Facebook: It's a Lifestyle

By the end of 2011, Facebook had over 845 million active users.  Let me write that out for you: 845,000,000 active users.  The entire U.S. population is only 311,591,917 people.  I think that puts it into perspective.  Like it or not, Facebook is significant, powerful, and a vital player in the ever-evolving World Wide Web.

Unless you live under a brick, you’ve probably seen the brilliant Oscar-winning film The Social Network, which does a fairly good job at accurately representing the creation of Facebook while still allowing for substantial cinematic drama.  So I’ll be brief with the drama of its history:        

• January 2004 – Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss approached a young and bitter troublemaker named Mark Zuckerberg, asking for his help in creating The Harvard Connection, a proposed social network exclusively for Harvard students.
• While meeting with the Winklevosses, Zuckerberg developed his own Harvard social network, The Facebook.
• March 2005 – The Facebook had spread to Ivy league schools and major universities.
• Summer 2005 – Zuckerberg (now having an entire team and a sponsor from PayPal) dropped the “The” and bought facebook.com for $200,000.
• September 2005 – Facebook expands to high schools.  Is invitation only at first, but then expands to any high schooler.
• September 2006 – Facebook open to any user 13 years and older.
•  November 2010 – Value estimated at $41 billion and is the third largest web company (under Google and Amazon, just above eBay).

      And important technology updates:

• April 2008 – Facebook introduces Chat, allowing users to instant message with other online users.
•  June 2009 – Facebook introduces Usernames, which allows users to customize the URL of their profile (example: facebook.com/cooldude).
• August 2010 – Places, allowing users to “check in” or add a location to any post.  Similar to foursquare – added Deals in November, which let businesses offer coupons or deals to recurring customers who check in – axed in August 2011.
• April 2011 – Voice calls through T-Mobile.
• July 2011 – Video Chat with Skype – one on one video chat.
•  December 2011 – Ticker, which allows for live constant updates on your screen, and the introduction of Timeline, which replaced the profile and organizes information by when the content was posted or occurred in real life.
• March 2012 – Facebook launches Messenger for Windows, allowing users with Windows 7 to chat, send messages, and view updates without being “logged in.”
• April 2012 – Facebook buys Instagram for $1 billion.      

Facebook is ever evolving, but here’s what Facebook currently looks like as of May 2012.  The Timeline, which replaced the Wall in late 2011, is the main profile of each user, topped by both a profile picture and a cover photo, with various activities and conversations listed below.  The timeline also links to the “About” page, an extension of the Timeline, that contains detailed information about the user.  Each user also has a homepage beyond their Timeline where the News Feed resides, informing the user of the activity of their friends and people they follow.

FACEBOOK STEALS YOUR SUCCESS

Part of the reason that Facebook has been so successful is that it has become a “one-stop shop” place to socialize on the Internet.  Rather than requiring users to use multiple websites and social media platforms with different purposes, Facebook attempts to place it all in one place.

• Twitter – A status on Facebook is similar to a tweet on Twitter.  A short posting of text with the potential for added videos, images, etc.  Twitter allows a maximum of 140 characters, while Facebook lets you include 63,206.
• Foursquare – Foursquare made “checking in” cool by letting you alert your followers to your location.  Shortly thereafter, Facebook launched “Places,” an almost identical service.  Places died in 2011, but Facebook still allows for check-ins and the addition of a location through Maps.
• Flickr (and others) – Need a place to upload albums of photos?  Who needs Flickr?  Let Facebook store your photos.  Plus, you can tag people in them.  And the location.  And streamline exactly who sees them.
• Evite – In middle school, I was informed of birthday parties and special events through an emailed Evite.  Now, Facebook’s Events has taken over, allowing for guests lists, images, time and location, and a short description.
• Any and all blogging websites – Although the Notes function on Facebook is essentially dead now, using Notes allowed you to basically post blog entries on Facebook and tag your friends.
• Google+ – The addition of the “Subscribe” button in 2011 nearly sealed Google+’s fate by stealing the only good thing Google+ had to offer: the ability to follow a celebrity’s postings and social activity without having to become their friend.  Instead of becoming their friend, you can merely subscribe to their postings.
• YouTube – You can post your videos on the Internet!  And receive comments.  And share with other people.
• Gaming websites – With games from Farmville to Words with Friends, Facebook allows you to play games with your friends and strangers.
• AIM, etc. – Chatting.  Nuff said.
• Craigslist – Marketplace is now a downloadable App run by Oodle, but a couple of years ago, Marketplace was an essential part of Facebook where you could post classified ads grouped by location.   

