F ACEBOOK

A Harvard dropout named Mark Zuckerberg designed Facebook as a social networking site for college students to interact with each other in 2003. Originally, it was an online program available only to Harvard students. Later, as word spread about the program, students at other colleges joined. And then, in 2005 it was opened to high school students.

With the success opening the program to high school students, late in 2006, Facebook 18

was opened up to all Internet users. Although there is some debate as to how many active members Facebook has and how fast they have been growing, there is no question that it has grown exponentially. It is one of the most popular websites on the Internet (Lampe et al., 2006). Facebook claims to have 50 million active users (Facebook, 2007). Of course the user demographics have changed, too, especially since they opened the site to everyone in the fall of 2006. Originally, American college students dominated the site, but now it hosts members from all over the world (so far only in English) and many age demographics.

Facebook has also introduced the “platform.” This enables aspiring programmers and product developers a chance to create software within Facebook that can be used and shared among members. This has been very popular and may have also encouraged growth. However, it is safe to say that many Facebook users do not develop software for the website. Instead many actively participate in the activities available, chat or just observe others’ interactions.

2.6.1 How Facebook Works

Facebook is, at its basic form, a directory of names with attached portrait pictures.

Typically, an existing member recruits new members to the website by email-based invitations. Once signed up, the new member can create a self-profile. This includes his name, email address and a few optional personal identification criteria such as age, workplace and hobbies. He can also join an existing network (such as a college or hometown) or he can create his own network.

There are three main ways to find and recruit friends to a personal site. Any member can

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search for other active members through the search application. New members can send invitations to contacts from the member’s existing email list and a new member can also look at the friends’ lists of his current Facebook friends and send messages to those members.

Only friends and members of the same network can see individuals’ larger profiles, but everyone can see names with the attached pictures. In order to become “Facebook friends,” one must make a request and get confirmation from that friend. Friends are then linked together in crossing networks. Whether a friend or not, the network link can be searched at the basic level which is faces and names within friend networks.

“Groups” are also an important part of Facebook membership. Members create and join groups on a variety of subject matters where they can post messages or take part in dialogues with others.

An important aspect of Facebook is the so called “news feed.” This shows what activities community members have been doing. Whether a member is active or not, the member can still keep track of discussions or postings by other friends. An example of this would be if John were a friend of Bob and Linda. John sends a photo to Linda. Even though Bob is not involved in this transaction, he is notified of the interaction in his “news feed”

because he is a friend of John. So members can keep track of friends’ social interactions whether or not they participate in those interactions. Marketers may find this a useful tool of implicit advocacy to spread product information.

Already one of the questions raised has been answered fairly assuredly. Marketers can reasonably be expected to benefit from the participatory nature of social network sites.

Boyd Thomas et al. (2007) have already seen evidence of this at MySpace. And Walsh

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(2006) tells us that SNS have actually been driving sales.

2.7 MySpace  

Chris DeWolfe and Tom Anderson created MySpace in 2003. They had been using Friendster and saw an opportunity to create something better (Lapinski, 2006). While MySpace is currently the most popular SNS in America (Alexa.com), MySpace grew quickly by appealing to a younger demographic (Snyder et al., 2006) by encouraging users to share personal experiences, files, hobbies and cultural preferences such as music.  

Most of all, MySpace exists to interact with others and to make new friends. As they say on their website, “MySpace is an online community that lets you meet friends’ friends.”

(MySpace) Media magnate Rupert Murdoch purchased MySpace in 2005 for over US$580 million (Barsky & Purdon, 2006). While these spaces are created to be personal spaces, they are also in the public domain. This is one of the key purposes of MySpace and has also been one of their most difficult problems. They have had privacy issues and security issues as well (Snyder et al., 2006). An example of this may be to consider a student who shares his not for public ideas with his friends on MySpace. Later, when he tries to get a job, he may have a problem with employment based on his views expressed in his public profile. 

2.7.1 How MySpace Works

Users are encouraged to sign up and to create a profile on the site. Then, they invite friends to join the personal network created and/or search for friends currently using the

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