Facebook is a social networking website that launched in early 2004. It was founded by Mark Zuckerburg while he was a student at Harvard University.  If you sign up to Facebook you can create a profile for yourself or your business and people can then become your friend, fan or supporter.  This forms a social network which can then be used to interact with - whether to arrange Satuday night or promote your brand.

Navigation of Facebook is a nightmare. It feels as though I am lost in a maze and there is no real centre to get to, just corners filled with information.  As soon as I leave the page, it vanishes to engage in a game of hide and seek! 

I created a public page but it took me two days to realise that to get back to it I had to go to my 'Info Tab' on the new Facebook layout.  At the bottom we have Pages! A lot easier than typing in a Facebook URL like mine http://www.new.Facebook.com/pages/Internet-Marketing-Specialist-SEO-PPC-and-more-AGI/31138893331?ref=s. I also found my groups here. Perhaps a tab called Groups and Pages, or a drop down tab listing my pages, would have been more logical.

I eventually found a really good page that let me look at other groups and pages It was off a tiny link found in my ‘Info Tab’ called ‘See All’ (See all what? My groups? All the groups?) Really, Mr Zuckerberg, don't you think with such a mass-used site a little attention to usability should be given some priority? I chose Business Groups and ended up seeing that the top business groups are not very business oriented!  

 This is the top three: ONE: Lower Fuel Price Petition (please sign..it’s a real Government petition) 422,176 members. TWO: People Who Always Have To Spell Their Names For Other People, 361,608 members. THREE: If one billion people join, each one of them will get a brand, 226,674 members.  Not very helpful, I thought, so I turn to Pages again, also accessed through that ‘Info Tab’ on a different ‘See All’ link (Confused? You will be.) This time I had to click another link on my Pages page called ‘Browse All Pages’.  Might have been better to call it Find More Pages?  Search Pages Directory? Either would be more user-friendly.  

However, in Browse All Pages I I found some really good stuff: pop groups, brands, people, films, restaurants, it was great.  Then I wondered why would someone create a page in the first place, so I took a look at the number one page on Facebook. It turned out to be “Barack Obama - US Senator for Illinois” which has 1,342,636 supporters.  Tell me another way of communicating with over a million people instantly, whenever you want, on a daily basis...for free!

 Following the old adage people buy people, Obama has found a hell of a way to sell himself.  People will get to know him, it will seem to them, on a one to one basis.  Barack Obama also has a MySpace page wih 451,179 friends but that’s another article.  So how are his rivals doing? Not so well, I fear: John McCain and Hillary Clinton are at 205,250 supporters and 162,066 supporters respectively.  http://www.new.Facebook.com/s.php?k=200000010&n=-1&c1=8&sf=f&c2=115#<http://www.new.Facebook.com/s.php?k=200000010&amp;n=-1&amp;c1=8&amp;sf=f&amp;c2=115#> /barackobama?ref=pdb (Why can’t Facebook use nice URLs like linkedin.com?)

Even the good old Mayor for London, Boris Johnson, is there with 14,052 supporters although his site has clearly not been touched untouched for a while as it says he is still running for mayor! Also the links he has displayed don’t go anywhere useful.  Links like www.backboris.com <http://www.backboris.com> go to a page listing Comedians, Fantasy, Stage Hypnotist and Trade Union links. Seems like an expired domain to me.  It appears City Hall needs some serious help with their online strategy, who knows,  maybe they’ll call. 

He could link those 14,000 supporters to his blog www.boris-johnson.com <http://www.boris-johnson.com>. If he promoted his Facebook profile he would be able to utilise all the real power of Facebook with demographically targeted ads and polls, and the ability to quickly convey messages to people who are interested.  Wouldn’t it be good to instantly publish a poll based on his blog post ‘Would Labour get rid of Gordon Brown? Or would they stagger on?’ He could really know not only what the public thought but also what the demographic was using Facebook’s insights reporting system http://www.new.Facebook.com/business/?insights=<http://www.new.facebook.com/business/?insights=>. Facebook Insights gives you access to data on activity, fan demographics, ad performance and trends and no other online platform has this much demographic information.

