Citizens of a mighty country called Facebook

Facebook now has one billion users every month. If it was country it would have been the third most populous in the world. The company says that those billion users were to date responsible for 1.13 trillion "likes", 219 billion photos and 17 billion location check-ins. How has it affected our lives?

On an average, I spend almost around 30 minutes on Facebook every day. I access it both on PC and on my smart phone. Since 2008, on a conservative estimate, I might have spent around 3000 hours doing something or the other on Facebook.  Being in the profession of media and communications, at one point, my job required me to engage only with social media tools. While at University in Scotland I actively used Facebook for recreation, heated debates and intellectual stimulation.

This is just me. Most of you who might be reading this could be spending (unknowingly) a similar amount of time on Facebook.  Depending upon the purpose you are using Facebook (and other social media tools) for you might say: ‘that’s really an awful amount of time – I just didn’t realise it.'

Many of us also suffer from Facebook syndrome. How many times have you sat in front of computer just to type facebook.com even when you didn’t want to visit the site? And what do you have to say when you hear that riot police in Netherlands were forced to break up crowds at a teenager’s 16th birthday party after 3,000 people turned up because she left the Facebook event invitation open!

In a nutshell, Facebook is a part and parcel of our life. Appealing to people of all age groups, Facebook not only serves as an interactive one-stop platform that enables someone to share messages and photos with their friends; it is also becoming a powerful media tool for citizen journalism, allowing people to express their opinions on a scale that has been unprecedented in human history.

During the Egyptian revolution in 2011,  Wael Ghonim, the Egyptian-born Google marketing executive, who first played a role in organising the opposition through Facebook, told the American audiences that without Facebook and( Twitter) their revolution ‘would never have happened.’   

For businesses and brands, Facebook enables them to directly get in touch with their core customers. It helps them to create communities, and brands such as Starbucks have more than 300,000 people following or liking them.  Whilst some see Facebook as an informal way to reach key buyers, others see it as their prime marketing tool. Brands today are increasing creating their Facebook page, and luring people to ‘like’ their pages to create brand loyalty.

Probably, in the years to come, Facebook can go beyond just being a social media tool.  It might want to integrate host of media platforms under one umbrella (which it already does to an extent) and charge subscription rates for its services.  Facebook can make available premium on-demand media content at very negligible price given its reach and ability create buzz.On the other hand, it might want the companies to pay an access charge to its billion plus users. It is often noticed that consumers are more convinced about a brand when they hear or see it on Facebook.

Facebook needs to have a business model where it can charge businesses for hosting their pages, and work more innovatively to penetrate in to the new emerging markets. Facebook has a massive data about each user. Without violating the privacy regulations, it can take permission from the users to display content or links of things that the user is interested in. 

A McKinsey report on mobile –internet revolution points out that  more than  70 percent of India’s urban consumers already spend about $1 a month on content and services through offline, unorganized retail channels—a market estimated to be worth more than $4 billion annually. Much of India’s young population loves to download videos and music, but not everyone is affluent or well educated. Due to their illiteracy or poor English they might not necessarily have the luxury of using an interactive tool. Facebook might want to pop out of the computer screens and develop tools that are easy to access and use. It might also contribute to areas like e-learning and beyond.

Over the years, Facebook has been offering the same things with a bit of tweaks.  The core strength of Facebook are its users, who patronise it and love it. Facebook has created a virtual (and largely a utopian) country. It is about time it lays the strong foundation to that country so that it can sustain itself in long run - it needs to offer us something new and more meaningful.