Chapter 1: Introduction
There can be little doubt that the nature of the internet has changed significantly over the last two or three years.
Nor can anyone seriously question the fact that one of the most obvious changes has been the rapid and exciting growth of the ‘interactivity' of websites on a truly global scale.
With this proliferation of new websites and blogs claiming to be Web 2.0 friendly, and the stunning growth in the popularity of social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook, it is becoming increasingly clear that people all over the world are using the internet as a principal means of communication in ever increasing numbers.
Not surprisingly, therefore, businesses both big and small have also begun to recognize and understand the potential of such websites and networks for expanding their customer bases.
For example, whereas perhaps only a year or eighteen months ago, most large corporate websites were purely informational, many are now being adapted to offer far greater levels of interactivity to both customers and casual website viewers.
Thus it is that more and more customers are able to take advantage of 24/7 ‘Help’ and ‘chat’ lines that are appearing on many large corporate websites with increasing frequency. Added to this, polls, customer surveys, and inbuilt feedback facilities are becoming ever more popular too.
Previously, on the vast majority of websites, such features were almost unheard of. So, there would have been little about the average website to encourage user communication, apart from a simple e-mail address or two line reply form at the bottom of a webpage.
In the same manner, businesses are rapidly beginning to appreciate that social networking websites that have many millions of individual members from all over the world could potentially represent massive market places for their products.
It is for this reason that a site like MySpace.com (which in September 2007 passed 200 million account holders) has become such an
increasingly attractive proposition for advertisers to become involved with.
MySpace is still far and away the largest social networking site, and the one that most people are probably most familiar with. Having been originally established in August 2003, it is also one of the longest established of the social networking sites too.
Facebook is, however, the second largest of the social networking sites, and is currently growing at a phenomenal rate, as you will discover.
For this reason, advertising is rapidly becoming an important topic of debate for the Facebook owners, moderators and community members.
The purpose of this book is therefore to investigate in depth how the Facebook site and social networking community is evolving, and how advertising and promotional activities fit into this rapidly expanding picture of development.
Perhaps more importantly, I am going to look in detail at how you and your business could potentially use Facebook as a source of new customers for your products and services.
One final thing to note is that, whilst most commentators will blithely refer to social networking sites as if they are all exactly the same, there are significant differences between them. These differences serve to make the demographics and practicalities of using these sites for business purposes entirely different from one site to the next, as you will discover.
Facebook was originally founded in early 2004 by a group of ex-Harvard university students as a service that was initially restricted to students of their own university.
From there, Facebook rapidly expanded their services into most of the Ivy League universities in the USA, and thereafter it went to a larger scale in the USA, spreading to most universities and eventually down into high schools as well.
Next, the site went international by moving into Canada, Australia and the UK so that it was (in its final ‘guise’ as an educational service) open to anyone who had a university or college e-mail address (e.g .edu, .ac.uk etc).
In late 2006, Facebook finally took the decision to move away from these educational grassroots and became a truly open service that anybody, anywhere in the world could register with and participate in (a move which prompted significant protests from the existing Facebook user base!).
Despite this move away from their traditional roots, however, Facebook even now still has an effective stranglehold on the educational social networking community especially in the USA, with the company claiming that almost all US college students have Facebook accounts.
This situation is, to a certain extent at least, replicated in many other countries across the world.
As proof of this, according to Wikipedia, in late November 2007 Facebook had the largest registered number of collegiate and student users of any social networking site, with 55 million users worldwide.
By the end of 2007, this figure is expected to pass 60 million users, of whom over half (that is, more than 30 million) actively participate in the Facebook community at least once a month.
To put Facebook's current rate of expansion into some kind of perspective, one year ago the site was enjoying 15,000 new user signups per day.
Now, that figure is over 100,000 new signups each and every day, and the site is expanding at a rate of 3% per week according to the latest statistics presented by the company Founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg.
Perhaps more interestingly, Zuckerberg also claims that the fastest growing demographic group of new Facebook users is in the over 25 years of age group. This would suggest a ‘maturing’ of the Facebook
community, and the beginnings of a move away from the original bias towards those with a college and high school background.
Indeed, over 60% of registered Facebook users are now non-college students, and that figure is expected to increase to over 75% (that will be 50 million users) in the next six months.
Facebook is currently enjoying 70 billion page views per month, and is the sixth most trafficked website in the USA, having recently surpassed eBay, and is now rapidly closing in on Google's traffic figures.
Nor is Facebook still quite so focused on the USA as it once was, with over 10% of Canadians now being Facebook account holders, with similar levels in the UK.
If you then add in the fact that Microsoft has recently paid 240 million US dollars for a 1.6% stake in Facebook (which values the company at around $15 billion in total) you clearly have a picture of a company and the website that is going places very quickly indeed.
It is clear that Facebook is a website and social community that is enjoying phenomenal levels of growth from what was a relatively closeted and deeply specialized background.
These numbers would also clearly indicate that Facebook could represent a potentially huge market place for any business or organization that can create means of advertising that are effective with the site members.
