Facebook Case Study

Logan Taylor

Dr. JK Lee

11 October 2016

Facebook case

1. Facebook is the most popular social network in the world, providing a wide range of communicational sources. For an absurd amount of people, Facebook has even become part of everyday life. A majority of people who have Facebook check it everyday, and some even check it every 5 minutes it seems. One reason Facebook is so popular is because everyone uses it. You can literally connect with almost anyone in the world, because it is that widely used. Facebook has many great features for its users, but I believe the main reason people get on Facebook is to look at their news feed. See what their friends are up to, and share information with their friends at anytime. Its very user friendly, and easy to use. Some stand out features of facebook would be its design, the tagging of friends, easy blog imports, non obnoxious advertising, photo storing capabilities, and its better privacy. These are reasons people might use Facebook over other social media cites.
2. Many people log onto Facebook for fun, to update their status, and look at their news feed to see what their friends are up to. However, businesses have been increasingly turning to social media sites for advertising. To put it simply, Facebook advertising is great. By placing ads on Facebook, businesses can zero in on a select portion of the nearly billion users. Facebook advertising involves different considerations than other online ad platforms do. GoogleAdWords for example, matches keywords on the pages of Google search results, whereas Facebook Ads can match specifics in a user profile. Facebook basically looks at the demographics of each person, identifies their interests and matches ads accordingly. Facebook advertising can be great because of this. At one point fo rFacebook, 85% of its revenue came from advertising, and this advertising accounted for 28% of the US online display ads. So 28% of all online ads, are on Facebook, thats crazy. Facebook advertising is effective, it is said that it generates about ten times more clicks than other online ads, which is why businesses whould put ads on Facebook.
3. A fan page is very similar to a regular account page, but with a few minor differences. Fan pages are typically for celebrities, and businesses. Most celebrities have one, and most businesses should consider having one. For the Facebook fan page there is a wall where fans can leave messages and someone maintaining the page can respond to them. People who want to become a fan of the page press the "like" button and then it shows on their own Facebook account that they are a fan of this page. People who visit the page can see how many fans or likes the page has, to see how popular it is becoming. Its pretty easy to manage and maintain a fan page because it is similar to a regular account page. One difference is that you can's send private messages to people from the fan page account. This is a downside to the whole fan page system. You can send updates, but they do not go through the messaging system and there is no clear alert on the person's page that tells them the alert is there. It is actually a pretty ineffective way of sending out messages, so really there isn't a great way to get messages out to your fans. I believe the pros outweigh the cons though. Businesses should use this page because its great for advertising, conducting surveys, and promoting deals and new peoducts to people that are interested in your business. Also, when a fan likes your page, whatever you post will be added to their news feed, so its a great way to get out information to consumers. It was also said that promotions on fan pages performed 2-10 times better than a traditional account page.
4. Launched in 2007, Facebook platform was a set of tools that enabled 3rd party developers to develop applications inside the Facebook environment. This increased the user engagement and growth in the site's traffic. Facebook platform basically affected social gaming. It increased the popularity of social gaming by 8%, because it integrated social elements into the games. Some examples of the popular games would be Farmville, or Cityville. Facebook would recieve monetary benfits from outside developers who wanted to have their game on Facebook. Facebook for websites is basically Facebook using their website to connect with their friends on other websites, which is pretty crazy. For example, when you make a twitter account, i think it gives you the option to login with Facebook. This allows you to stay connected with your Facebook friends even more often. You can save time by just using the "Connect to Facebook" button when making an account on this 3rd party website, and it automatically plugs in information using Facebook. These 3rd party cites also send your Facebok friends information on what you are doing on this site, which obviously benefits the 3rd party site, because that advertising. Sites that used Facebook logins saw a 30-200% increase in registrations on their site. By 2012, about 25% of websites had the "Connect with Facebook option.
5. Although Facebook had no effective mobile ad strategy, even though half of users accessing it through smart phones and tablets, but this market has crazy potential. A lot of revenue can be generated if Facebook invests in this market by building its mobile ad network along with maintaining its successful revenue generating corporate ads, social ads and promoted posts. This would be their best option to invest in. As I said before, Facebook advertising is strong, with a few weak points, but it is their main source of revenue. So focusing on it for monetizing is a no brainer. Facebook advertising is very popular among businesses, becuase of how successfull it can be. It generates about ten times more clicks than regular advertising. Advertising is what they should invest even more into, its their biggest money making asset in my opinion.