Facebook’s Beginning
Okay, guys, I'll try to get the ball rolling. As I've been researching Facebook, it seems to me like Mark Zuckerberg (founder) was a really fortunate guy. He created a basic social networking application by himself in about two weeks, at a time when people were just realizing how the technology could be useful to them. So, as far as I can guess as to why he has been so successful #1) he already had good programming skills to accomplish the task and #2) his timing was great. He also benefited–and I'm not sure he was aware that this model would be best–by starting small and only releasing the application to his own university first. After the initial market was convinced of the usefulness of the application, the idea just snowballed as people told their friends about it and demand grew. A mass release might not have worked so well as it would have lacked the closeness of the first Harvard market that in turn generated positive buzz about his product. Also, I think that appealing to colleges in particular made the application stronger in that it caused people to think of it as more directly relevant to them. Myspace, at least in my opinion, seems a bit too far-reaching and impersonal. As to some good reasons why Facebook is so different from other social networking sites, I can't really say. Maybe somebody who has used Facebook in addition to other sites can comment.
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January 27th, 2008 at 6:17 pm
You’re right on with Facebook’s success coming due to how it was released. Word of mouth is THE best type of marketing possible, though it is not very measurable nor can most companies count on word of mouth for their sole marketing need. Facebook, because it is a social networking site, needs people to tell others about the service, and those comments must be good (not negative). For a large, mass market company like Google, it takes more than just word of mouth to manage the company’s reputation.
I am sure many remember when Facebook first introduced the Newsfeed. A large public outcry immediately happened with Facebook losing customers and upsetting many others. For a larger company with a reputation to worry about, simply releasing a feature without testing is not possible, and for Facebook, this was a terrible move since they count on word of mouth to keep them going.
All this is to say, Facebook is lucky that they can market primarily through word of mouth, but at the same time, the company needs to be very aware of what customers want. A few wrong moves and boom, the site could fail. I suppose this is a good time to bring up that now Microsoft is involved in the company, Facebook needs to be that much more cautious about what they do and many customers may be turned off by Microsoft’s involement in the firm.
January 27th, 2008 at 7:19 pm
Great Post! I think you’re right about it’s success being partly due to starting in a smaller market, succeeding and then moving on to others.
It seems like the same thing happened with Craigslist. Anyone agree?
I like Facebook for the reasons I hate MySpace. Myspace is all cluttered and if possible is too customizable. On Myspace there is music blaring, flash everywhere, and color schemes from people with no design sense. Oops, too harsh haha.
Sadly, I think Facebook is becoming closer to MySpace with the overuse of apps.
January 28th, 2008 at 11:38 pm
In researching some of Mark Zuckerberg’s career at Harvard, I learned that Harvard has a policy allowing their students to pursue other “projects.” When approached by Peter Thiel for some funding for Facebook, Mark and his friends from Harvard had the choice to either go back to school or pursue opportunities with Facebook.
The mindset at Harvard that encourages students to go out and try out their ideas contributed to Zuckerberg’s “safety net” should Facebook not succeed. The fallback support at Harvard allowed Mark to take greater risks, just like Bill Gates did when he took his ideas for Microsoft to the next level.
Maybe more entrepreneural ideas would be pursued by college students and succeed if they were to have the confidence they could “come back to school” should their ideas go south.