Facebook, Macro and Micro Communication
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History
Facebook was founded by Harvard computer science major Mark Zuckerbergin 2004. In the first few years of its existence, Facebook was only available for college students. As the Facebook hype started to expand, Facebook Inc. made its online community available to all users. Since it's release, Facebook has profited more than a billion dollars in revenue and is today's most popular social networking website.
Overview
In the past ten years we have seen the web revolutionized by social networking. It started out with your basic email, then moved to direct chat (AOL instant messenger), and ended today with a combination of nearly all things needed to communicate among your peers. Today, Facebook incorporates all aspects of communicating via the web. You can do nearly everything with Facebook from email, to instant messaging, to sharing information about yourself. What is most intriguing about Facebook's structure is that it is just as easy to communicate to the masses as it is to individuals. With features such as the ability to create pages for upcoming events, Facebook's user's can inform and update their peers in seconds rather than having to communicate via telephone which would take hours. In addition to being able to manage events, Facebook also brings people together via group pages, where users can collectively or individually discuss a wide variety of things from current events to something as simple as coordinating meeting times or sharing information for a group project. In addition to being a great organizational tool, Facebook is extremely accessible and easy to use. Facebook relates to the Web 2.0 concept of technology above a single device in a wide array of ways. With extremely popular innovations today such as the iPhone or Blackberry hand-held device, Facebook users can have access to the content of their page at any point in time. The technology that Facebook offers is eliminating many mis-communications amongst people at a rapidly fast pace which is why more than just teens and college students are using it. Since more than 100 million people are Facebook users [[1]], many businesses have began using it not just as a way to advertise, but as a way to communicate important information such as meeting times or company goals within the organization. As more and more people join and use Facebook, it's technology will continue to advance as well as our ability to communicate because as Web 2.0 preaches, a websites power lies in the hands of its users.
Financial
What started out as a Harvard dorm room project quickly turned into a multi-billion dollar company. Since it's release in 2004, Facebook Inc. has raked in an average 300 million dollars per year revenue. Major companies such as Microsoft and Google have invested into the Facebook empire. In 2007, Microsoft announced its acquisition of a 1.6% share of Facebook for $240 million. It is said that Microsoft's involvement alone put Facebook's total networth at a staggering 15 billion dollars.
Accesibility
Since the popular advent of smart phones in today's society, facebook has made itself available at almost any point in time. The ever popular hand-held Blackberrydevice has intertwined all of Facebooks features into its user experience. With the Facebook application, Blackberry offers a range of functions such as the ability to integrate Facebook events into the BlackBerry calendar, or using Facebook profile pictures for Caller ID.
Bibliography
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Zuckerberg http://oreilly.com/web2/archive/what-is-web-20.html http://www.facebook.com/ http://whyfacebook.com/2008/08/28/10-reasons-to-use-facebook-for-business/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BlackBerry