Information Technology for Managers - Explore the Facebook''s service and its successfull

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MASTER OF BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION
INTERNATIONAL PROGRAM


ASSIGNMENT
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY FOR MANAGERS




Submitted to: PhD. Dr. Pham Van Tai
Submitted by: Huynh Thi My Dieu
ID No.: CGSVN00014998
Class: MBAOUMM0313



Ho Chi Minh City, July 2013



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Acknowledgement
……………………………………………………………………
Abstract

Many of early communication tools focused on bringing people together to interact with
each other through chat rooms, and encouraged users to share personal information and
ideas via personal webpages by providing easy-to-use publishing tools and free or
inexpensive webspace. This also leads to the rapid increase in social networking sites'
popularity with big name such as MySpace is getting more page views than Google, or
Facebook was launched in 2004 then became the largest social networking site in the
world in early 2009. This report with aims to explore the Facebook’s service and provide
some evidences of its performances as well as find out the ways to set up this kind of
business in Vietnam to be successful.









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CHAPTER 1: OVERVIEW OF FACEBOOK.COM
1.1. Introduction:
Facebook.com was created in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg, Eduardo Saverin, Dustin
Moskivitz and Andrew McCollum, originally designed for college students with the name

TheFacebook.com. But from 2006, anyone who possesses a valid email address with over
13 years old could join Facebook. It makes easily for users to connect and share with
family and friends online and has even helped the web become more open and social.
Today, Facebook is the world's largest social networks and keeps growing for many years
to have 1.750 staffs and offices in 12 countries in early 2013.
1.2. Log in:
To explore Facebook, users must create a free account on the site. Facebook requires new
members to provide a valid e-mail address before completing registration. After created an
account, Facebook will ask new members answered a few questions about some general
information such as work, education, etc. After doing so, Facebook will generate a profile
for new member.
Picture 1.1: Facebook Homepage to log in/ sign up



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Here are general steps to create an account on Facebook for personal use:

Figure 1.1: Steps to create an account at Facebook.com
After these above simple steps, The Welcome to Facebook Page will appear. Then
Facebook will send you an email to confirm about your registration. Before you can access
all of Facebook's features, you will need to confirm your email address.
To create a Facebook page, we have to choose one of six categories including:
- Local Business or Place
- Company, organization or Institution
- Brand or Product
- Artist, Band or Public Figure
- Entertainment
- Cause or Community
Go to
www.facebook.com

Under the words
Sign Up
, enter your personal information and
desired password
Click
Sign Up

Find yours
Friends

(Can skip this step)

Add
information about yourself
such as education, employment, etc.
(You also can skip this step if you want to keep them privately)
Add your
Profile picture
(Upload available picture of yours or take a photo from
webcam – You can skip this step if you are not ready to show your profile picture)
Click
Save and Continue





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Picture 1.2: Six Categories of creating a page on Facebook
1.3. Products/ Services:
Facebook is offering various applications to write personal blogs, share images, video and
stories in social communities. It also supports e-marketing and offers many services to
worldwide marketers.
1.3.1. For individual: create profile with photos, lists of personal interests, contact
information, and other personal information; communicate with friends and other users
through private or public messages and a chat feature; Join, “like” or run common interest
groups or pages (organized by business or brand).

1.3.2. For organization: advertise across the platform to run a page and promote their
products or services.
In summarize Facebook’s products/ services can be listed as the following table:
Name of
Products/
Services
Description
Year of
introduction

New Feed
- An updating list of stories from friends, pages, and other
connections, like groups and events.
- People can like or comment on what they see.
- Each news feed of user is personalized based on their interests
September
2006



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and the sharing activity of their friends.
Timeline
- A new kind of profile that lets people organizes and highlights
the events and activities.
- People choose the information they want to share on their
timeline, such as their interests, photos and work history and
can control who sees the sharing contents.

September
2011
Graph
Search
- A structured search tool that lets people use simple phrases like
“Photos of my friends in Vietnam” to find people, places, photos
and other information shared with them on Facebook.
- When turned on, Graph Search replaces the search bar at the
top of every page of Facebook.

