Friendster, Facebook, Wikis, Blogs, YouTube, Flickr, Twitter… the list goes on! With so many to choose from, which is truly the most effective pass along medium for marketing communications use? Facebook.
Originally known as the social networking tool for students, Facebook’s membership has grown to include anybody and everybody seeking to join. The only requirement? An email address.
So why Facebook? Here are six reasons:
1. Many avid Facebook users don’t see the need to sign up for a Twitter account simply because of Facebook’s popular status updates, which appear on the Facebook homepage mini-feed.
2. Facebook is also the #1 photo-sharing social networking site that allows you to “tag” photos of users — a feature currently being offered by Flickr and Picasa.
3. Unlike MySpace, the Facebook page layout is cleaner, more secure and interactive. This has especially been more apparent since Myspace has recently been criticized for spam being sent to users.
4. Facebook marketplace operates very similarly to online classifieds such as Craigslist.
5. Facebook allows you to manage a social events calendar, invite users and send group updates
6. Targeted advertising — User information on Facebook such as sex, birthday, school, relationship status and interests allow advertisers to choose the exact target audience for their marketing communications campaign.
What are some reasons that you love Facebook over other social networking sites? Check out these two videos on the Facebook cultural phenomenon and its growing popularity…
I was a late comer to the social networking scene. I had used AOL’s instant messanger program to keep track of friends. I moved out of state and found it to be monumentally tougher to stay in the loop with everyone. I had refused up until that point in time to join any of the social networking sites due to its trendiness and caved a month after the moving and joined Myspace. While I enjoyed using it, not too long after joining, in early ’07, people started to migrate to Facebook(FB) so begrudgingly I switched as well. Since then my Myspace account has gotten minimal activity w/me loggin in every quarter or so as opposed to near daily on FB. The interface is much cleaner, less cluttered, and their recommendations are much better focused e.g. becoming a fan of a group or person or event is well targeted. Such a great marketing tool. I have witnessed a friend and independent film maker gain grassroot support with enough success to the point where it was invited and shown at the film fest in Tribeca. Also, the convenience of the interconnectivity between events and even picture tagging makes adding friends a cinch. Currently, I am anti-Twitter. I do not need any more outlets that would decrease my day to day productivity or inhibit sleep… but we’ll see what the future holds.