Born in 1984, Mark Zuckerberg is wise beyond his years and has been for quite some time. As we will soon, one could argue that no company has faced greater challenges in building its platform and planks. In no way does this minimize the efforts of Amazon, Apple, and Google. Although these three companies also created vibrant ecosystems , facebook is somehow different. For one, the speed of facebook’s ascent has been unprecedented. it was so successful so soon that, in an era of 24/7 media, it found itself under near-constant scrutiny .in other words, the company lacked the early learning curves afforded to Amazon, Apple, and Google, Those Companies had more time to get their chops.
Let’s look at facebook’s Meteoric rise
A Rapid Ascent: Along with Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes, Zuckerberg founded Facebook in 2004. Without question, however, Zuckerberg is the face of the company. Some have called him arrogant, socially awkward, and unpolished, no one can legitimately call him myopic. Zuckerberg understood the importance of the platform for facebook’s future from his company’s inception. Here, Zuckerberg is nothing short of a sheer visionary.
Lesson from Friendster: Scale, Speed, and Paranoia
The promise of friendster is hard to understate. Along with classmates. com, Friendster was a seminal social network, founded in 2002, it preceded even Myspace. During its apex, Friendster claimed more than 115 million registered users and more than 61 million unique monthly visitors, Although it ultimately failed. Zuckerberg was determined to succeed where Friendster had failed. To this end, he knew that Facebook would have to manage its expansion somewhat cautiously .that is, Facebook’s platform would have to concurrently grow without sacrificing performance. Zuckerberg did not take the same “ get big fast” approach that jeff bezos did with amazon . Zuckerberg understood the importance of managed growth, he knew that he simply could not make everyone happy.
The Planks: How Facebook Built Its Platform
As prescient as Zuckerberg may have been about creating a platform. He could not add individual planks until he was sure facebook was strong enough to support a tsunami of users and activity. Once it was out of the wood, Facebook began adding rich features designed to strengthen its platform.
Ads: With so much demographic information on so many users, Facebook is clearly on fire. Facebook’s distinctive form of display advertising is increasingly attracting advertisers. These are mainly smaller companies and some of them have a strong direct–response focus.
Authenticity: Not on Facebook, from its inception, Zuckerberg has taken great pains to authenticate users. While it has not been entirely successful in preventing fraud and identity theft, the vast majority of users are precisely who they are they are.
Facebook Connect: Facebook Connect offers the following features
· Trusted Authentication: users will be able to connect their Facebook account with any partner website using a trusted authentication method. The user will have total control of the permissions granted.
· Real identity: Facebook users represent themselves with their real names and real identities. With Facebook Connect, User can bring their real identity information with them wherever they go on the web.
· Friends Access: Users Count on Facebook to stay connected to their friends and family
· Dynamic Privacy: As a user moves around the open web, their privacy settings will follow, ensuring that users’ information and privacy rules are always up-to-date.
Games: Facebook is not just about connecting with others. Many peoples take much-needed breaks throughout the day by playing one of the site’s astonishing array of games. From Mafia wars to Farmville to texas hold’em, the sites millions of users spend untold hours enjoying themselves or wasting time.
Credits: Perhaps, the ultimate sign of facebook’s rise to prominence is its creation of a de facto currency and how that unit of “ Money “ will fuel its ecosystem. In late June 2011, Facebook made credits that platform universal currency, with $1 US Equating to 10 Credits.
Like Button: In April 2010, Facebook introduced the like button for its own site and soon after allowed for its easy installation and integration with just about any external website. The like button works exactly as it sounds, user can indicate that a particular story, photo, blog post, and web page interest them. In turn, that little bit of information cascades to the user’s Facebook news feed-allowing the user’s friends to view that like and potentially view it themselves.
Fan Pages And F-Commerce: Fan pages are yet another example of Zuckerberg’s profound understanding of the importance of platforms. Facebook wants its users to create interesting fan pages, Again this encourages user participation, interaction, and time spent on the site, and let’s not forget that companies with strong facebook presences are more likely to buy ads.
News Feed: In September 2006, Facebook introduced two features that made its platform stickier than ever. New feed and Mini Feed allowed users to easily see the most recent happenings from their friends, groups, and other assorted interests.
Tags: In 2005, Facebook added the ability for users to upload photos of themselves, others, and just about anything else they could imagine. Through tags, users could easily indicate that a friend of theirs was also in a picture. Related notifications encouraged users to view these photos and spend more time on the facebook platform.
Facebook Reels: Recently, Facebook has introduced short-form videos called reels to have a better experience of watching videos in short versions. One can add music to the short videos and make their videos viral.
Privacy: Facebook has taken a great deal of legitimate criticism over its mishandling of privacy issues. At times, it has not seemed terribly concerned with personal and account safety. It also has Automatically opted its users into certain programs and settings causing a cauldron of other issues.
Lessons Learned: You would think that, as they say, the burnt hand teaches best. At times, it appears as if facebook has learned from its privacy and security missteps. Moreover, the company realizes that it’s better to ask for permission, not forgiveness. As a result, it now takes steps to ensure that third-party apps accessing its API received explicit user permission before connecting.