Messages

- Allow to send messages, emails, chats, and text messages
together in one ongoing conversation whether they’re chatting
on the web or texting on the go.
- Messages are organized by conversations with friends or
groups of friends.
February
2004
Photos
and Video

- People can upload unlimited number of videos and high-
resolution photos, create albums, and share with their friends or
any audience they choose.
- It’s easy to add details like captions, locations and tags. Tagging
lets people identify a friend in a photo or video, easily sharing
that content with them
October
2005

Groups
- A private space within Facebook for people to discuss common
interests.
- Allow to create a small set of people such as family, teammates
or best friends.
- People within a group can post updates, photos and chat with
everyone at once. They also can customize the privacy settings
for each group they create
September
2004
Event
- People can organize gatherings, manage invitations and send
notifications and reminders to their friends.
- To invite their friends to anything from a dinner party or a
community charity performance.

Pages
- A public profiles that let artists, public figures, businesses,
brands, organizations, and non-profits create a presence on
Facebook and connect with the Facebook community.
- When someone likes a page, they will see updates from that
page in news feed.
- When someone likes or comments on a page post, that activity
may be shared with their friends, increasing the page’s
exposure and reach.
November
2007
Platform

- It enables developers to build social apps, websites and devices

that integrate with Facebook and reach millions of people.
May 2007
Apps
- Enable people to connect with their friends, whether it’s through
playing a game, watching a movie, sharing their favorite
restaurant, or listening to a song.
- New social apps that integrate with Facebook are emerging on
phones, through websites and within Facebook.

Social - Social plugins help developers and publishers drive growth and



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Plugins

engagement for their websites with a single line of code.
- For example, social plugins allow people to easily share
interesting content with their Facebook friends through News
Feed. Examples include:
• Like Button: people can share a web page or a piece of content
with their friends in one click.
• Subscribe Button: people can follow their favorite public
figures in one click.
• Comments Plugin: people can easily comment on articles, see
the most relevant comments and share their comments with
friends on Facebook.
• Single Sign On Registration Plugin: People be able to login

without having to fill in registration forms or remember another
user name and password.
Sponsored
Stories
- Marketers can amplify the distribution of stories that people
have already shared with their friends.
- For example, when someone posts on Facebook that they have
“checked-in” at a restaurant, their friends may see that in their
News Feeds. The restaurant can purchase sponsored stories to
increase the distribution of that story to the person’s friends.
- Sponsored stories also enable marketers to promote stories to
people that have liked their Facebook Page.


Table 1.1: Facebook’s products and services

Picture 1.3: Examples of Apps on Facebook
1.4. Payment:
Facebook offers an easy way for people to buy digital and virtual goods in apps on
Facebook such as premium items in games or video-on-demand movies. Payment options



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include credit and debit cards, PayPal, mobile payments, gift cards and numerous local
payment options around the world. In 2010, Facebook’s payment system charged a 30%
fee to publishers of Facebook applications for virtual goods transactions.
People can store their payment information on Facebook in a trusted environment and then

make purchases across a range of apps without having to re-enter their payment
information in each app. Using Facebook’s payment infrastructure, developers can focus
on building great games and apps rather than having to build their own payment and deceit
management systems.
1.5. Link the Website’s service to other ones:
People can Share, Like or Search on other websites that integrate with Facebook
whenever they see display image of Facebook. Other integration activities from Facebook
such as:
• Like buttons: update Facebook profile when clicked
• Activity button: show what friends are doing on the site
• Add Comments: add comments to any web page
• Recommendations: suggestions for web pages
• Like box: view Facebook Page stream from website
• Website Login/ Registration authentication through Facebook




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Picture 1.4: Facebook’s integration with the website Mashable
Facebook create opportunity for developers Open Graph API and Social Plugins that they
can use to build different experiences for users, including Apps on Facebook, Desktop
Apps, Mobile Apps, and Platform-integrated websites. For example, Facebook users can
publish Facebook Status Updates on Twitter and publish Tweets on Facebook.

