Reference no: EM133409636
Questions:
- Research Facebook's Mission Statement. Help make a new mission statement that brings the company right up-to-date in terms of all of the scandals and political issues. Help write a new mission statement for Facebook that is market-oriented.
- Do some research to determine what kinds of technologies Facebook needs to be successful in rural and remote areas. Base your research on three rural/remote countries in the world. Share why you think these technologies will serve Facebook well in these regions.
- How can Facebook do more to give back to communities and provide free and open access to the Internet? What is Mark Zuckerberg's plan? How will he make this happen?
- Summarize the key challenges Facebook has faced in the last five years. Based on the last five years, what do you foresee as future challenges Facebook will need to overcome?
Case Study:
Facebook: Making the World More Open and Connected
The world has rapidly gone online, social, and mobile. And no company is more online, social, and mobile than Facebook. Despite the growing number of social media options, Facebook continues to dominate. In little more than a decade, it has accumulated 2.2 billion active monthly users-approximately 30 percent of the world's total population-and some 1.7 billion people now access the network on a mobile device. More than 1.5 billion Facebook members already log on daily, and eight new Facebook profiles are created every second. In the United States, more collective time is spent on Facebook than on any other website. Together, the Facebook community uploads 350 million photos, "Likes" 5.8 billion items, and shares 4.75 billion pieces of content daily.
Having achieved such phenomenal impact in such a short period of time, Facebook can attribute its success to a tenacious focus on its mission-"to give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected." It's a place where friends and family meet, share their stories, display their photos, pass along information, and chronicle their lives. Hordes of people have made Facebook their digital home 24/7.
From Simple Things
Initially, carrying out this mission was relatively simple. When CEO Mark Zuckerberg and friends launched "thefacebook.com" in 2004, it was for Harvard students only. Still, with its clean design ("No Disneyland, no 'Live nude girls.'"), the fledgling site attracted a lot of attention when it racked up more than 1,200 registered users by the end of the first day. Within the first month, more than half of Harvard's undergraduate student body had joined. The massive response demonstrated tremendous untapped demand. At first, the social network grew one university campus at a time. But it wasn't long before Facebook was open to the public and people everywhere were registering by the millions.
As it grew, Facebook's interface was a work in progress. Features were added and modified to appeal to everyone. The network's growth and development also gave it the ability to target specific kinds of content to well-defined user segments. However, Facebook's "all things to all people" approach left many users, especially younger ones, visiting Facebook less and shifting time to more specialized competing social networks. To meet that growing threat, Facebook shifted gears from a "one site for all" approach to a multi-app strategy of providing "something for any and every individual." According to Zuckerberg, "Our vision for Facebook is to create a set of products that help you share any kind of content you want with any audience you want."
As the first move under its multi-app strategy, Facebook paid a then-stunning $1 billion to acquire Instagram, the surging photo-sharing app. Although Facebook already had its own photo-sharing features, the Instagram acquisition brought a younger, 27-million-strong user base into the Facebook fold. And rather than incorporating Instagram as just another Facebook feature, Facebook maintained Instagram as an independent brand with its own personality and user base. Instagram and Facebook customers can choose their desired level of integration, including Instagram membership without a Facebook account. "The fact that Instagram is connected to other services beyond Facebook is an important part of the experience," says Zuckerberg. The strategy has worked. Instagram's userbase has exploded to more than 800 million in just six years.
On the heels of the Instagram acquisition came another stunning Facebook mega-acquisition. Dwarfing its Instagram deal, Facebook paid a shocking $19 billion for standalone messaging app WhatsApp. Facebook's own Messenger had already grown quickly to 200 million users. But similar to Instagram, WhatsApp immediately gave Facebook something it could not easily build on its own-an independent brand with more than 450 million registered international users, many of whom were not on Facebook. Now, four years after the acquisition, 1.5 billion worldwide WhatsApp users send 60 billion messages every day.
By developing and acquiring such new products and apps, Facebook is doing what it does best-growing its membership and giving its diverse users more ways and reasons to connect and engage. Facebook's fuller portfolio lets users meet their individual needs within the broadening Facebook family.