I realize that many other people (including my fellow peers in my marketing class) have and will be speaking a lot about Facebook. I however am not choosing to write about this multi-billion dollar website because I think it will be an easy topic. In fact, I want to convey just how the Facebook brand has epically changed our personal and professional lives.
Facebook Facts 2010
Starting in 2003, one man (Mark Zuckerberg) decided it would be awesome to hack the Harvard secure network and create a small social media site isolated around the local private dormitories. The rest of the story is pretty straight forward and if you want to know more, go see the social network. Facebook originally branded themselves on the cutting edge of social media, attempting to ride the upward trend toward ownership of personal computers and internet connectivity. Within a very short period of time, they had over 1 million users and rising, making Facebook management contemplate on the direction of the brand. Due to the extreme popularity of Facebook and the return click back rate of the population, the Facebook administration created a sense of necessity for Facebook making it a platform for personal connections, games, businesses, charities and the list goes on.
Facebook is a completely unique entity of its own and we do not have many marketing models to truly recognize the scope of Facebook. For example, it acts like a monopoly for their competitors are meager in comparison so it has relatively little competition. Additionally, Facebook has created its own currency so it has created its own economic factors. Basically, Facebook is no longer a choice for many people and businesses; it is a way to maintain a competitive advantage over your friends or competitors. It has become a complete necessity, much like eating and sleeping for over 500 000 000 people. We are no longer dealing with a company or a marketable brand; it should be treated more like an addiction.
Facebook Connections Visualization
It’s scary when FB’s influence in our lives is spelled out this way, isn’t it?! A few of your comments stuck with me… First, that FB doesn’t have any competition. What about other social media tools like Twitter and Foursquare – do you think those aren’t competitors of FB? Second, that FB is a way to maintain a competitive advantage. I wonder if it really is a competitive advantage when so many people are on it? Or at least maybe not a sustainable competitive advantage. Maybe more of a baseline requirement of business or personal communication? And third, that it’s more of an addiction than a brand. I wonder why these would have to be mutually exclusive? Isn’t every brand’s dream to become an addiction – a need we cannot live without? Interesting food for thought, anyway…
Thanks!
Tamar