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?
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