Facebook: An Addiction Beyond Control

Facebook is a name that needs no introduction. With one billion plus users, it is undoubtedly an enormous rage throughout the world. With Google Page rank 9 its rank is 1 according to Alexa. Its USA user rank is 2. This clearly justifies its importance as a socializing hub. An average teenager spends at least 5 to 6 hours on this website.

History: Facemash.com was launched in 2003 by Mark Zuckerberg after numerous controversies regarding its concept and copyright issues. On 24^th February 2004, the website was re-released with the name thefacebook.com. In 2005, the name was changed to Facebook.com. The website remained quite dormant till mid 2008, basically due to fact that people were engaged at Orkut.com during that period. Anyhow, its first glory was declared at 24^th August 2008, when it crossed 100 million users. After that its growth was unprecedented. On 4^th October 2012, the company declared that its member count had crossed the 1 billion mark.

Founder: Although Facbook.com has 5 founder, the main credit goes to Mark Elliot Zuckerberg. He was born on 18^th May 1984 and currently resides in Palo Alto, California, USA. He is the world’s second youngest self made billionaire and is currently serving as the Chairman cum CEO of Facebook.com. Mark is married to Priscilla Chan. He was awarded the prestigious award of ‘Person of the year by Time magazine’ in the year 2010.

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How does Facebook.com generate revenue? 

The main source of the website’s income is advertising. The other source of income is by selling credits on games and post promotions. The ads which I am referring towards are the ads which appear on the left hand side of the user screen. A very interesting fact is that although the number of users on Facebook increased this year, its revenue decreased considerably. And even more important is the fact that since its launch, its revenue share has shifted from advertising to promotional activities. Earlier, Facebook earned 98% of its share from ads and now it earns only 85% through them. Even Now Facebook has started monetizing everything.

Statistical data: Facebook.com recently released its data that its user strength crossed 1 the 1 billion mark. According to the management, their revenue in the first 3 months this year was $186 million. Almost 30% users on Facebook are power users who frequently, tag, share pictures, comment, like, chat and update posts.

Competitors:  As a social networking website, Facebook has a lot of competition in the form of Orkut.com, Google Plus, etc. But as a business, it is competitor less. It was presumed that Google Plus would beat Facebook, due the fact that it was more organized, offered more features, carried Google’s tag, publicized itself randomly and could be accessed from ones usual Google account. Anyhow, that never happened. Despite all speculations, Facebook crossed its 1 billion mark recently. People seem to have grown quite addicted to this social networking website and are refusing to leave it.

Criticism Worldwide: Facebook has been widely criticized for its security and many accounts on the website have been hacked recently. Furthermore, it has been banned in many countries including China. The social networking giant has been blamed for allowing anti-Islamic content which sparked major protests. Furthermore, since many organizations consider Facebook as a major wastage of time, they do not permit their employees to operate it during work hours.

My Review: Although I am a Facebook addict, but still believe that it is quite unsafe as of yet. Its response to user problems is way too slow. The management does not show any concern towards racism and other issues as racist posts are quite common here. Anyhow, its future still seems quite bright basically due to the fact that people have grown way too addicted to it.

Whats your views on this? Share in comments please.