Founder Mark Zuckerberg explains why he and his college friends were the ones to invent the most popular social network in the world.
“We were just students. We had way fewer resources than big companies. If they had focused on this problem, they could have done it,” wrote Zuck. “The only answer I can think of is: we just cared more.”
The power to share posts, comments, images, your relationship status and anything else you can think of, has turned this social media system into a billion dollar industry and as other tech companies see their shares fall in value recently (Apple) Facebook is only getting financially stronger. With soaring profits (see below) there seems to be no slowing down for the world’s most popular networking site.
In millions, 9 Months Ended September 30
Revenue:
2012 - $3,504
2013 - $5,286
Even if it did take a long time before Facebook decided to displayed advertisements on its pages it has definitely paid off. More and more business are not only using it to sell their current specials within the ad area, they are also using it to create pages/events for their businesses and products. Offering their followers and potential followers prizes and rewards for just clicking a ‘like’ button. Once you do ‘like’ their page you will begin to receive near daily posts into your news feed.
This is where Facebook success begins; the simple beauty of a system that lets the end user login to one account (and begin scrolling) to see all the things they are interested in including: news, specials, comments from all their ‘Friends’ and families. Gone are the days of navigating to your top 5 sites to get up to speed on the things you’re interested in and having to wait for an email reply from a family member to see if they are coming over to dinner.
Can it continue? I have recently read a few articles stating that almost 80% of Facebooks current users will stop using the system within the next two years. If this prediction is to come true it will most likely be because of two reasons.
- More and more parents are finally logging in and everyone knows children don’t want to be doing the same thing as their parents and are moving to other systems. i.e. tumblr, instagram, etc. Plus who wants their parents to know just what you are actually getting up to on a weekend?
- As stated above business are taking over and almost all of the posts in your feed will be from advertising agencies prompting or offering something. This is where social media will no longer be social media and it will become more like a letter box on your street, full of no-solicited (junk) mail or spam that comes to your email's inbox.
I believe that the OS of mobile devices will have a large affect on what happens next in the social media market. Google’s OS is now on so many devices and it’s G+ and Hangout’s system is becoming more and more popular. As it is already installed, synced and running on the handset it may stop users from seeing the need of downloading and using the Facebook app. The same goes with Microsoft; the Hotmail/Live/Skype option may be all that is required for the next generation of social media users.
Whatever way social media moves we’ll be keeping a close eye on it. Until next time. I'm off to update my status!
If you have any queries or concerns over your social media requirements please get in touch! You can find us on Facebook, Twitter and Google+, or you can create a ticket with our User Support system.