When Facebook was founded in 2004, it was meant to be a way for college students to connect with the friends that they had left who had gone to other colleges, however it has become an insane social tool that everyone (including my parents) have subscribed to.

Facebook may be looking into becoming an operating system for communications as far as personal computers are concerned. This means that Facebook wants to become as much as a part of your life as Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, or other companies that have become household names.

Last week Facebook let its users see a version of its search software that allows members to search news links as well as other topics that users have updated in real time. This feature is not just limited to friends, but to the network of over 250 million users. I can’t forget to mention that the social networking site has acquired FriendFeed. FriendFeed is similar to the rival social site Twitter. It allows users to bring together all their favorite content from other websites or blogs as well as services to one place so all their other friends can see it.

Once upon a time, Facebook was started as a group of Harvard students sitting in a room together who had a great idea. It was meant for people who were in college and had college email addresses to sign up. Now the site is open to anyone over the age of 13. This, of course, has brought in some heat from previous users who didn’t want to be friends with their younger siblings, but it has since grown to them not wanting to be friends with their parents, or worse yet…grandparents.

Facebook has also seen its fair share of criticism with the implementation of the news feed, which was seen by many as a “stalker feed” type of thing where anyone who you were friends with (or sometimes not) could see what you were doing on Facebook. However, over time, this made Facebook an application that many people sought out the site for, and it eventually made the site much more relevant.

Facebook has had plenty of opposition from other social networking sites. MySpace was supposed to be the greatest social networking site on the internet, but is now seen (by many) as a dirty place that many people don’t go anymore. Twitter serves a single purpose, and not much more than that.

I think that Facebook is already a social networking superpower and over time it will be seen if the company can keep it up or let it slip away from them.

Facebook announced yesterday that it had won a lawsuit and $711 million in damages from internet spammer, Sanford Wallace. The social networking site sued him after he spammed the site and would not stop.

Facebook claimed that Wallace was able to get into users’ accounts and send messages to their friends. He was phishing for information and/or hacked the accounts because he was able to get in to them without permission. When someone’s friend saw a message from their “friend” (who was really Wallace’s “marketing” company) they would open it unsuspecting…

“Wallace willfully violated the statutes in question with blatant disregard for the rights of Facebook users whose accounts were compromised by his conduct,” U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel in San Jose wrote in his court order.

Wallace has been sued in the past, by MySpace, another social networking website. In May of last year, MySpace won a judgment of $230 million against him for sending junk mail and messages to its users.

He was also fined by the FTC in 2006 for $4 million due to his use of excessive pop-up ads.

So, basically whenever anyone thinks of the “bad” sides of internet marketing they are thinking about this guy. His scams are so sleazy that even a used car salesman wouldn’t use the same tactics that he does (a subprime mortgage lender, maybe).

I am glad to see that people and companies are taking spammers like this one to court and actually winning cases. It is awfully annoying to be a user of a social networking site and know that your friends’ accounts are being hacked and phished and messages that are coming from them may or may not be real messages.

I wish someone would go after the guy who announces in a popup “Would you like to make $5000 a week….” and then when you hit the “x” at the top of the screen, another popup comes up that asks if you’re sure. That is really annoying and I’m pretty sure that most people wouldn’t fall for such a scheme, but they are annoying anyway.

I know that marketers have to come up with new ways to get your attention, but I feel as though the more IN YOUR FACE they are with the way they market, then the less inclined people will be to actually want to purchase the product, and will actually go out of the way NOT to buy it.

It even happens that way with television ads, in my opinion. The main reason I won’t ever purchase “Head On” is not only because I think it is a weird product with  no real medical value past putting a wet cloth on your own forehead, the ads are so LOUD and annoying that I try to steer clear of anything like that.

The 2009 Tribalization of Business Survey conducted by Deloitte, Beeline Labs in conjunction with the Society for New Communications Research came out recently that said that 94% of companies want to keep up with their social networking efforts or even invest more into them. There are only 6% that were surveyed that weren’t getting the results they wanted from the sites.

Just over 400 companies were surveyed for the report.

“Despite risks associated with participating in online communities, the internal costs of community formation and management and the fact that we are in the midst of a profound recession, organizations’ continued and enhanced investment in online communities underscores the perceived potential for the value that they may provide to the enterprise,” said Ed Moran, director of product innovation, Deloitte Services LP. “Social media and communities are expected to continue to play a significant role in the way in which companies are interacting with employees, customers, partners and the larger business ecosystem, thereby redefining the very edge of the corporation.”

As far as online communities and social media is concerned, the majority of those surveyed found that word of mouth, customer loyalty, and brand awareness were the main reasons for continuing the investment into social networking. A smaller percentage believed that idea generation and customer support were also important aspects of divulging into the new media.

A lot of companies are finding themselves needing to have a social networking site just to keep up with competition. Many customers and patrons feel like they are more connected with the company if they can interact with a social networking site. Also, businesses are able to get the word out about new products and promotions quickly and with minimal effort with sites like Facebook, Myspace, and Twitter.

I personally like when a company has some kind of promotion through their Facebook site, since I’m on the site all the time anyway, it is nice to be able to see when there is some kind of new thing or product coming out that the company (which I like anyway) wants to promote.