Picture 1.5: Example of Integration between Facebook with Tweet and Twitter
On Facebook, a public profiles that let artists, public figures, businesses, brands,
organizations, and non-profits create a presence and connect with the Facebook

community. It comes to the results that when someone likes or comments on a page post,
that activity may be shared with their friends, increasing the page’s exposure and reach.
In terms of its partners, Facebook has linked connection with many companies in different
services such as Netflix, Hulu, Spotify, Washington Post providing online movies, TV
shows, music, and news. At the end of March 2012, more than 9 million apps and websites
integrated with Facebook.







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CHAPTER 2: FACEBOOK’S BUSINESS MODEL
2.1. Business Model
Facebook follows Advertising E-business Model for earning revenues in exchange for
displaying advertisements on its website. Facebook draws the attention of millions of users
which is a mine stone for advertisers targeting a particular market segment. Facebook
relies on an old internet business model: display ads. The good news for Facebook is there
is a lot of room to target ads more effectively and put ads in more places.
A Consumer - to - Consumer (C2C) business model is one of model in which firms facilitate
the exchange of data directly between its users over the internet, providing a platform to
load text, images, music/ video files, etc. for sharing among users. This platform for sharing
and interaction has a commercial aspect with the aid of advertising. Distinguishing itself
from the conventional media, social networking sites like Facebook keep its users with
unique designs and sponsored online content. According to Canzer, the level of traffic to a
particular website acts as a tool to understand how appealing the site is to its users, its

effectiveness in its brand awareness and an attraction to marketers and advertisers
(StudyMode.com, 2008
)
.
Facebook also incorporates community e-business model which is an e-business model
built around the notion that a group of online users can be regularly brought to a common
platform. Facebook successfully makes communities within its own community. Even the
Facebook users form an part of the virtual brand or community of Facebook users in
contrast to users of other sites such as MySpace. Within this virtual community lie
thousands of other communities built by users, band groups, advertisers, etc.
2.2. How Facebook’s Business model work:
The Mission of Facebook is to open and connect the world. It has built a Multi-sided
Platform (MSP) that serves different customer segments with different value propositions.
Advertisers can further engage their audience by incorporating social context into their ads
such as displaying when someone’s friend has liked an advertiser’s Facebook Page. The
website also helps users stay connected with their friends, families, and colleagues as well
as to discovers and learns more about what is going on in the world. People express
themselves by sharing their opinions, ideas, photos, and activities.



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Figure 2.1: Facebook’s Business Model
Facebook creates a unique combination of Reach, Relevance, Social Context, and
Engagement to the advertisers. They can engage with users based on the information such
as Age, Gender, Location, Education, Work history or specific Interests which are shared
by users. Facebook offers advertisers an ability to include social context in their Ads that

social context highlights a user’s connections with a brand or business. Businesses can
also create Facebook Pages to engage with interested customers and simulate an ongoing
dialog with them.
Developers benefit from tools and APIs which are created by Facebook that enables them
to easily integrate with Facebook. Developers can use Facebook platform to build apps and
websites that are more personalized, social, and engaging. Facebook offers developers an
online payment infrastructure that enables developers to receive payments from the users
in an easy-to-use and secure environment.
Besides that Facebook is investing heavily into Facebook-owned data centers. This is to
support user growth, increased user engagement, and delivery of new products. Currently,



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data centers of Facebook store more than 100 petabytes (100 quadrillion bytes) of photos
and videos. This is going to increase further in the future since people engage more on
Facebook. To support these massive storage and computing needs, Facebook custom
designed and built their software, servers, and data centers from the ground up.
Furthermore, in order to growth the user engagement, Facebook has partnered with
companies such as Netflix, Hulu, Spotify, Washington Post providing online movies, TV
shows, music, and news which help users share what they are watching, listening, or
reading with their friends and family.
On 9
th
April 2012, Facebook made a decision to buy Instagram for $1 Billion. Instagram is
application of sharing photos that allows its users to apply digital filters to the photos and
then share them on different social networking services. Since then, the results from
applying Instagram are impressive: 30 million+ Registered Users; 1 billion+ Photos

Uploaded; 5 million+ Photos Per Day; 575 Likes Per Second (about 50 Million Likes per
Day); 81 Comments Per Second (about 7 Million Comments per Day).
2.3. Competitors:
There are majority of International competitors with Facebook such as Google (in terms of
Pageview and display ads), Youtube (for advertising), Google+, Twitler, MySpace, Yahoo
(about social connection), etc.

