Facebook has been in the news a ton recently and it's no surprise given the: explosive growth they are experiencing, the growth of the social media sector as a whole and the innovation Facebook has ignited after opening up their platform for people to develop their own applications.
So it makes sense to quickly get up-to-speed on the "toplines" of what's new at Facebook, and that's the purpose of this post. As always, please feel free to post comments & ask questions about what interests or confuses you you have a resource article or thought to add, and we'll go deeper into those topics in future posts.
Microsoft Investment: In October Microsoft paid $240 million for a 1.6% stake in Facebook. You can read a quick summary of the ramifications of that in this New York Times article.
Software Platform: Facebook's announcement in May of this year they were allowing developers to create applications for Facebook and pocket the money from their efforts has spurred hundreds of applications. Business 2.0 had a great article in their September issue on The Facebook Economy.
Advertising Platform: In November Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced Facebook Ads, "an ad system for businesses to connect with users and target advertising to the exact audiences they want". This enables businesses to build pages on Facebook, users to spread viral brand messages through Facebook Social Ads and a way for marketers to gather data on people's activity. For more details, check out the press release and the Facebook Ads page at Facebook.com/ads
Privacy Concerns: One of the drawbacks of adding applications or new advertising vehicles to a site like Facebook is that some of those apps or ad vehicles are bound to be controversial. One of the biggest controversies lately has been around the Beacon widget, which shows a Facebook user's friends what they'd purchased online from a third party site. These DM News & Business Week articles have the details and here is a press release from Facebook
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