How Facebook became the newest form of communication and entertainment while making money!

 Facebook was launched in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg. Created with the help of fellow students Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes  While the site remains free, it generates revenues through advertising  Site currently valued at $82.9 billion dollars ($136 billion if valued at secondary stock sale values of $60) jumping more than 40% since December. Now Tops Amazon valued at $77.2 billion and eBay.  The name Facebook comes from a document given to Harvard freshmen to help them navigate campus  Facebook features the ability to share photos, and instant message other members. It also enables members to play games and respond to requests and ads.  Ad spending at $4.05 billion by year’s end

 Initially offered to Harvard students but expanded to other campuses in the US and abroad, then offered to high school students and in 2006 open to anyone. It also added a news feature to report when members update their pages.  2007 Facebook opened its platform to outside vendors to develop applications, games have become the most popular  Later in 2007 Facebook introduced its Beacon social advertising program which tracks users who visit their sites and then targets their friends to announce when they purchase a product, rented a movie, etc.  Beacon was introduced as “opt out” but changed to “opt in.”

 50% of active users log on to FB everyday  Average User has 130 friends  People spend over 700 billion minutes a month on FB  More than 30 billion pieces of content shared each month (pics, news stories, blog posts,etc.)  Users may join groups with common interests such as college groups, hobby groups, etc.  41.6% of US has an account

Ads and Fan pages allow members to “like” products and services and receive updates from those pages for sales, coupons, current happenings, etc.

 Members may also “ignore” friend requests or “defriend” individuals at any given time.  Popular terms now include “facebook me,” did you get “defriended?”  Microsoft powers the server  Goldman Sachs and Digital Sky Technologies are among the investors

 Facebook shares information with other sites such as Twitter, MySpace, etc. to minimize the information the user must provide  Users download 20 million applications per day  Entrepreneurs and developers from more than 190 countries build with FB Platform  200 million FB users access their account with mobile devices  Mobile users twice as active as non mobile users  200+ mobile operators in 60 countries  More than 10,000 new websites integrate with FB per month

 Facebook Platform was launched in May 2007  Facebook Platform is the language and coding system initially developed for use with the Facebook applications  Facebook Platform now enables applications to be developed by outside vendors  Facebook Platform now enables applications to be developed and supported across the Web  Facebook Applications from outside vendors are often seen as annoying by users … not a great business strategy!  Facebook Platform Statistics as of May 2010: [2] [2]  More than one million developers and entrepreneurs from more than 180 countries  More than 550,000 active applications currently on Facebook Platform  Every month, more than 70% of Facebook users engage with Platform applications  More than 250,000 websites have integrated with Facebook Platform  More than 100 million Facebook users engage with Facebook on external websites every month

 Farmville by Zynga  62 million people currently play Farmville (active users)  Microsoft also supports mobile applications of Farmville  Zynga incorporates the portion  Zynga valued at $5.7 billion

 FarmVille had offered users "farm cash" for completing various advertising surveys or signing up for services: for instance, the player would get some virtual currency for signing up for Netflix.Netflix  FarmVille has been accused of scamming its users through misleading offers, such as filling in bogus survey or IQ tests which in fact subscribe the users to an unwanted service which appears on their phone bill or sending them advertisements through . [13][14]scamming [13][14]  In a video posted November 9, 2009, Zynga CEO Mark Pincus says "I did every horrible thing in the book too, just to get revenues right away. I mean we gave our users poker chips if they downloaded this Zwinky toolbar which was like, I don't know, I downloaded it once and couldn't get rid of it," in regard to criticism about business practices. [15]Mark PincusZwinky [15]  Michael Arrington of TechCrunch accused Facebook of allowing Zynga's FarmVille to continue these practices because a great deal of the money it gets from such leads is reinvested in ads inside the Facebook network. [14] In response to this negative publicity, Zynga removed all virtual cash offers on 8 November 2009 only on those pages on the main farmville.com website, but at least since July 12, 2010, farmville.com has still offered its virtual cash. [16] Players accessing the game from within Facebook also may see these offers.TechCrunchZynga leads [14] [16]  More recently, Zynga has been accused of sharing information with advertisers and other internet tracking companies about their users, however, Zynga had denied these accusations.internet tracking