Whitespace: Face value - What Facebook's massive growth means to you

Issue 63: July 2010

Facebook now has half a billion users world wide, an increase from 150 million at the start of 2009 – that's approximately one in every 14 inhabitants of the planet Earth. If the social media site was a country it would have the third largest population in the world, second only to India and China. Not too shabby for a website that's only been around for six years.

But just how big can Facebook become? Will its service become stale? Will it encounter a backlash for being too big, or even too Big Brother? The short history of Facebook indicates fast innovation is part of the company's DNA with a number of new services suggesting it is focused on staying relevant to social media users.

Whether you're a Facebook addict or a Facebook sceptic it's worth getting to know where the social media monolith is heading. This month's Whitespace evaluates some of the nascent services being offered by the site and considers how they could affect your organisation.

Instant aggregation

You may have recently noticed a Facebook 'Like' button appearing on a number of your favourite websites. Not content to be the world's largest social networking site, Facebook now wants to be your personal online information aggregator. With this development, Facebook users are invited to hit the 'Like' button to automatically update their social media mates about web content that interests them. In the US, Facebook is also working with business rating service Yelp to enable consumer developed reviews to be automatically posted on Facebook. There are a lot of sites out there that allow web users to aggregate information, but this instant personalisation development turns the process into a one-step wonder.

Business benefit: inexpensive PR gold provided you have content that makes people want to show their allegiances.

Should you take Facebook Credit?

It might be hard to believe unless you're in the zone but people are spending up big in Facebook, a trend that's resulted in the launch of the online currency Facebook Credits. Consumers can buy Facebook Credits using their credit cards or by taking part in loyalty programs based on their Facebook and real-world buying habits. At the moment Facebook Credits are predominantly used as part of social media game play, such as the phenomenally successful Farmville. But Facebook has big plans for its new currency; it's likely that Facebook Credits will soon be used to buy both on and off line products and services.

Business benefit: Facebook Credits may become the dominant currency for purchasing an array of content with early business adopters reaping the rewards of customer loyalty.

Getting to know your customers

Facebook is changing the face of advertising. When people sign up to the social media site, they are agreeing (unless they explicitly opt out) to have information about their conversations monitored. For instance, you might message a friend saying that you're dying for a holiday; shortly after making this comment personalised banner ads for island resorts may appear. Whether consumers respond to this approach is yet to be seen. But this is just one marketing related Facebook development. Another service that's growing quickly is market research via social media. An example of innovation in this space is Lab42. The company serves up surveys via social media channels to attract customers as they go about their day-to-day activities. 

Business benefit: Price and speed ­– Lab42 packages, such as the US$500 premium survey, deliver market research data in just three days.

Facebook goes to work (seriously)

Facebook has long been a point of contention for managers fearful that staff are wasting away the hours on social media rather than focusing on organisational goals. But could Facebook be a useful place to share work-related information? Microsoft is hoping so; the company has developed a partnership with Facebook that will see Docs offered to social media users. This service allows workers to collaboratively use MS Office programs via their Facebook page. A form of cloud computing, the Docs service stores collaborative documents on an external server for access across sites by co-workers, suppliers or clients.  

Business benefit: Facebook's interface design people are adept at making software easy to use; their involvement is set to make collaborative software applications and cloud computing just as accessible.

Facing the facts

Whitespace is published monthly by the Australian Institute of Management - Qld & NT. Sign up to have a copy sent direct to your mailbox.