Source: Social Media Influence.com
Table 2.1: Top 20 websites ranked by Visits by 2010



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Facebook is ranked at top for traffic and Google narrowly edges out Facebook in terms of
traffic share, with Gmail the one property that puts Google over the top. Looking further
down the Top 10 list, the only thing keeping Yahoo even remotely competitive in the
competition for eyeballs is Yahoo Mail. The same could be said of Microsoft. Its Windows
Live Mail is keeping it barely in the game.
Success of Google because of two major innovations: their core search product, and their
keyword advertising business model.

Some estimates put Google’s search revenues per
page views at 100-200x Facebook’s. Google has over 350 million users using Gmail. Over
250 million photos get uploaded on Facebook daily. Over 4 million businesses use Google
Apps for Business. Over 4 billion videos are streamed on Youtube everyday.
In Vietnam, the social networking Sites which provide same services as Facebook including
Zingme.vn, Truongxua.vn, Banbe.net, Tamtay.vn, etc. Zingme.vn closely resembles
Facebook, which recently overtook the Vietnamese site in subscriber numbers. Facebook

is sometimes blocked by the government because of fears it could be used to mobilize
dissent against its one-party rule. Zingme.vn is never blocked, and is more popular with
younger, less educated Vietnamese. Companies and institutions often have accounts on
both. The embassy has more than 18,000 friends on Zingme.vn, compared to 12,000 on
Facebook (Thenextweb.com, 2013).

Table 2.2: Top 5 social networks in Vietnam
While Vietnamese can still access the social network with relative ease which has led to the
restriction policy being called the Bamboo, in reference to China’s Great Fire Wall,
Facebook does not dominate in Vietnam. A recent report showed that local



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offering Zingme.vn is the top social network, suggesting that the block, although an easy
circumvented one, is affecting Facebook in the country.
2.4. Key success factors of Facebook:
- Sustainable Competitive Advantage
If Google is a dominant web search provider with over 66% of search market share then
Facebook is a dominant social networking site with over 845 million users at the end of
2011. With the aim is to connect all global Internet users, Facebook’s strategy is to design
social products and enter into partnerships that drive engagement levels of these users
even further. To do this, Facebook has built a multi-sided platform (MSP) with strong
network effects. These network effects and Winner-Takes-All (WTA) dynamics of MSPs
provide sustainable competitive advantage to Facebook. It has very strong R & D
(Research and Development) capabilities and leads the market through innovative
products. It is very difficult for a new company to enter into web search or social networking
services market and beat Facebook in these markets.

- Presence of Network Effects
Facebook is benefiting from very strong network effects since its inception. Online
advertisers benefit from having a large base of search users, but it doesn’t lead to network
effects. Facebook benefits from the same-side network effects between the Facebook
users. Facebook also benefits from the cross-side network effects between the developers
and the users.
- Visibility/Predictability are highly valued
Facebook earned 85% of revenue from advertising in 2011. It has self-serve auction-based
Ad products and a “long tail” of customers. This makes modeling or predicting the future
revenues of the companies little difficult.
- Customer lock-in/High Switching costs
Facebook focused on Lifetime Value (LTV) of the customers. The company is trying to lock-
in users with their data in form of emails, photos, videos, documents, and blogs. Facebook
has over 100 billion friendships. The company has achieved data lock-in with their users.



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- Customer concentration
Facebook has a “long tail” of customers and does not dependent upon any single customer
for its revenues. The website has implemented self-serve auction-based Ad products. This
makes customers “price accepters” than “price demanders”. An example of this case is
Zynga. Zynga accounted for 12% of Facebook revenues in 2011; Facebook revenues are
not highly dependent on Zynga. Moreover, Zynga also needs Facebook for its revenues.
Both of them are into a long-term relationship.
- Major partner dependencies
To increase the engagement levels of its users, Facebook has partnered with content
companies such as Netflix, Hulu, Spotify, and Washington Post providing online movies, TV

shows, music, and news respectively. However, Facebook is not dependent on any single
partner.
- Organic vs. Heavy Marketing spend
The company is well known as Global Brand. It serves multiple audiences including Users,
Advertisers, and Developers. So, the company runs different marketing programs for
different audiences to achieve different marketing objectives. It spent approximately 12% of
the total revenues on Marketing and Sales in the year 2011. We can give 1 point to both
the companies on this criterion.
















