In Response to Lyndzi's Blog
Do you think Facebook is a good form of marketing for certain businesses?


Many companies don't use Facebook to its potential.  It is nearly free advertising on a site, that over 60% of the users check at least once a month.  With many of those being daily or visiting Facebook multiple times each day.  


As Facebook is a social network, it is used by many as a casual means of communication.  Many people use Facebook as a method to "unwind" or ease stress.  This needs to be taken into consideration when businesses are advertising on the site.  The posts need to be casual enough for viewers to want to read them, or watch the videos, but not so casual that companies lose their reputation as a professional company.  


There are many companies that it may make sense to not have a Facebook as their products or services are too professional for them to say things casually.  Some examples of this may be, lawyers, engineering facilities, and even hospitals have to advertise.  


Facebook has a lot of marketing potential for many businesses, but they need to use some caution before creating a Facebook marketing campaign to see if they are actually going to help their company's image at the time.  


If you were a company, would you prefer to advertise on linked in which is a more professional site or Facebook?  

Facebook IPO

Facebook IPO FilingReveals Its Stunning Size: A Private Jet, $1 Billion In Profits, And More

Facebook is one of the greatest success stories of somebody pursuing the American dream.  Mark Zuckerberg had an idea, one that he thought was good enough to drop out of one of the most respected universities in the world to pursue.  Facebook has since grown from a small start-up tech company that was struggling to raise funds, and operated out of a rental house in California to a tech giant that has over 800 million users worldwide and a net worth of $75 to 100 billion dollars.   Zuckerberg is the youngest person to ever become a billionaire, and is one of the most high profile CEOs of any company in the world. 

On January 28, 2012 Facebook confirmed the rumors that they would be going public by filing a S-1 with the SEC.  This means they are going to have an IPO in order to raise money for the company.  From a marketing standpoint Facebook is an advertisers dream.  Potential customers openly provide age, gender, location, interest, and a plethora of other information to Facebook.  They in turn use this information to create ads that are able to reach exact target groups.  No longer are the days when companies have to worry about who watches what television when, or what groups read each section of the news paper.  When a customer signs on to Facebook, they tell Facebook they are online as well as all of their demographic information.  As time goes on Facebook will further be able to perfect their art of advertising in order to hit even more distinct target groups which will only increase the value of Mark’s company. 

While this seems a win-win for everybody, facebok gets advertising money, and the users get to be able to connect with their friends in a way they haven’t ever done before, it creates a huge privacy issue.  Currently Facebook manages the ads, if Facebook does en d up going public, there is a chance Facebook will start selling the information to ad companies, as they are better at handling target audiences.

Would you read the new privacy policy to see if that is the case?  Should Facebook do this?  If not how can they raise the money needed to keep their company profitable?