Social Networking Sites and their impact on business

Social Networking Sites and their impact on business

Introduction

Facebook is the most popular social networking website in the domain of social media. The social network was formed in February, 2004 by a Harvard University student Mark Zuckerberg. The website was initially limited to the Harvard University students, but since the official launch of the website it has gained tremendous significance and has completely revolutionized the social media networks (Lusted, 2011). It came up as a great competitor for the existing social media services of that time like Orkut, which completely lost its popularity after the launch of Facebook. The social media website has now completely turned into a corporate giant with its headquarters in the United States of America. The social media website has the prestige to have its users in millions, and no doubt the services provided by the organization are outstanding.

Advantages of Facebook

Facebook has millions of users from all over the globe. The brand is providing the users with remarkable services. The social media website has provided its users with numerous advantages. The first advantages is the sharing of information on a large scale. Facebook allows the users to share information with others as per the desire, ask public opinion on a variety of things, and ask for any queries, and countless other information sharing features. The users can share their photos, audios, videos, and all sort of memories on Facebook, in short making it a medium to share a life style with the social circle. The best features associated with this advantage is that the users have a complete control over the shared information, they can add privacies and control on the shared content. The social media is free of cost, and helps us to connect with billions of people around the globe. In this way it also helps in socializing to the people from different cultures and traditions. Almost every member of Facebook will agree with this fact that Facebook highly facilitates in connecting back with the old ones (Ellison et.al, 2007). This is the key feature of Facebook, and a potential reason of the user attraction towards Facebook. People have succeeded in connecting to people who they have been searching for years, and Facebook is a platform that has acted as a providing medium.

The social media service provides the users with highly customized services. The members of Facebook can be updated with the latest happening as people share things on Facebook, which are rapidly shared all over the network, similar to that of the news channels. Celebrities find Facebook a very potential medium to connect with their fan base. Facebook is not limited to personal computers or laptops, but now the service has taken place in form of mobile applications, and people can get access to the social media service via their palms. Taking the positive side of the socialization factor people have managed to interact with many people who they could have never talk to in ...