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Facebook Case Study

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Through its years of operation, Facebook has been able to evolve and remain as one of the most popular social networking sites ever created. Facebook’s purpose is for users to connect, share, and communicate with each other across the internet. The case explores the beginning of Facebook, in 2003, when Harvard student, Mark Zuckerberg first created an on-campus website called Facemash. The site would allow other students to rank the attractiveness of fellow students and quickly became the topic of conversation at the university. Zuckerberg would soon be placed on academic probation for breach of security, after the university learned he had hacked into Harvard’s computer network in order to use pictures of students on the website. This, however, did not deter Zuckerberg as he then began to work on his next website: The Facebook. The Facebook was launched in 2004, soon dropping the “The” to become Facebook. Zuckerberg knew the sites potential and allowed other universities in the Boston area to use the site. Over the next years, Facebook grew more and more popular, being used in over 800 colleges, universities and high schools. By the end of 2005, Facebook had earned 9 million in revenue and millions of monthly active users (The Guardian 2007). In 2012, Facebook’s sales reached 5.09 billion, the majority of revenue coming from advertising services and social gaming fees charged to platform developers (Floating Facebook: The value of friendship, “The Economist). Although,

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