Various Teams in Facebook
Some of the different teams of the Facebook organization include Marketing, Legal, Information, Human Resources,etc. These various teams allow each sector to promote growth within each team to allow to contribute greatly to the success of the company as a whole. In my opinion, the most important team in the Facebook organizational chain is the human resources team because they do exceptionally well at listening, responding, and implementing customer feedback. Overall, Facebook is a well rounded and innovative technology giant that will continue to innovate and grow as time progresses.
Facebook does many things well, after all, it is the largest social media platform. It provides its users with quick, high quality communication worldwide At the top of this list of things Facebook does well is advertising. In an article published on Investopedia, written by Rakesh Sharma, Sharma stated that “ Facebook made more than $40 billion in revenue in 2017, approximately 89 percent of which came from digital advertisements. Facebook’s method of mass advertising includes targeting products at specific genders, ages, regions, ethnicities, musical preferences, etc. They find this information by looking at your profile information, pages you follow and pages you like. For example, a company such as Toys r us, want to send toy advertisements across the United States. They will produce many different advertisements relating to your region. Then, they will send mass advertisements that will appeal to your ethos, logos, and pathos, which will increase the chances of you buying that product.
Increased Privacy Settings
This method has proved more successful than the older style of advertising of sending one mass advertising to everyone, no matter who the advertisement appeals to. Second on the list of things that Facebook does well is listening to their users and customers. This organization has taken all constructive criticism received and reconstructed their whole platform to make its users requests a reality while still focusing on the image portrayed by Zuckerburg. This includes increased privacy settings that will protect user information, such as card numbers, cell phone numbers, and the use of personal pictures without authorization. Third on the list of things Facebook does well is the monitoring and distribution of a vasts amounts of information worldwide. They do this by having contracted companies monitor every post posted worldwide. For example, at any given time of the day you will see information from the current Brexit discussions to how Japan is combating the future hurricane season. With this information being spread rapidly, Facebook’s contracted information verification companies have their hands full monitoring the 2.5 billion active monthly users.
While being the largest social media platform, Facebook still has its fair share of flaws. At the top of the list of things Facebook does poorly, is its current privacy policy. When logging into facebook it asks you personal information that could possibly lead to hacking of your account’s information and identity theft. This personal information includes your address, phone number, pictures, and credit cards for facebook pay. While having this information on facebook makes actions, such as online shopping and applying to jobs, easier, this could also have substantial negative effects. Although Facebook has companies checking for misinformation and spam posts, they need to bring more attention to content censorship, which is the second item on my list of things Facebook does poorly. It was recently discovered that terrorists all over the world were found using this platform and spreading their extremist messages through various extremist groups. Although they have begun to combat this more strictly there still is need of the total shutdown of these groups, because they could potentially be planning the next 9/11 through coded messages and the world would never know. In an article published by Bloomberg and written by Vernon Silver and Sarah Frier, they stated that “Facebook has added content reviewers. It has 7,500, up 40 percent from the year before.
Content Reviewers
They work in about 40 languages”,. This number of content reviewers seems very small compared to the amount of monthly viewers content that must be reviewed. I’m not saying that Facebook is the only platform being used by these extremist groups but it is most certainly one of the largest and I think more effort should be put toward this. Third on the list of things Facebook does poorly is slow innovation. When Facebook is compared to other companies, although it is the largest, it still seems to be currently targeting the baby boomer generation. They are not focusing enough on the millenials, which in turn could cost them the mammoth social media market share.
With Facebook being one of the largest social media platforms, it has many threats and opportunities. The greatest threat for Facebook is other social media platforms. These platforms could take the Facebook idea and change the layouts and codes slightly, and could potentially overtake Facebook as the largest social media platform. Facebook does have many patents protecting their specific brand, but patents are very specific and just a slight adjustment to the image or platform’s code could make the competitor legal to launch their new platform. With the threat of competition, Facebook has to invent new software that will appeal to millenials, to allow it to maintain its largest social media platform title. Major competitors, such as Instagram and Tiktok, have begun using picture filters, financial incentives, and plaques for its users. Another threat that has faced Facebook was the need to keep up with company growth. As the younger generation grows in size and social influence, this leads to the need of increased software to enable a smooth operating system. This cost a large investment to keep users happy and company software up to date. This also leads to newer technology being needed to keep user interest. A large threat facing Facebook is information leaking. Facebook executives have found themselves being questioned before the Supreme Court about how advertisers target its customers. In an article published by The Guardian written by Chloe Watson, Watson quoted Zuckerberg saying that “what we allow is for advertisers to tell us who they want to reach, and then we do a placement”,. This landed Zuckerberg in lawsuits due to some people feeling discriminated against and the Supreme Court ruled that they discriminated on the basis of race.
Innovation and New Products
Facebook has many opportunities in the expansion, research and development, and diversification fields. The first opportunity is Facebook should actively pursue innovation on new products within the Facebook app that would target the millenials. This would not only increase revenue but significantly increase monthly users. They should attempt to diversify the app to where the older generations could keep the current platform and millennials could change to a newer, more trendy layout. By Facebook not currently pushing this idea, I think they are losing their grip on the market to other platforms. Second is, Facebook could also push for a code that will help themselves and law enforcement fight crime. This opportunity may not be a large revenue generator but it has many positive incentives that could otherwise benefit the company, such as user satisfaction, user safety, and could possibly lower the national crime rate. Another opportunity is Facebook should put out a survey that asks its users, who want to participate, what they want from Facebook as far as technology, their system, and layout. This will potentially make users feel better that the platform is listening to them recommendations and increase satisfaction.
I would recommend Facebook to begin aiming their platform toward millennials because other platforms are rapidly gaining market share practicing this approach to better have a sustainable competitive advantage. A sustainable competitive advantage is a long term advantage that is not simple to duplicate by competitors. This should include layout changes, more appealing systems, such as filters, and better privacy. Facebook currently has a competitive advantage in the social media sector. I think they can maintain this advantage by increasing advertising sales and appeal to the Millenials. I would suggest surveys, in the company and the public, as to what users want to see from Facebook in the future.