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CHAPTER 3: FACEBOOK’S PERFORMANCE

According to website , the chart from picture 3.1 illustrates that

Facebook has reached 1.06 billion users by the end of 2012 after 9 years of launching the
website.

Figure 3.1: Facebook’s monthly active users from 2004 – 2012
The following statistics are further illustrative of Facebook size and scale: 100 Billion
friendships; 250 Million photos uploaded every day; 2.7 Billion Likes and Comments per
day. More than 425 Million MAUs, nearly half of Total MAUs, used Facebook products on
Mobile. With so many users using Facebook on a regular basis, it has become an attractive
destination for advertisers and developers alike (Group jysx, 2012).
From source: www.marketingland.com released that over Q3 2012, revenue was up to
$1.262 million, a 32% gain and the third consecutive quarter of higher revenues.




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Figure 3.2: Facebook’s Revenue from Q3/2010 to Q3/2012
Another research by Willis Wee (2012) said that Facebook is coming close to dethroning
Yahoo and Google in terms of unique web traffic. Facebook has overtaken Yahoo to
become the world’s second most visited site. All it took was a slight improvement and a
slight dip from Facebook and Yahoo respectively. In any case, Yahoo has only itself to
blame for not capitalizing the early head start it had over its competitors. And for Facebook,
a combination of smart business decisions, user friendly features (mostly) and strong
supporters have made the giant what it is today (from the website: www.techinasia.com
with titled “STATS: Facebook Overtook Yahoo. Google Beware”).

Figure 3.3: Number of visitors of Facebook, Google and Yahoo

In terms of expense on marketing and sales,
showed that “Facebook G
ot More Revenue On
(Jim Edwards, 2012).







Figure 3.4
: Revenue of
Facebook
's marketing and sales costs
deduct the stock compensation expenses
That means Facebook
grew its revenues this
less on its ad sales force to get that increase. Its promo costs are up year on year, but
they're level
sequentially from Q1
Facebook
reported it spent $392 on sa
stock-
based compensation. So it actually spent about $160 mil

sales
(In previous periods, stock







In terms of expense on marketing and sales,
the website
www.businessinsider.com
ot More Revenue On

LOWER Sales And Marketing Costs In Q2

: Revenue of
Facebook
vs. Marketing & Sales Costs
's marketing and sales costs
went down as a
percentage of ad revenue in Q2 (if
deduct the stock compensation expenses
included in that line on
the income statement
grew its revenues this quarter, up 32% to $1.18 billion, but spent
less on its ad sales force to get that increase. Its promo costs are up year on year, but
sequentially from Q1
meaning that they're down on a
comparative

reported it spent $392 on sales and marketing, but that $232 million of that was
based compensation. So it actually spent about $160 million on promotion and ad
(In previous periods, stock
-based comp within mar
keting and sales was negligible


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www.businessinsider.com
has
LOWER Sales And Marketing Costs In Q2
”
vs. Marketing & Sales Costs

percentage of ad revenue in Q2 (if
the income statement
).
quarter, up 32% to $1.18 billion, but spent
less on its ad sales force to get that increase. Its promo costs are up year on year, but
comparative
basis.
les and marketing, but that $232 million of that was
lion on promotion and ad
keting and sales was negligible
).



