The modern era of electronic technology has brought great transformations to the lives of contemporary generation. The ever-changing trend of the computer technology has impacted almost every sector of the human life. The internet is one of the main aspects that have continued to play a significant role in the entire sector of computer technology.
The concept of social networking, which brings people together no matter the distance separating them, has been made easy by the internet. Major social networking sites such as Facebook, My Space and Twitter among others, have enormously led to the development and adversity of the contemporary world. Among other significant benefits, these sites have also paved way for the introduction of E-Commerce, a phenomenon that enables people to conduct business transactions over the internet.
Through social networking sites, sellers and buyers are able to interact online and actively take part in business activities (Turban et al., 2011). This paper explores the Facebook, as one of the social networking sites for business professionals, as it is highlighted in chapter 3 of the provided text.
Ever since its inception in the year 2006, facebook has rapidly grown to become one of the most popular websites of the modern day, as far as social networking is concerned. The site connects people from across the world whereby members can interact and communicate with each other in a number of interactive ways.
More importantly, Facebook serves as a basis for social networking activities which are certain to bring people closer to each other in life. Apart from just establishing ties with friends through chats and sharing of photographs and videos, facebook users can also access and join groups and networks that have common interests.
These are some of the features that have enabled the site to successfully create a strong online community within a very short period of time. Facebook has been successful in establishing its community and this is evident in the rapidly increasing numbers of people who join the site everyday. Currently, facebook is observed to have made a breakthrough in history, for having registered over 800 million daily users across the world so far.
Most facebook users are adolescents and young adults who like to take part in social life. As it would be observed, these specific facebook communities are associated with certain characteristics or features. For instance, these people have more friends or acquaintances and are likely to offer more social support compared to other people.
Frequent Facebook users are also more trusting and more willing to trust others, due to their uncountable interactions with many other people over the internet. Another outstanding characteristic of facebook members is that they are more politically active compared with other people.
Facebook offers a vast array of impressive features to its community and some of these would include live chats, messages and sharing of videos and photos. Moreover, the site acts as a basis where users can meet with people they have lost touch with in life, and revive old relationships. These features have continued to impress people all over the world, thus attracting very large numbers to join the site everyday. Another thing which attracts people to the site is its overwhelming acceptability allover the world.
Today, facebook offers a broader social trend for e-commerce activities through a bulletin board, where members can conduct business transactions. The site allows its users to set up a ‘group’ or a ‘page’ through which they can advertise their products and services. Business people and companies can also post advertisements on the site to publicize their products and services.
Apart from the individual users who are able to buy and sell products on facebook, major e-commerce sites also use the site to advertise their brands. Considering the site’s overwhelming popularity, which is characterized by great numbers of daily users, all kinds of businesses have discovered the benefits of utilizing effectively it to reach their customers.
The new ‘Like’ tool and the ‘Open Graph’ are some of the recent concepts being used by Facebook, as part of their plan to venture fully in the world of e-commerce. Facebook’s ‘Like’ button now appears in more than 50,000 websites, thus making it easy for users to express their attitude on products and services directly.
This makes it easy for the users to update their newsfeed, for friends to see and recommend on what they have liked. More importantly, people are also able to see the sites which their friends enjoy most. Open-Graph data on the other hand, shows a list of everything that members have liked across the web.
This Protocol will certainly establish a basis for the site’s adoption of credits from the broad world e-commerce market. Through these approaches, companies can easily direct their advertisements to the people who have liked content in their websites and this would in turn increase business opportunities. All these concepts play a significant role to the rapidly advancing world of e-commerce, thus forming an integral part of Facebook as a giant social networking site.
Reference
Turban, E., King, D, & Lang, J. (2011). Introduction to Electronic Commerce (3rd ed.). New Jersey: Prentice Hall. ISBN: 9780136109235.