And the list goes on and on.  I don’t say this to hate on Facebook, but to congratulate them on their successful branding.  They revolutionized social media by making Facebook more than just a website—it’s almost a “mini-WWW” within the actual World Wide Web.  By allowing most of the Internet’s social functions to exist within one website, avid users can and do spend hours of time purely within Facebook.  And that’s where its success comes from.

CORPORATE FACEBOOK

As Facebook tries to become more and more all-inclusive (leading to its success), businesses and corporate companies have invaded as well.  Facebook has had advertisements on the right-hand side for a while now, but through Pages, Groups, Apps, and Interests, everyone from 30 Rock to Pepsi to Barack Obama is able to communicate their messages to their target audiences in new and innovative ways.  Advertisements, obviously, cost money, but creating a page and attracting Likes is a free way to stay active and in the forefront of peoples’ minds.

 The poll asked by the official 30 Rock page shown above is both an advertisement and market research disguised as social interaction.  Over 2 million people like 30 Rock on Facebook, and those 2 million people saw the above poll in their newsfeed.  Not only am I reminded how much I love 30 Rock, but I’m thrilled to be socially engaging with one of my favorite TV shows and am more willing to offer them viewer input and tune in next week too.

Mirroring the emergence of viral presences of corporate organizations is the emergence of Social Media Managers, Viral Marketing Managers, and other similarly titled jobs.  Next year, I’ll be working as a Social Media Ambassador for the Office of Admissions, blogging and tweeting and communicating via Facebook—a job that would have been unheard of ten years ago.  The Internet persona of these businesses needs to be managed just as tightly as a “real world” marketing and public relations strategy.  The Social Media Manager is the Public Spokesperson of the Internet.

PRIVACY ON FACEBOOK

Despite the ability to customize your individual privacy settings, Facebook has constantly been criticized for its lack of privacy.  Controversy originally rose in August 2007 when a computing error caused the PHP code to be displayed instead of the actual page.  Many users expressed concern over how private their information was, and whether or not it could also be accidentally leaked.  In November of the same year, Facebook launched Beacon, which allowed external websites to post the activity of Facebook users on their Facebook profile.  These postings could be turned off, but the default allowed for postings to occur, even without the user’s knowledge.

Concerns also arose over the News Feed, which alerts users of the their friends’ activity.  In May 2010, Facebook introduced individual privacy settings for each post.  The Students Against Facebook News Feed group peaked at 740,000 members in late 2006.  Initial privacy features were introduced in 2006 giving users some control, but then removed in late 2009.  Now, since May 2010, users can choose whether they want to share their post with Everyone, Friends of Friends, or Friends Only.

                                                                                                                               

A new trend is also emerging in the business world: bosses are asking potential employees for their Facebook login and password during job interviews.  Although it is technically not illegal to ask for a password, employees often feel pressured to give their password, believing that saying “no” will guarantee them not getting the job.  Experts say it blurs the line between personal and private life.  Businesses say it’s just another way to gather information about prospective employees.

THE FUTURE OF FACEBOOK

Facebook’s future looks promising, but so did Myspace’s in the early twenty-first century.  As “vital” and “necessary” for survival Facebook may seem to us now, technology is changing at increasingly rapid rates and has the great potential to surpass whatever Facebook can achieve.  On the other hand, Facebook is no stranger to evolving and changing, even when users find it unnecessary.  With over $3.71 billion in revenue last year, Facebook has the potential to do almost whatever it wants.  It just depends on whether or not it has the insight to keep up and push out competition.