Whether anybody has so far managed to achieve this or, indeed, whether it is actually possible to achieve is one of the critical questions that we are going to look at in considerably more detail in this book.
Chapter
3: Comparing Facebook with MySpace
Despite all of these facts and figures, however, MySpace is still by far the most popular social networking site, and that is a situation that seems unlikely to change in the near future.
Now, all of the major community sites do emphasize that the main function is to provide a means for people from all over the world to network with one another.
It would therefore be fair to suggest that most of these sites have (as far as it is possible) tried to discourage and prevent people from viewing them as commercially orientated sites.
In other words, sites like MySpace and Facebook do not want their communities used by members promoting their products or services to other members. Despite the fact that it is owned by the Fox Corporation, even MySpace is no exception to this rule, and has gone to some lengths to prevent the site becoming a huge online auction or bazaar by another name.
Nevertheless, many smart online marketers and internet entrepreneurs have managed to promote their businesses, products and services through the MySpace site and community, and have made considerable amounts of money doing so too.
This being the case, many marketers are looking at doing the same with Facebook, and therefore we need to establish what similarities and differences there are between these two sites.
This will assist in establishing whether a similar business model to the one that is now all too commonly applied to MySpace will work with Facebook.
So, let us take a very quick look at how products and services are marketed on MySpace.
Effectively, and at its very simplest and most basic, when you sign up for a MySpace account you will then build your own 'space' which is a very simple mini-website that tells the world all about you.
So, in this 'space', you would probably include full details about yourself, your interests and hobbies, perhaps pictures, videos, musical and rock band preferences, and so on.
The nature of the MySpace social network is that you are then expected to go out into the community and find new friends who have similar interests to yours.
You simply invite these people to be your friends and, as a natural part of this process, you would ask them to visit your MySpace mini-site.
From there, assuming that you are looking to promote a product or service, you would attempt to steer your new-found 'friend' to your blog or website, and it is there that you would be promoting the product or service in question.
This method of promoting a product or service by using the 'invite a friend' facility of the MySpace website has been very successful for the past year or so.
Indeed, it was so successful that some software designers created and sold MySpace 'friend adder’ software programs that automated the whole process of inviting hundreds of new friends each and every day, and sold them to many eager would-be MySpace entrepreneurs.
The fact that this method of promotional advertising is now becoming less successful (as more and more people are becoming fully aware of the fact that their new ‘friends’ are no such thing!) is possibly one of the reasons that internet marketers are now looking at other options such as Facebook.
The success of such a relatively simple business model does, however, hint at one fundamental difference between MySpace and Facebook that would suggest a directly comparable venture may not be so successful in the latter case.
MySpace is fundamentally a community for meeting new people; a way of networking to expand your social groups through access to an active worldwide community.
The concept of inviting dozens or even hundreds of new people to be your friend every day on MySpace is not seen to be in anyway strange or alien to the nature of social networking.
Facebook is fundamentally different from MySpace in this respect.
Because it was originally founded to provide a means of communication for old classmates or work colleagues, Facebook has grown up as a community that is focused on groups of people who already have some form of tie with one another.
Facebook is all about inviting members of your social peer group to become a member of the community, and then focusing on networking with them, rather than going out and 'collecting' new friends on a daily basis.
Whilst the recent demographic changes that Facebook has clearly enjoyed are inevitably going to change this picture over time,
nevertheless, as it stands at this point, it is unlikely that the MySpace ‘business model' would work especially effectively in the Facebook community.
Another factor to consider is a possible remnant of Facebook's history as a site originally created for students of America's top universities. That is, some Facebook users would probably suggest that using their community site for commercial purposes was maybe a little 'tacky' or perhaps somehow undignified.
This is perhaps best represented in the obvious dignity and pride that many longer-term users of Facebook still obviously take in being members of what was at one time a fairly exclusive community.
These people would very probably see something a touch 'unsavory' in having what they would see as 'their’ community besmirched by commerce in the way that they seem to think MySpace has already been.
Thus, there is an established business model that does work for the leading social networking and community website, but it is almost 100% certain that the same model will not work with Facebook.
MySpace and Facebook are like attractive but non-identical twins - yes, they are members of same family, but thereafter, all similarities cease!
Chapter 4: An Initial Facebook Overview
Introduction
If you are used to opening up the home page of MySpace, then you will in all probability find the first page of Facebook somewhat plain, perhaps even a little bland.
However, you can clearly see from the screenshot above that the first thing the site encourages you to do is to 'Find Friends’ (the emphasis being on ‘finding’ people you already know).
Should you choose to follow this link, you will quickly discover that it takes you to a screen that allows you to search for ex-pupils of your old high school or university.
It is not, therefore, encouraging you to go out seeking lots of new friends in the same way that MySpace does.
Of course, the site does try to encourage you to meet new people who have interests similar to yours, especially by clicking on the 'Groups' icon in the top left-hand side bar of the screen shown. This will take you to this screen: