Why Facebook?

Do you know the top sites traffic rankings globally speaking? Number one is easy right? Of course it is Google, then Yahoo, followed by You tube and Live. So who is number 5? Yeah, the number one social network Facebook. According to alexa.com Facebook is just surpassed by youtube and some of the giant search engines. It is above other popular and important sites like Wikipedia, MSN, MySpace, or Blogger. Even when compared with the titan of the web Google, Facebook doesn’t seem that small, especially under the last months.

In Canada for example, face book is bigger than Yahoo.

My space was probably Face book’s biggest competitor but today face book is the leder, at least according to Alexa.com top ten sites. One fact that I consider worth mentioning is that according to Myspace is used more like a “fantasy alternative life”, in which people pretend to be something there are not where as in Facebook users are more real. Sounds like a good place to search for information about customers or to be an interesting place to use personalized ads …

Social networks are growing in an impressive way. For example in 2008 “79.5 million people, or 41% of the US Internet user population, visited social network sites at least once a month, an 11% increase from 2007” according to emarketer. This trend will continue in 2009 and social networking will probably become a daily habit for more users. Not just the members are increasing but also their level of involvement; they are spending more time and effort within the societies. Also users are diversifying, now we find different segments (adults, teens, girls…) among facebook followers for example.

The big question still the same… how to harness stable revenues from social networks?

In conclusion social networks are going huge. Users are taking their e profiles and pages a lot more seriously; the level of involvement and frequency of usage is going up. This growth means U2U communication, either good or bad for your company. An exellent example of this trend is MySpace, which might be an excellent opportunity to reach your target audience and to go beyond.