Facebook: The largest social network in the world

Résumé du document

We know that nowadays, there are about 1.7 billion people connected to the web and the social networks phenomenon is becoming increasingly important and especially one social media: Facebook. We can ask ourselves how this kind of website became as important in a short time and how Facebook has succeeded in becoming the largest social network in the world. For this, we have used a combination of primary (questionnaire devoted to international students) and secondary data (newspaper, books, blog articles). The first step was to make a background to see what has been written about social networks and Facebook, and then the author made a questionnaire to compare its results with his findings.

Thus, we have seen that nowadays, Facebook count 600 million users including 200 million in its mobile platform. Its strategy to attract new users has been in a first time to translate the website and now, specific strategies are used to attract users in developing countries. Moreover, we have seen that Facebook is now the biggest data base in the world but its privacy policy does not protect its users. Finally, in the questionnaire, we have seen that 99% of respondents are in a social network including 94% of them on Facebook. They use it everyday to keep in touch with their friends by chatting, sharing content etc.
 

Extraits

[...] With deals, Facebook allows local businesses to propose to mobile users discounts when they are close to the shop. It is a very good way for the company to earn money How Facebook Attracts New Users As we said before, the website has attracted about 600 million users in the last six years, but Facebook will have to find a new strategy if it wants to have one billion customers. The first step in Facebook's strategy to attract new users has been to translate the website. [...]

[...] Most of the respondents ( 48.6 have heard about Facebook from a friend on the internet of them thanks to word of mouth and the rest via the media. Question How often do you log on Facebook? The vast majority of respondents log on to Facebook every day and the rest of them at least once a week. Question How much time do you spend on Facebook at each connection? No major trend emerges from this question, indeed of respondents declare that they spend between 5 and 20min while of them say that Facebook is always on when they are on their computer. [...]

[...] Indeed, he has chosen to make a survey because he thinks that it is the best way to obtain insightful information about the topic (Facebook) and from the target population which is international students because depending on the countries, people use Facebook in a different way. Indeed, the authors has interviewed 74 people, they are all student, from 17 to 25 years old and is composed of 58% of females and 42% of males. The population comes mostly from France, but also from England, Germany, Spain and China. In chapter three, we are going to see the results of this survey while chapter four will be devoted to analyze the results. Question Do you have an account on a social network? [...]

[...] It contains four parts, firstly we will see the research questions and hypothesis, secondly we will see the author's research approach and strategy, thirdly, we will see the data collection and finally the problems and limits that the author had to face Research Questions and Hypothesis To carry out its research, the author began by defining a number of research issues and objectives. Following the funnel method, the author has begun with general questions about social networks to understand the success of these websites: - What is a social network? - Why social networks are so successful? After this, he continued with specific questions about Facebook to find out more about the website, its strategy and its success: - What are Facebook's main characteristics? - How many people are using Facebook? - How do people use Facebook? [...]

[...] - Who are Facebook's main competitors? Concerning the hypothesis, the author thinks that the main reason of Facebook's success is because it is the more complete social website; indeed, users can publish some texts, pictures, videos. They can also chat and publish what they want on their friends' walls. Moreover, this website allows people to join some groups (political, sport, brands, funny . ) and there are a lot of applications (online games). The other reason is because Facebook is one of the first social networks and the website has been able to adapt to new technologies by creating “Facebook applications” for Iphone, Blackberry, Ipad, etc Research Approach and Strategy .For this dissertation, the author has adopted the deductive approach, indeed, as we said before, he has adopted the funnel method by starting to find general information about social networks. [...]