CONNECT EVERYONE, THE ORGANIZER OF SOCIAL EVENTS – FACEBOOK

Introduction- What And Why Is Facebook

Facebook is an American online social media business that is based in California. It is launched in 2004 and it currently has 2.2 billion monthly active users in 2018. It has a revenue of 40.653 billion USD in 2017 (Sheeran & Cummings, 2018). The operating income of the business has reached 20.203 billion USD. The business has a transformative effect on people’s understanding of the Internet and the economic, political, social and cultural worlds. It transformed people’s understanding since it increases the interconnectedness of people on the Internet. After the invention of Facebook, people are more dependent on the Internet to communicate with their friends, meet with new friends and share their lives with their friends (Sanne & Wiese, 2018). Facebook also changes the economic world as it shows how the huge amount of users can bring profits and economics to the business. It is dependent majorly on the advertisements income for profits and Facebook is almost totally free to users. In addition, it transfers the political worlds since many politicians began to use Facebook as channels to manage their public relations and manage their public images (Hansson, Wrangmo & Klaus, 2013). The Facebook changes the social and cultural worlds since it promotes online communication and promotes the development of an online community. The sub-cultural become developed in the online world.

 

History of Development

 

Business Model

 

       

How Does Facebook Make Money? Facebook Hidden Revenue Business Model Explained by Gennaro Cuofano from Four-Week MBA licensed under All rights reserved

Facebook’s business model is to make profits from advertisements. Facebook has a lower clickthrough rate for advertisements in comparison with other major websites. However, considering a large number of users on Facebook, it is still attractive for businesses to make an advertisement on Facebook. Facebook does not charge users and this business model is conducive to attract a huge amount of new users and existing consumers. In addition, its business model can gain huge benefits from the economies of scales and network effects (Amalia & George, 2018). The huge amount of existing users on Facebook can help attract new users since these new users have friends and families who use Facebook. The huge amount of users is attractive to advertisers, which can provide profits for Facebook. Facebook has 2 million active advertisers in 2015. It reached 3 million active advertisers in 2016 and 70 percentages of them are from outside of US. 

In addition, the firehouse access is another major source of revenue for Facebook. It sold the social media data to third parties. The user data can be used to analyze the behaviors and preferences of consumers. 

Place in the industry Ecology 

Partners 

Facebook has many partners. It cooperates with the National Democratic Institute and International Republic Institute for news distribution outside the USA. The National Democratic Institute for International affair is a non-partisan and not for profit organization to work with partners in developing countries to improve the effectiveness of local democratic institutions (Lappas et al, 2018). The International Republican Institute is a not for profit organization to advance democracy and freedom around the world to help political parties to become more responsive and issue-based. In addition, Facebook also cooperated with Microsoft, Intel, Google, and many of their private and public organizations to make the Internet more affordable. 

Competitors 

There are many competitors for Facebook. For example, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn, Reddit, Tumblr, VK, Google Plus are all powerful competitors for Facebook. YouTube currently has more than 1.5 billion monthly active visitors. Twitter has 0.4 billion monthly active visitors. Instagram has about 0.3 billion monthly active visitors (Mochon et al, 2017). They are powerful competitors. However, they also have different features. For example, Twitter has the feature of allowing users to communicate with unfamiliar people. People can follow and make contacts with unfamiliar people on Twitter. Instagram allows users to share pictures and videos with their friends. 

Suppliers 

The major suppliers of Facebook are employees. They work for Facebook to build the whole online system and platform on which that Facebook is operating. The users can also be considered as suppliers for Facebook. They provide contents on Facebook and other users view these contents. The user generated contents are important for Facebook to attract users. 

Regulators

Facebook is under the regulation of many government institutions as its behaviors cover many areas. For example, it is under the regulation of Information Commissioner’s Office, a non-departmental public body in the UK, which directly reported to the Parliament to regulate actions related to the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulation 2003 and Data Protection Act 1998 (Leung & Baloglu, 2015). Facebook is under its regulation for the users’ data security problems. Facebook is also under the regulation of the Federal Trade Commission in the USA, which is an independent agency with the major aims to protect the consumers and prevent and eliminate anticompetitive business practices. The behaviors of Facebook to sell users’ data to Cambridge violated the related legal regulations about customer protection in the USA. 

