Facebook is the most powerful platform for social marketing with so many sales pitches are available like recommendation from a friend, so the billions of interactions on Facebook influence everything from music to the politician they vote for. According to the study approximately 5 billion worth of goods were sold through social commerce. Facebook is becoming the worlds online passport since so many peoples have Facebook account under their real name.
It has created its online currency named Facebook Credit. As more peoples join Facebook its appeal grows those who signs up have access to the wider circle. Those who don’t can feel excluded. This powerful feedback loop has already made Facebook as one of the biggest social networking site in many countries. It accounts for one in seven minutes spent online worldwide. Facebook is blocked in China but it is still growing fast in big emerging markets like Brazil and India Buy Italy Facebook Comments. Facebook knows a staggering amount about its users. It is also constantly devising ways to find out more, such as Timeline a new profile theme that enable users to create online archieve of their Facebook activities. Last year Facebook overtook Yahoo! to become leading seller of online ADs in U.S. Thus Facebook is one of the hottest companies in the world.
On 1st Feb 2012 Facebook unveils its plans for Initial Public Offering (IPO). The approximate estimates of Facebook public offering is in between $75 billion to 4100 billion. This is extraordinary as investors believes that Facebook can be more valuable than Boeing, world’s largest aircraft maker. A $100 billion price tag would hardly be cheap but other technology giants like Google, Microsoft are already worth more than Facebook. Google’s marketcap is $190 billion while Microsoft’s market capital is $250 billion and Apple’s market capital is $425 billion. But there are some reasons to worry as well Facebook has only 3200 employees and many of them will become paper millionaires after IPO. Firm can add more people and services with the billion of dollars that IPO will bring in. It is also expected to add online search function that will heat up its battle with Google, which is including information from its Google + social network in its own search result. Google has progressed from popularity to profitability due to its new revenue streams while Facebook is still completely dependent on it’s display ads and there is tension between attracting users and squeezing money from them. Technology creates competitor quicker than any other industry. Remember MySpace, Orkut and AltaVista out of which Myspace and Orkut were popular networking sites once upon a time but today they are none in front of Facebook. Facebook’s big asset is the information which is shared by its users but turning such data into cash can raise privacy concerns. If users start to feel that Facebook is abusing their privacy then they will quit Facebook.