Social Networking: The Big Five - 2). Facebook

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As the strapline states, "Facebook is a social utility that connects you with the people around you." Initially launched in 2004 as a platform for Harvard students to keep in touch with one another this social networking site expanded quicker than the creators wildest dreams and in 2006, it finally became available to anyone around the world using any email address.

Today there are approximately 52,2 million members on Facebook and there are more than 100 000 joining daily. It's estimated that the company is worth a cool $6 billion - not bad considering the CEO is a 22 year old Harvard drop out - Mark Zuckerberg, the Internet's latest and greatest success story.

Creating an Account
Creating a new account is very simple and involves filling in your name, what you do, your email address, password and birth date. To further explain this process, there is a virtual tour one can take if you click on the tour button in the top right hand corner of the site.

What Can You Do On Facebook?
The inventors describe Facebook as a site which you can use to: upload photos (it has been reported that there are 1.7 billion photos on Facebook, making it the biggest photo sharing site in the world), publish notes, get the latest news from your friends, post videos on your profile, tag your friends in photos, use privacy settings to control who sees your info and join a network to see people who live, study, or work around you.

You can list as much or as little personal information as you like (what school you went to, your favourite books, movies, quotes, birthday, relationship status, religious views etc, etc). You can then add friends (must be mutually accepted) and post messages to them on their walls, write emails and interact with people who have the same interests as you, and a number of other features. Once you have added a friend you will be able to view their list of friends and ask them to become yours and so on and so forth until the end of time. You can also join or form groups that consist of people with similar interests to you, some of our favs include "Boys are stoopid, throw CROCS at them", "I Min Pins" and "Friends of Quirk" (of course).

Facebook Applications
Applications are tools that allow you interact with your friends and networks. There are over 1800 applications available, and the Application Directory can be helpful in understanding them. The top ten applications which each have over 3 million users are; Top Friend, Graffiti, iLike, Fortune Cookie, Horoscopes, X Me, Video, SuperPoke!, Free Gifts, and Movies. More than 75% of Facebook users have used at least one Facebook application.

Privacy
What is important to note is that your Facebook profile is only visible to those that you invite to be your friend, and cannot just be accessed by anybody, unless you have joined a network and not adjusted your privacy settings. Facebook prides itself on its privacy laws, and under the privacy link (in the top right corner) you can edit your privacy levels to ensure levels of privacy can be maintained in your profile, search (who can search for you), news and mini feed, your poke, message and friend requests as well as your applications.

The Marketing Opportunities
Advertising on Facebook seems like a no-brainer as you can target your ads to specific groups (geographic locations, universities, ages etc). The users are a relatively captive audience and are more likely to respond better to advertising on this platform. If your brand is targeted at an audience that is not as receptive to traditional marketing messages this is the space you want to be in but it is vital for marketers to remember that they can't simply push messages out to community members they actually need to interact with them and provide them with information and value added services that they are interested in.

The term eCRM (electronic customer relations management) is being linked to discussions around the topic of social networking. As social networking is all about creating and fostering relationships, it is only logical that brands would get involved in this space.

If you're going to be hosting an event (party, launch, conference) you can create an event on Facebook and send out invitations to specific individuals / group members. All the events that you are "hosting" will be listed on your profile page so anyone who lands on your page will be able to see it and click through to the event information itself.

Facebook allows you to create sponsored groups / user-created groups. So if you're a company, like Quirk eMarketing, you could create your own Facebook group for employees, clients, affiliates etc. You can post photos, videos, news and discussions on your group page so your members can constantly be in the loop as to what's going on at your company. Check out the "Friends of Quirk" group to get a better idea.

Take, for example this 13,390 strong Facebook group: Anything your PC can do my Mac can do better - where individuals from all over the world voice their opinions on why they think Apple is the best Operating System in the world. As the most trusted message comes from "someone like me", this kind of publicity is invaluable to Apple and a relationship with the members should be fostered.

While social networking can significantly raise brand awareness and perception it is not right for every brand. If a company is not willing to respond to criticism or has issues with exposing their brand in an open forum, then this is not the space for them. As always companies need to monitor their brand as where there are consumers there are negative sentiments. Take these popular Facebook groups as examples - "Abolish iPhone!! - it sucks!" and "Against the London 2012 Olympic Logo".

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