Users  

             Facebook’s Road to 2 Billion by Felix Richter from Statista licensed under All rights reserved

Facebook now has more than 2 billion active users a month. Users of Facebook include consumers and businesses. Individual consumers use Facebook to chat with their friends, share photos with their friends and so on. Businesses also use Facebook to communicate with their consumers (Sheeran & Cummings, 2018). 

Ecology Diagram

 

The transformative effect of Facebook

Facebook has generated huge influences on people’s understanding of the Internet. Facebook allows people to communicate with each other and share their lives with each other on the Internet (Vassilakaki & Garoufallou, 2015). 

• Facebook changed the way people relate socially 

Firstly, Facebook makes the Internet to be a self-media on which that person can increase their influences on other people. Facebook changes the way that people are related socially. Traditionally, people are connected and linked with each other in their offline interactions, which are limited by the geological areas they are in and sometimes by their genders, cultural backgrounds, education backgrounds and so on (Shao, Ross & Grace, 2015). On the other side, Facebook breaks this limitation and allows people from different geological areas with different cultural backgrounds and education backgrounds to communicate with each other. It changes the way that people are related to each other. In this condition, it changes the way that people communicate with each other. Previously, people have to be dependent on the e-mails on the Internet to make communication (Sheeran & Cummings, 2018). Facebook allows people to share their contents and broadcast to other people and consequently engage others in their posts. Facebook allows people to participate in an atmosphere that can challenge traditional social restrictions. Moreover, it unites people who share similar interests and benefits. It allows the minority groups to unite and increase their influences. As a result, it changes the way that how people group together and communicates with each other.

• Facebook mobilized social and political changes.

Egyptian protester discusses social media’s role in revolution by Elena Sucharetza from The Daily NorthWestern licensed under All rights reserved

It changes the way that people relate politically and promote the political participation of people. For example, on January 14, 2011, Wael Ghoniem generated a Facebook page called “We are all Khaled Said”, to invite Egyptian people to participate in the peaceful demonstration on January 25. Facebook became the major tool for protesters to connect with each other, which forces Nazif, the Egyptian government of Prime Minister to ban Facebook on January 26 and later ban all Internet and mobile connections on January 28 (Sanne & Wiese, 2018). This was considered to play important roles in the 2011 Egyptian revolution, which finally forced Mubarak, the President to resign. In addition, in 2008, Facebook cooperated with Saint Anselm College and ABC to allow users to provide feedback about the ‘black to black’ Republican and Democratic Debates. Users on Facebook took active roles in debate groups on message questions, voter registrations and specific topics on Facebook (Mochon et al, 2017). More than 1 million users installed the application called the US Politics on Facebook to participate in the debate. The debate shows that young students and people have used Facebook as a powerful and new way to voice their opinions. Facebook generates huge influences on the youth voting rates and the involvement of youth generation in the 2008 election. 

• Facebook generates a new business model.

Facebook can stimulate economic development by providing a free public good, in which that all people can gain benefits from without reducing the amount that other people have access to. The Facebook also generates positive externalities (Lappas et al, 2018). It can generate huge spillover effects on mobile phone manufacturers and so on. Moreover, it can also bring benefits to providing huge user behavior data. It provides a platform for review, feedback, communication, social gaming and many other applications related to online activities. Facebook provides this open platform, which introduces a new business model for many businesses (Baglione, Harcar & Spillan, 2017). For example, Zynga Inc uses the platform to develop a new business model. It is a social game developer app and it is focused on providing games on mobile devices, and mobile gaming. It uses the large development platform of Facebook to connect the world with games. 

Facebook-A Global Social Utopia?

Admittedly, Facebook has created a vast social network around the world, free, borderless, zero-distance and other features that make it highly regarded, and Facebook insists on making the product and user experience the first idea. It seems that a thriving social utopia has been presented to the public.