Source

Facebook has been operating in the red since the beginning of the company just a handful of years ago. Today it was reported that the company is finally beginning to have profitable operations and that according to CEO Mark Zuckerberg, the company is now cash flow positive and has been since the second quarter.

From the Facebook Blog as posted by Zuckerberg:

“We’re also succeeding at building Facebook in a sustainable way. Earlier this year, we said we expected to be cash flow positive sometime in 2010, and I’m pleased to share that we achieved this milestone last quarter. This is important to us because it sets Facebook up to be a strong independent service for the long term.

Over time, Facebook will continue to be as strong as all of the connections you make. We’ll continue building new and better things to make connecting with the people you care about as easy and rewarding as possible. We thank all of you for helping us reach the point where we are connecting 300 million people, and we hope to serve you and many more people in increasingly deep and innovative ways in the months and years ahead.”

In a previous release from Facebook, the company was not expected to be cash flow positive until sometime in 2010, so seeing profits in the second quarter 2009 is a welcomed surprise.

Facebook also boasts more than 300 million users all across the world.

While the social networking site MySpace has begun to see its numbers slip and users go on “extended vacations” from the site, Facebook is seeing a spike in users and is now looking to hire 50% more employees sometime in the near future.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that there is a surplus of engineers and that it’s a great environment for the company right now.

The website currently has 1,000 employees and plans on building its workforce, but at a much slower pace than other start-ups. When you compare Facebook to Google, Facebook has barely grown its workforce at all. Google has nearly doubled its staff every year for the three years following the year it went public.

This move could prove to be smart for the site because it is definitely a good way to keep costs down. The site wishes to reach a positive cash flow next year and having fewer employees is a good way to make that happen.

The problem that the site is having with advertisers is that a study showed that people who use social networking sites like Facebook are much less likely to click on ads or purchase anything from the ads on the sites. Currently, Facebook makes its money from advertising and little extras around the site like the “gifts” system where users pay for “gifts” to post on friends’ walls.

I’m sure if you’ve been paying attention to what I say when I talk about social networking sites, Facebook is very obviously my favorite. I rarely log into MySpace anymore and Twitter is something I only use if I’m bored and can’t play on Facebook on my phone. Twitter will likely not even be a blip on my radar once the Pre comes out with a Facebook application.

There are a few steps that employees can do to make themselves known to employers to hopefully be promoted one day. Those same tactics are now being implemented by the workforce to not be fired when the next line of lay offs comes their way.

So what’s the secret?

According to BusinessWeek here are a few of the tips from the magazine:

1) Focus on the company’s success rather than your own. Most employers don’t have the time (or money) to deal with any potential problems you may have. When you’re at work, you are there to work and not create drag for you or your team.

2) You have to be more than willing to change. I don’t just mean use blue pens instead of black pens, you have to be ready and willing to change direction at the drop of a dime and be ready for it. If the company is looking to mix up the product lines or create a new mission statement for the company, its time to be the “yes man” and learn how to cooperate with the change.

3) Be great at your job and be useful in every aspect of the company. While this is a lot of work, it shows your employer that you have a commitment to the company by going above and beyond your own responsibilities.

4) Social hour should be after work, not during. The last thing a company needs is for its employees to be negative and do a lot of gossiping while on the clock. “No complaining, no blaming!”

5) You have to follow the rules, even the ones that may not have been written down. An example is to be at work early and be at least willing to stay late. When looking at this tip, now would be a good time to quit smoking and start bringing your lunch to work with you to avoid smoke breaks and long lunches.

6) You need to solve problems before they happen. If there’s a way to make the company more efficient (or make it more money), tell your supervisor. Of course, this means there will be some time away from the workplace and in your home where you may have to do some research about competitors and what they’re doing. Doing this ensures that you are seen as an asset to the company

7) Get to know people outside your department, especially those in human resources.

8 ) Social networking is important, if not crucial in today’s workplace. On the BusinessWeek article this tip is titled “Start Tweeting or Start Packing.” I think that this tip is more important to those in the marketing field than those in, say, the accounting department. Social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook are easy to set up and use. Here’s a warning: Don’t “Facebook” too much at work.

It looks like the giant social networking site MySpace is gearing up for some serious layoffs. It is expecting to have to lay off as many as 500 of the 1,600 it currently has working at their headquarters.

The company, owned by News Corp, is trying to cut costs to help in the fight with arch rival Facebook.

MySpace currently had committed to a 12 year lease on a Playa Vista building near Los Angeles, CA. The lease would have cost the company roughly $350 million. Now, because of financial hardships faced by the company, it has backed out of the lease. The building was a 420,000 square foot office space in Play Vista, California.

The market share for MySpace has been declining steadily since it was bought by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp in 2005. It has been losing visitors and advertisers to Facebook, and more recently, Twitter.

In my own opinion, as well as the opinion of many of my friends, is that MySpace is a second rate Facebook. Even though many of us have been using MySpace for longer, the overall sight design as well as some of the more unsavory clientele have made the site really come in second place to Facebook, but still well above the Xuqa. Now, even though Twitter isn’t my favorite social networking thing, I find myself on it more than I am on MySpace…perhaps its because it is one of the only social networking applications on my new phone.

So it appears that Tom will be losing nearly a third of his coworker friends on MySpace. I hope that those developers and programmers find work, but not at Facebook because I like Facebook the way it is, even if all the applications and quizzes are really annoying at times.