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CHAPTER 4: WEBSITES PROVIDE SAME SERVICES WITH FACEBOOK IN
VIETNAM
4.1. Similar website with Facebook in Vietnam (As discussed earlier in Chapter 2):
The name of social networking websites which are providing same services as Facebook in
Vietnam such as Zingme.vn, Truongxua.vn, Banbe.net, Cyworld.vn, Tamtay.vn, etc.
4.2. Similar points of social networking sites like Facebook:
- They are social networking sites which have common characteristics of social network
that differentiate from a regular website. These are including:
 User-based: While the websites are based on content that was updated by one
user and read by Internet visitors then online social networks are built and directed
by users themselves. Without the users, the network would be an empty space filled
with empty forums, applications and chat rooms.
 Interactive: This means that a social network is not just a collection of chatrooms
and forums anymore which are filled with network-based gaming applications,
where you can play poker together or challenge a friend to a chess tournament.
These social networks are quickly becoming a pastime that more people are
choosing over television because it's more than just entertainment, it's a way to
connect and have fun with friends.
 Community-driven: This means that just like communities or social groups around
the world are founded on the fact that members hold common beliefs or hobbies,
social networks are based on the same principle. Within most modern online social
networks today, you'll find sub-communities of people who share commonalities,
such as alumni of a particular high school, or an animal welfare group. Not only can
you discover new friends within these interest based communities, but you can also
reconnect with old friends that you lost contact with many years ago.
 Relationships: Like the concept most pyramid schemes are focused on, within
online social networks, the concept really works in a powerful way. For example,
when you have just 20 contacts and you publish a note or an update on that page,

that content proliferates out across a network of contacts and sub-contacts that's
much larger than you may realize.



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 Emotion over content: Social network sites provide users with emotional security
and a sense that no matter what happens; their friends are within easy reach.
Whether suffering through divorce, break-up or any other family crisis, people are
finding that the ability to jump online and communicate directly with a circle of
friends provides a great deal of support in an otherwise unmanageable situation.
- All sites use for purpose of sharing of information and they provide online entertainment
services;
- Business and individuals can advertisements and promote their goods and services to
customers by such effective ways;
- They all have linked to various websites.
4.3. Differences points of Facebook from other ones in Vietnam make it success:
- Facebook is a big social network with more than 680 million users range from civilians
to politicians, actors and actresses, music bands and charity organizations, etc.
- As can be seen from Facebook, all of those such as status update, photos, videos, and
links shared are seen on only one page.
- Facebook gave way for idols and businesses to have their “page” and be noticed by
people.
- Facebook create a place where business can be advertised for free or by using
Facebook’s advertisement system. Among those applications of Facebook, there are
top 10 Business Applications can be listed as the following:
 Telephone: Allow us to call, send and receive voice messages through Facebook,
just like having voicemail on phone. It is required the application and a microphone.

 SlideShare: That we can upload PowerPoint, OpenOffice, Keynote or PDF files and
view presentations shared by others.
 CircleUp: This tool facilitates some of the communication needed to promote your
group activity and events on Facebook and elsewhere. This is particularly useful if
you’ve created and maintain your own group on Facebook or often promote
teleseminars and workshops.
 Free Conference Calls: Use Free Conference Calls to organize a business
meeting on the fly. We can call in from anywhere; your home, mobile, Skype, or any
VoIP service.



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 Facebook Video: This app provides a high-quality video platform for people and
pages on Facebook that you can upload video files, send video from your mobile
phone, and record video messages to your friends.
 Testimonials: Use Testimonials to gather your personal and professional
references in one place. Encouraging customers and contacts to post testimonials
about your work and expertise adds great marketing content to your profile.
 Introductions: Introduce your friends to each other and make new ones. Ask for an
introduction to a web programmer or good lawyer. Then make introductions for your
friends. This application speeds the process of effective networking by helping focus
on giving and receiving introductions in a systematic way.
 Business Cards: Personalize your card and attach it to your Facebook messages.
View postings and network with others. This application is much like the signature
common in email messages. Just one more way to say business when using
Facebook.
 My LinkedIn Profiles: Makes it easy to promote your LinkedIn account with a

badge on your Facebook profile. Cross promoting social network activity is a great
way to extend your reach.
 What I Do: Allows you to promote your services/products to your Facebook
network. Display your skills/wares on your profile box and list yourself in a business
directory. Recommend your colleagues services and products too.
- Facebook has its own uniformity: Blue and white background color on every page, red
color for notifications and not too many graphics. There is no background glitter that
seems to run through the bloodstream of anyone who visits a page and also no
annoying background music or anything that can alienate users.
- Especially, Facebook applies various languages for global users (about 53 different
languages).