However, Facebook’s repeatedly exposed data breaches have forced the public to start thinking, and social media can be a violation of user privacy while bringing us many conveniences. Facebook is surrounded by public opinion, rooted in an irreconcilable contradiction between advertising profit patterns and user privacy. Facebook’s growing number of users means the amount of data Facebook has gradually grown to an astonishing number, a resource that can generate revenue for advertisers and Facebook itself. Facebook’s exposure to data breaches is about politics, business, and citizen privacy. For Facebook, it was a failure to balance the customers’ privacy and business interests. However, for the public, this is an in-depth consideration of social habits, if you are enjoying free convenience, then, you may be the product.

 

Summary 

Facebook is an important part of the Internet transformation. It generates huge influences on the way people live, work and play. It changes the way that people communicate with each other since it allows people to share their lives and their opinions with others on the Internet. People can enjoy better connectedness with each other and break the traditional boundaries to make connections. It influences the way people work since it brings some new business models and generates more work opportunities for people. Moreover, it changes the entertainment methods of people by allowing people to communicate with each other online. People can gain enjoyment and entertainment through sharing their lives with other people and engaging in the contents posted by other people. It also provides more political participation opportunities and changes to normal people. However, it does bring with it some security and privacy issues.

 

References:

[1]Amalia, T., & George, S. (2018). The impact of facebook experience on consumers’ behavioral brand engagement. Journal of Research in Interactive Marketing, 12(2), 164-192. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/JRIM-03-2017-0016

[2]Baglione, S. L., Harcar, T., & Spillan, J. (2017). Turkish students’ perceived relevance of facebook as a marketing tool. Journal of Information, Communication & Ethics in Society, 15(2), 125-144. 

[3]Hansson, L., Wrangmo, A., & Klaus, S. S. (2013). Optimal ways for companies to use facebook as a marketing channel. Journal of Information, Communication & Ethics in Society, 11(2), 112-126. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/JICES-12-2012-0024

[4]Lappas, G., Triantafillidou, A., Deligiaouri, A., & Kleftodimos, A. (2018). Facebook content strategies and citizens’ online engagement: The case of greek local governments. The Review of Socionetwork Strategies, 12(1), 1-20. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s12626-018-0017-6

[5]Leung, X. Y., & Baloglu, S. (2015). Hotel facebook marketing: An integrated model. Worldwide Hospitality and Tourism Themes, 7(3), 266-282. 

[6]Mochon, D., Johnson, K., Schwartz, J., & Ariely, D. (2017). What are likes worth? A facebook page field experiment. JMR, Journal of Marketing Research, 54(2), 1. 

[7]Sanne, P. N. C., & Wiese, M. (2018). The theory of planned behaviour and user engagement applied to facebook advertising. South African Journal of Information Management, 20(1) doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.4102/sajim.v20i1.915

[8]Shao, W., Ross, M., & Grace, D. (2015). Developing a motivation-based segmentation typology of facebook users. Marketing Intelligence & Planning, 33(7), 1071-1086. 

[9]Sheeran, N., & Cummings, D. J. (2018). An examination of the relationship between facebook groups attached to university courses and student engagement. Higher Education, , 1-19. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10734-018-0253-2

[10]Vassilakaki, E., & Garoufallou, E. (2015). Library facebook practices for creating and promoting a professional profile. Program, 49(3), 343-359. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/PROG-10-2014-0073

 

Multimedia references:

[1]Elena Sucharetza. (2015). Egyptian protester discusses social media’s role in revolution. [Image]The Daily NorthWestern. Retrieved from https://dailynorthwestern.com/2015/04/14/campus/egyptian-protester-wael-ghonim-discusses-social-medias-role-in-revolution/

[2]Felix Richter. (2017). Facebook’s Road to 2 Billion. [Image] Statista. Retrieved from https://www.statista.com/chart/10047/facebooks-monthly-active-users/ 

[3]Gennaro Cuofano. (2018). How Does Facebook Make Money? Facebook Hidden Revenue Business Model Explained. [Image] Four-Week MBA. Retrieved from https://fourweekmba.com/how-does-facebook-make-money/

[4]Mark Serrels. (2018). Facebook isn’t a ‘community’. It’s a weapon. [Image] Cnet. Retrieved from https://www.cnet.com/news/facebook-isnt-a-community-its-a-weapon/

[5]Rapid Learning Life. (2010, August 1).  Facebook – In Simple English. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJJNM2KWYtc