Facebook is a social network which was founded in 2004, originally for college students. Now catering for all age groups, Facebook is second only to MySpace in size and is probably the fastest growing internet community today.

Joining the community is as easy as logging into Facebook.com and filling in a simple online form to register. In common with other social networks, Facebook provides users with the opportunity to create their own profile page.

This usually includes information such as age, marital status, religious beliefs and other personal details. It also includes the user’s network of friends and photograph albums. Communication with friends, family and, often, complete strangers, takes place via message ‘walls’, status updates and an email type message system.

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Facebook originally distinguished itself from other networks like MySpace by cutting down on the cluttered webpages and spam which are prevalent in its rivals. This was done chiefly by limiting the user’s ability to change their profile pages and keeping the design format simple and basic.

However, increasing numbers of applications such as games, news updates and the opportunity to rank everything from movies to friends has resulted in crowded profile pages which are more and more difficult to access. Facebook is currently looking at redesigning its format.

Issues of privacy:

One of the problems with a social networking site is that we are inclined to reveal far more of ourselves online than we would in our day to day lives and Facebook is no exception.

Although Facebook does provide users with privacy settings to reduce accessibility to their profiles most neglect to do so. In fact, a number of Facebook users I spoke to were unaware of this function. Privacy settings which allow users to screen the viewers of their personal information should be clearly available and easy to manage.

Revealing photographs, unguarded reminiscences with friends, postings describing last night’s party which might have got somewhat out of hand, all go towards building up a persona which your friends might enjoy but a potential employer might find a little disturbing to say the least. And recruiters are increasingly using social networks such as Facebook to find out more about job applicants.

By going into the profile of a prospective employee, employers are able to do background checks and access sensitive information about the job seeker’s character and interests which they would legally be prevented from enquiring about during a formal interview. Although this is not endorsed by Facebook there is nothing to prevent anyone with an account with them to search other users’ profiles.

Another privacy issue which Facebook was embroiled in recently is the tendency of social websites to share personal information without the users’ consent. Facebook crossed this line with the introduction of its Beacon service which notified all the users’ friends about online purchases made by the user.

Opportunities for entrepreneurs:

Of course, privacy is not an issue for entrepreneurs whose aim in joining Facebook is to disseminate as much information to as wide an audience as possible. As an entrepreneur you can open a business Facebook page as easily as you can set up a personal profile.

This allows you a more flexible layout to create a customized profile which will introduce your product or service to a virtually unlimited audience. Through Facebook you are able to add photographs or videos of your product, include reviews and send updates or news of special offers to your Facebook friends/fans.

In return you will get feedback from your fans who will often share their views with their own friends, quickly building up a network of potential clients for your business.

Should you wish to invest in advertising, social advertisements can be bought, either as cost per click (CPC) where advertisers only pay when a user actually clicks on an advertisement, or cost per impression (CPM). These can be targeted at users according to age, gender, interests or geographical location.

A third way to make your presence felt on Facebook is to develop a Facebook application, or widget, for your business or website. In May 2007 Facebook opened its service to outside developers, inviting them to create applications such as games or tools from which they could profit.

Since then thousands of developers have taken them up on their offer, some reporting high earnings from advertisements which accompany their applications. Since Facebook updates it users on the applications their friends are using, popularity of a site can grow very quickly.

If you have the technical know-how, then, this can be a very inexpensive method of reaching your market, however, using a professional developer can be a much more expensive prospect with costs ranging from $100 to $30000 depending on who you choose and what you want done.

In addition, once your application has been developed you need to find a host which will provide you with enough bandwidth to handle your application should it really take off. Hosting costs are also very variable, running anywhere from $5.00pm for an application with a low user base to over $20000pm if you are reaching millions of users.

Conclusion:

Although there are still some questions about the sustained viability of businesses on Facebook the general expectation seems to be optimistic with some developers believing that the prospect of being able to target their audience will eventually draw the bigger and more traditional advertisers to Facebook.

Certainly the appeal of Facebook as a social networking site continues to grow with millions of enthusiastic users logging on daily.