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Source: www.faceook.com

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CHAPTER 5: SET UP THIS KIND BUSINESS IN VIETNAM
5.1. The Key successful factors to create a social site:
The keys successful factors come from 2 perspectives
 Business Perspective:
- Being the first mover;
- Focusing on short messaging;
- Faster way of communication, openness and simplicity;
- Being a new trend and satisfying a niche need (the need for a faster way of
communication).
 User’s Perspective:
- Make it adoption by its users: effort expectancy, facilitating condition, playfulness,
status updates (short messaging) and open culture.
5.2. Risk points:
- May get fake information from users;
- Many competitors, especially the limit of foreign languages to be applied for users
around the world make it not much attractive.
- Less security.
5.3. Recommendations to be successful on the Site:
- Continuing PR activities, preventing technical problems and preparing technical.
- Structure for higher user’s volume, satisfying new demands by users, paying attention
to the monetizing strategy.
- Offer its predecessors (options such as: Home, Profile, Finding people and etc) in

online social networking.
- Providing its users both web-based and mobile platform SNS.
- Specialize in various fields to attract specific targets, chose a specific (selection)
category(ies) for target audience.
- Pay attention to main key elements: “The main reason behind SixDegrees’s failure was
that the site provided its early adopters nothing more than a simple way of connecting
and communicating with others” (Boyd & Ellison, 2007).




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5.4. The 4Cs of Building a Successful Channel for Social network Site:
- Customers: Engage with the right “customers” and build the community. There are
such ways to building the community including:
 Use “Friend Finder” or “People You May Know” to send friend request to five
people.
 Use the search facility to join/‘like’ three relevant groups/pages. Invite friends by
email using “Invite Friends”, “Suggest to Friends”.
 Invite your email or zone subscribers.
 Add social media profiles to your email signature file.
 Add page link/badge to your profile page.
 Actively participate in relevant groups/pages – tagging your post.
 Think about the best way of creating a viral campaign.
- Content: should be “customer led” and add value, by ways such as:
 Focus on Frequency: how often to post or update.
 Type (update, video, and image): mix it up, photos and videos can be more
engaging.

 Own/Other Peoples Content (OPC): look for other content to share.
 Tone/theme: friendly, informal, warm, welcoming, advisory, facilitative, authoritative.
 Sources of Inspiration – have some examples of your ideal page• Participation in
other groups/ pages – comment and interact more widely.
- Conversations:
 Engage in other relevant pages/groups.
 Look for opportunities to stimulate a discussion and encourage user generated
content on your own Page.
 Encourage shares, likes and comments.
 Create a Response Policy for your own page (perhaps a wider initiative across all
channels).
 Engagement: For status updates, try ending with a question. Add your own
comments as needed to get the ball rolling. Come back and reply often to your fans’
comments• Agree an appropriate Response Policy.
- Conversions: The “call-to-action”; core business objectives:
 Look for opportunities to make a sale, generate an enquiry, create a referral and be
subtle.



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 Choose one of the following applications and become familiar with it, using it to
carry out some of the common actions: Post, Delete Post, Like, Comment, and so
on.
 Try the same application on your desktop and your mobile phone: Hootsuite
; TweetDeck ; MediaFeedia
; HyperAlerts .

5.5. Performance Measurement:
- This can be done in two ways: “lag” and “lead” measures. “Lag” measures are the
ultimate “business” objectives e.g. feedback, insights, service awareness,
accountability, marcoms effectiveness and efficiency, ROI etc. “Lead” measures are the
main “drivers” that help to achieve your core objectives.
- There are a number of tools available for monitoring your Page’s performance,
including:
 Involvement: the number and quality of people involved in your page.
 Interaction: the number of comments and likes.
 Intimacy: the affection or aversion to Jacobite Cruises on your page.
 Influence: recommendation in terms of shares on your page.
 Insight: actionable insight on your Page.
 Impact: sales recorded on GA, enquiries.