Face Book Analysis

Facebook is a social network service and website which was launched in February 2004. According to statistics of 2010, Facebook has more than 500 million active users, which is about one person for every fourteen persons in the world. Users can create a profile, update their personal info, add other users as friends, have chat with them online and they can get automatic notifications when they update their profile. Users can also play different games and join different platforms and communities of their interest.

            Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg with his college roommates and fellow computer science students Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes. At first membership was only limited to students of Harvard only but later on it was expended and now a days every one above 13 can register an account on Facebook.

            Today Facebook is most widely used social networking website and it is much more than a social network. Facebook is having major developments related to privacy, Facebook credits and ads policy because these can have a big impact on a brand or company doing business with Facebook. Every company in the world faces difficulties and hurdles sometime. Same is the case with Facebook. It has been involved in privacy issues since last few years, because since last few years Facebook has asked its users to make their profile more public than ever, this is not so good. Facebook thinks doing so will help marketers and developers.  Due to these actions Facebook has been under heavy pressure. The company has been forced to accommodate changes from Canadian privacy commissioner last year. Facebook firstly introduced the “Like” feature as a way to show your appreciation for things which you like on your friend’s profile, it could be a picture, a status or video or any page made by that friend. However, Facebook broadened the meaning of “Like” along with its other changes. Instead of a button on Pages that invites users to “Become a Fan,” it asks them to Like Pages. This means that users are not just sharing links to the Page on their wall and news feed — the actions that clicking “Like” has generated up until this point. Instead, users are becoming fans of the Page. Anyone can view all of a Page’s fans. The result is that some users might see a Page and click Like because they think they are simply sharing the Page with their friends. The point of the change is to make “Like” a universal term for expressing interest and sharing information, cueing users to do so more often.

Facebook is also testing instant personalization now days. It means your profile can be viewed thoroughly by any third party (partner websites). The point is to make website safe and valuable by providing relevant social context for users. Quite a number of groups and politicians have come out against the move.          Previously Facebook didn’t allow developers to store user data for more than 24 hours but now Facebook has given them a free hand means they can store data till infinity. This is another reason for users and politicians to shout, because unlimited storage of data sounds scary. Who knows what they are going to do with that data?

In the end, Facebook is doing what they think is right but their righteousness may drown them as they are severely going against the will of users upon whom their business is standing tall.