Facebook is a social network service and website launched in February 2004 that is operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc As of July 2010 Facebook has more than 500 million active users, which is about one person for every fourteen in the world. Users may create a personal profile, add other users as friends and exchange messages, including automatic notifications when they update their profile. Additionally, users may join common interest user groups, organized by workplace, school, or college, or other characteristics. The name of the service stems from the colloquial name for the book given to students at the start of the academic year by university administrations in the US with the intention of helping students to get to know each other better. Facebook allows anyone who declares themselves to be at least 13 years old to become a registered user of the website.
Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg with his college roommates and fellow computer science students Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes. The website's membership was initially limited by the founders to Harvard students, but was expanded to other colleges in the Boston area, the Ivy League, and Stanford University. It gradually added support for students at various other universities before opening to high school students, and, finally, to anyone aged 13 and over.
Key success factors
The Experience was designed for college students, by college students.
The Facebook's founder Mark Zuckerberg, back in February 2004, when founded Facebook, he was a student at Harvard. Two other students, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes were the second and third employees of the company. This added a level of credibility to the site in the minds of the student users. It was something one of them had created, not something fed to them by a "company" in the traditional sense. It was a place that they could trust because one of their own had made it.
Aggregation of a chain of intensely penetrated small communities
Facebook is a more convincing advertising opportunity than other social networking sites because of deep penetration within a series of micro communities (college campuses). Facebook is the best way to get the advertiser's message to that audience if a local advertiser wants to target a particular college campus,. With 65% of users logging in daily and 85% weekly, advertisers can run time-oriented campaigns very effectively.
Confine user registration to make "considered necessary online service"
Facebook originally limited membership to those users who could verify they had a ".edu" e-mail address for the college they attend .Facebook made important product decisions that ensured harmony and trust between the offline community and the online service created.. Facebook also placed limits on the ability to search or browse users to the college that the user attends. These measures aim to make users feel that the site is exclusive and limited to members in their offline community (colleges and universities).
Provide existing offline community with a corresponding online service
Facebook had its primary success with college students by providing an information service that was not available offline - an interactive student directory containing each student's class schedule and social network. . Facebook did not create a community where one never existed before; rather they provided an important information and communication service to a existing offline community. Before Facebook added the characteristic sets it has today, it was simply a more complete student directory. The larger picture here is that Facebook created a high utility online service for enabling existing social behaviours within an offline community.
Privacy
Beyond the market segment and the experiential aspects of the site, the fact Facebook walled networks was its most critical component. That the students could create their profiles for their audience (other students on their campus), and for their audience only created trust in the site
Problems faced by Face book
Facebook platform not serving the peak line.
No revenue generation from advertisements.
Competitors are high.
Chat application not working properly
Unsolved Security issues.
Solutions of problems
New platform should be developed by facebook to earn more revenue.
The new strategy for promotion should be created.
New user friendly applications have to be created to differentiate from the competitors.
They must try to solve security issues.
Refined chat application should be made.
Recommendation
Facebook can be improved with the platform for online shopping of products like books, movies and songs and create the forum for the discussions because user share there views on different things and they can create community also for a particular products or brand. This may generate the revenue from both customer and ad sponsors and more concern towards the privacy and network security will create more reliability of the networking sites.
Organizational and Industry analysis
Give a brief description of your business model including what product or service you are producing or will produce?
Facebook is a social networking site which will connect one individual to another individual around the globe. In other words we can explain it as many to many function where each individual is connected to n number of people.
Describe your customer?
We will target teenagers along with other age group users.
List and describe your competitors?
Myspace, Orkut, Linked in, Friendster, Twitter .
List and describe your potential competitors?
Social networking sites and professional networking sites.
Who will you purchase materials, components or other inputs from?
Computer software manufacturers and online service providers.
SWOT ANALYSIS
Strength
Familiar to the people by their own differentiation by giving more application according to the location, targeting the youth.
Brand name and more ad sponsors.
Good management and highly skilled people spread throughout the world.
Fan base from different segments.
Privacy options
Weakness
Infrequent updates on fan page and
Not visible in facebook search results
Chat application not up to the standards
Opportunity
Convert users onto youth noise
Providing various blogs and campaigns for community users
Implement applications on fan pages and user profiles for increased campaign branding
Work with others to build applications ( causes)
Threat
Consumer get bored of social networking sites in near future
Security issues
Too many competitors
Strategy canvas for existing product compared to competitor or industry
Very High
Competition
High
Us
Average
Us
Low
Very Low
Attributes
Price
Business plan template
What is your mantra?
Facebook - connecting people faster
What is the overall mission of the business?
To connect an individual's around the globe.
How will you make money?
From advertisements and other add on paid services.
What are the goal and objective over the next 3months to year?
To lead the market and come up with more interesting applications.
What tactics will you use over the next 3 months to a year to reach your objective and mission?
Merger and acquisition of small player of social networking sites
Product differentiation .
Will introduce more security for users.
Will introduce more applications for users.