Next I turn to the category Places. The  top place with nearly 112,000 fans is Disneyland and it does a really good job in engaging people to want to go there.  Top Products are Apple Students and Victoria's Secret PINK, both with about half a million fans. Apple seem as always to have a slick approach to their page, using a strong marketing approach to create a community as well as slick adverts and promotion of products.  Victoria’s Secret PINK seem to use the page mainly as an advert with a link back to their site. Some promotional banners for products are also there but not animated like the Apple one.  

Facebook Business Opportunities

Facebook Platform: Applications abound on Facebook. I gave up when I got to 2,000! Social applications allow members to interact their friends and businesses.  Most applications I found were for fun but some have practical uses.  The most popular applications are Slide FunSpace (formerly FunWall) (20,964,181 monthly active users), which allows users to find and share videos, posters, graffiti, and more.  Top Friends (17,075,103 monthly active users), allows you to give and receive exclusive awards, show off your mood and keep tabs on the people you really care about.   

I particularly liked Shopit, which allows you to add a free shop to your profile. http://www.shopit.com <http://www.shopit.com> /.  It is a great example of someone making a good commercial use of Facebook.  I wonder if there is a way for major brands to take a commercial advantage of the Facebook application platform? Guess there is one way to find out... http://developers.Facebook.com <http://developers.facebook.com> . Better get my developers on to building apps.

Facebook Ads: Perhaps the best targeted advertising ever created, ComScore reports that Facebook attracted 132.1 million unique visitors in June 2008, compared to MySpace which attracted 117.6 million.  Creating a Facebook advert is straight forward and you really can be very specific with your target audience. 

I am running an experimental advert targeting people between 25 and 50 years old in the United Kingdom who are Marketing Assistant, Marketing Associate, Marketing Consultant, Marketing Director, Marketing Manager, or Marketing Specialist.  This advert is to promote my Internet Marketing Specialist (SEO, PPC and more) AGI page. http://www.new.Facebook.com/pages/Internet-Marketing-Specialist-SEO-PPC-and-more-AGI/31138893331<http://www.new.facebook.com/pages/Internet-Marketing-Specialist-SEO-PPC-and-more-AGI/31138893331>  to the 5,000 people who match this demographic

If I was selling an alco-pop drink I couldn’t go far wrong showing an advert to people between 18 and 30 years old in the United Kingdom who like Drinking, Clubbing, or Getting Drunk.  Turns out there are 340,420 of this demographic on Facebook!  Given a suitable incentive you could get quite a few people trying your brand.

Facebook Polls: Again easy to set up. You can run a poll over as short a period as 24 hours for as little as $26, which will give you a max of 100 results where you can see the demographic breakdown of those who answer.  A poll allows you to ask a single question with a multiple choice of five answers.  It’s a great way to get quick market research  results for your business.  You can target demographics on polls although not in such a flexible way as the ads.  The reporting on the polls is great, clear, detailed and easy to understand.

Facebook Beacon: A fantastic social viral way of promoting a website, Facebook Beacons allow you to add code to your website so that when a certain action is completed e.g. purchasing a product, signing up for a service, adding an item to a wish list, or downloading something, a story is published to the user’s Facebook profile.  Users are alerted to this and given the option to opt out, however when I downloaded the Facebook app for my iPod touch I don’t remember ever being told that my Facebook profile was going to tell everyone I had done so! I can only presume this was a Beacon in action and that Facebook have now changed it to alert users.  I can think of many fantastic uses for Beacons but getting one is not so straight forward. You have to be manually chosen for the program and after sending several emails to Facebook I have yet to receive a response.

In summary, WOW! Facebook has me hooked, I check it every night, it lets me stay in contact with friends all over the world, it brings people closer together.  Aside from some bad publicity stating sites such as Facebook could be costing firms over £130m a day (BBC News online), it also has great opportunities, with a vast audience over 10 million in the UK alone.  The only thing I would say is that my Facebook profile is one I use for friends only.  I use Linkedin.com for my professional profile.  I have a separate Facebook page to promote myself professionally, but I have heard that mixing your personal social network with your professional one is not advised.  It is not necessarily a good idea to let your clients know when you have been out for a big night the day before a presentation or that your Brain Game score is below average!  But if you want to reach a specific demographic then I can think of no better way... at the moment.