine in the future by using those facebook stories as content. In addition, facebook enables the developers to utilize the users’ info on facebook. Then, facebook connect tries to pull in all the websites into facebook. “like” enables the advertisers are well-known of the customers’ interest and therefore advertising to the potential customers more concisely and accurately. Besides, the advertisers can post their advertisement with photo in facebook which would be more attractive if compared to google adswords. According to research, many advertisers seek to advertising on facebook in other ways.
With the enormous population, every single step of facebook has a huge impact to the internet world and human life. Recent movement of facebook has shown its ambition to dominate the internet world. Recent strategies of facebook reveal that facebook is in keen to utilizing its cash cow which is 500million users.
What next?
Will facebook move to other area or stay focus on its social network empire?
As facebook is getting famous in the world, many websites are imitating facebook’s strategies such as 开心网,tumblr. So far, I think Twitter is the only capable SNS to compete with facebook. However, in china, facebook is not that famous because china people are kind of patriotism. China people like to stay with the local websites. For example, baidu and 新浪微博 is popular in china but not in other countries.
I think facebook still have to stay focus with its social network empire as it is the core business model of facebook. Furthermore, facebook will keep utilizing its cash cow, 500 million users to expand its business. There are some areas that I think facebook would probably step into in the future 5 years:
1. Market places
I think facebook would probably introduce B2C market place which enables the users buying and selling on facebook. Meanwhile, facebook would introduce a payment system for the users to make transaction by using facebook credit. That time, facebook credit will be playing the same role as Alipay in Alibaba. Then, facebook can earn commission from the million of transactions on facebook.
2. Connecting business with consumers
Facebook will emphasize on connecting business with consumers in 2 ways.
i. Advertisement
facebook will seek other way to ease the advertisement program for the advertisers on facebook. i think facebook will probably introduce ads program like google adsense for the apps developers to insert the advertisement on their apps. Besides posting the advertisement on the wall, I think this could be another way to advertise.
ii. Facebook Connect.
Facebook will keep pulling into its platform. Perhaps in the future, we don’t have to register on other website anymore, with facebook account, we can access to any websites without obstacle.
3. Search engine
Facebook would emphasizes on its search engine as there are many users on facebook. I think facebook would focus on these 2 ways
i. business
searching business pages or websites on facebook. I used to do like that now. Perhaps in the future we can do the searching on facebook see the raking in by looking at how many “like” of the pages or websites.
ii. individual
I think now facebook is the world’s largest people directory. 5 million users information are on the facebook. Although some users’ info might not be available, we still can easy find out who is connecting in facebook. We can easily find out the people by typing name, university, area on the search bar. What facebook have to do is to improve its search engine and ease the search processes. Perhaps the companies can use facebook as a platform for recruitments. However, privacy is still remaining as the great issue and concern.
In sum, facebook’s past strategies is to attract people as much as possible. Then, facebook’s current strategy is to collect can utilize its harvest which is 500 million users. Facebook is one of the most successful companies in the world as it has only spent 6 years to be the leader in the social network. What would be the next step of facebook? Let’s wait and see how facebook can change the world.