Why Facebook?
In our previous post, The History of Facebook: Part 3, we continued our series on Facebook with the final part of a three part series on the history of the company.
In this post, we continue on with our discussion by asking, why Facebook?
Why Facebook?
As the world’s largest social network, no matter what you used to think about Facebook, your enterprise needs to be there. When we did training on Facebook in mid-2009, many of our students still had the mentality that Facebook was a toy for kids, and many expressed the belief that they would never have any use for the social network.
That was then. This is now:[1]
- Facebook reported its second-quarter 2012 ad revenue rose 14% from the previous quarter and 28% from a year ago. However, quarterly ad revenues in 2011 grew by as much as 87% from the year-ago period. Global online ad sales represented 85% of its 2011 total $3.7 billion in revenue.[2]
- Facebook is sticky. Nielsen findings indicate members spent on average almost seven hours on the site in May 2012, by far the most time spent on a Website among the top 10 (Yahoo was a distant second at 2:11.)[3]
- Facebook was the number five video streaming site in September 2012 with more than 46 million unique viewers, trailing YouTube and Yahoo, AOL and Vevo [4]
- Facebook’s user growth may be slowing after it hit a billion users, but the company thinks there’s plenty of global growth ahead.
- Facebook’s total number of users is on track to overtake China’s population total within the next five years
- In May, 2012, Facebook had 158.01 million unique visitors in the United States, edging lower from 158.69 million in April and 158.93 million in March, according to traffic measurement company comScore[5]
- Far from being just for kids, Facebook shows great demographic balance:
- While more than half of users are in the 18-34 age group, the 35+ demographic now represents more than 38 percent of the entire user base
- The strongest growth segment, 55+, grew a whopping 922 percent in 2009 and 35 percent (3,443,460 users) in the first half of 2010
- Teenagers are just 10 percent of the membership
Figure 57 — Facebook Users by Age — June, 2011 [6]
If we’ve succeeded in browbeating you into submission with all these stats, and you’re ready to get serious about Facebook, the posts that follow will get you started.
Next up: Use Facebook Professionally
Why Facebook? is the 120th in a series of excerpts from our book, Be a Person: the Social Operating Manual for Enterprises (itself part of a series for different audiences). We’re just past page 325. At this rate it’ll be a long time before we get through all 430 pages, but luckily, if you’re impatient, the book is available in paper form at bit.ly/OrderBeAPerson and you can save $5 using Coupon Code 6WXG8ABP2
Get our new book, The Infinite Pipeline: How to Master Social Media for Business-to-Business Sales Success online here. You can save $5 using Coupon Code 62YTRFCV
What Others Are Saying
“Infinite Pipeline offers practical advice for using social media to extend relationship selling online. It’s a great way to get crazy-busy prospects to pay attention.”
—Jill Konrath, author of SNAP Selling and Selling to Big Companies
“Sales is all about relationships and trust. Infinite Pipeline is the ‘how to’ guide for maximizing social networks to find and build relationships, and generate trust in our digital age.”
—Sam Richter, best-selling author, Take the Cold Out of Cold Calling (2012 Sales book of the year)
“Infinite Pipeline will be the authority on building lasting relationships through online social that result in bottom line business.”
—Lori Ruff, The LinkedIn Diva, Speaker/Author and CEO of Integrated Alliances
[1] Stats courtesy of iStrategy Labs 1/2010: bit.ly/dlB2lg and 6/2010: bit.ly/dlB2lg
[2] Inside Facebook’s Push to Woo Big Advertisers, on.wsj.com/NosIrb
[3] Top U.S. Web Brands and News websites, Nielsen Wire bit.ly/Yv6pP7
[4] comScore Releases September 2012 U.S. Online Video Rankings bit.ly/X59s51
[5] Facebook’s unique visitors slipped in May: comScore | Reuters reut.rs/UYKWlR
[6] CheckFacebook.com: bit.ly/lBSBBN