Transportation Deployment Casebook/The Growth of Facebook

A Qualitative Study

What is Facebook ?

Facebook is the main social media powerhouse in the world as of today. It is a relatively recent technological innovation which came to fruition in 2004, enabling internet users to freely transport their ideas and thoughts from their fingertips to their respective social network. Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg alongside a few other colleagues during his university career and was officially launched to the public September 26, 2006.  

Technological Characteristics & Advantages

Initially the founders intended for the website to be a simple profiling application exclusive to Harvard University originally known as ‘Facemash’ in 2003. However, with its abrupt success and controversial publications, Zuckerberg immediately recognised the potential for the technology to transform into one that would disrupt and shape the global media and communications industry significantly.

Its original functions were to serve as a directory featuring personal photos as well as basic information. Through its evolution, Facebook’s technological characteristics has grown immensely with the addition of a diverse range of services that strengthen the digital ties which bind the cyber and real world together. Facebook is a platform with extremely high accessibility, with the ability to be opened via any device with internet and browsing capabilities. These include mobile phones, tablets, desktop and laptops and is also universally available in 140 languages. The use of Facebook has transitioned from one that was traditionally a social network service to one that is multipurpose serving both personal and business modes of exposure.

Key advantages that Facebook offers are an enhanced online social experience, providing ease of access to exploring the digital world. It enables people to be more transparent about their interests, however also comes with the lack of privacy that can be accounted for through user settings. People are finding the service incredibly useful as a communication tool, through the channel of instantaneous messenger services in conjunction with the ability to easily find and invite friends. Furthermore, business uses have met exponential profitability through the creation of Pages which enable an additional mode of connecting with customers as well as advertising and promotion. An increasing majority of university students are finding themselves managing group assignments and simple tasks through the creation of groups whilst procrastinators will be slaving away their hours to games such as Farmville. The best part about these components is that they are all free of charge, allowing for a wider market that harnesses Facebook.

Main Markets

The market for Facebook has a global reach, despite being banned in several counties such as China, Iran and North Korea. As of January 2018, there are over 2.2 billion users that actively use the service monthly. A study performed by Pingdom in 2012 found that 65% of total Facebook users are 35 with an average age just over 40. Furthermore, a survey conducted by Pew found that 63% of male internet users and 70% of female users actively use Facebook. Business owners are also provided with the flexibility of choosing their target demographic when advertising content on the service. In terms of geographical context, Facebook’s presence is split amongst 140 countries with 52% of the US population being active users. A population pyramid from 2010 illustrates the consensus for Facebook users in figure 1.

Figure 1: Population Pyramid

Before Facebook

Prior to the advent of Facebook, there were other social network services available however they were limited by their customizability and features. In 2002, Friendster was launched which saw relative success until 2008 where its membership peaked but slowly declined afterwards due to its emphasis on media aspects rather than social. LinkedIn opened in 2003, and maintained a focus on corporate networking which has driven its success to its current day status.

MySpace also opened in 2003 posing as Facebook’s main competitor and inevitably saw its userbase decline after the launch of Facebook. MySpace was limited by comparison to Facebook’s features that Myspace did not offer such as the Wall as well as the ability to decorate profiles using plain text rather than HTML or CSS. Furthermore, it was a requirement by Facebook for every user to be transparent about their true identity which Myspace didn’t have. During the early 2000s, the social network market was alight with competition, many small networks sprouted out of small start-ups with the hopes of creating a significant impact in a world of new ideas. The markets for transporting ideas across the interwebs were rapidly developing innovative tools for social media platforms and many new possibilities were out there, however Facebook won the race. Through the last decade, it has been evident that Facebook has dominated the industry in a monopoly-type fashion through its exponential growth and size in the market.

The Invention of Facebook

The concept of Facebook came through with its predecessor Facemash, which was cheekily created by Mark Zuckerberg in his second year of college. The website was designed to rate Harvard students particularly female students as “hot or not” in a side by side comparison. It quickly attracted 450 visitors and over 22,000 photo-views within 4 hours of its launch; however, it was shut down several days later by the Harvard administration. Consequently, Zuckerberg was faced with expulsion and was charged by the campus’s administration with a breach of security as well as violating copyrights and individual privacy. Ultimately however, he was allowed to continue his studies on campus and appropriated his design for a more mature purpose.

Soon after, the “face book” was created, which was a private Harvard directory for basic student information and photos, which made the default system design look primitive. Zuckerberg’s coding and software expertise proved that he was capable of taking on greater roles in creating a technology that could better benefit the social network needs of the region. An editorial in the Crimson stated “It was clear that the technology needed to create a centralized website readily available…. the benefits will be many”. Eventually, with the help of a few colleagues, “TheFacebook” was created with the original domain thefacebook.com in 2004.

The expansion of Facebook was rapid, with the network’s services spreading to 21 universities in the UK and around the world in 2005. Technological expertise was assembled by Zuckerberg’s company, hiring only highly capable software developers driving the expansion of the service to a global scale. By September 2006, Facebook was globally available to any individual over the age of 13 with a valid email address.

The Growth of Design

In the face of early experience, as with most inventions the design evolution revolved around the core model that Facebook was built on. Periodically, Facebook has experienced user interface overhauls as well as added features to supplement the service.

• In 2006, the network dropped the “the” from its name to be branded as the Facebook that exists today. In addition, a modified larger font size and profile picture were implemented for aesthetic purposes.
• 2007 saw the integration of the mini-feed or timeline of a Friend’s activity onto their profiles. This feature became one of the main components of the Facebook experience.
• 2008 revitalised a newer Facebook, including a new menu bar on the top of the UI in conjunction with tabs which segregated individual activity and other profile data.
• By March 2009, a new homepage came to the service enabling users to more easily post links and files with fewer clicks.
• 2010 saw another makeover, modifying the interface such that users can feature friends and important experiences. Furthermore, Open Graph was added for application integration however raised controversy as people were accidentally sharing activity on sites such as Vevo, Spotify or Hulu.
• In 2011, Zuckerberg implemented a new interface which featured a large cover photo as well as a modified timeline which made scrolling back through Facebook history resemble a journey back in time in an array of posts.  
• Further UI overhauls were made in 2012 where a new photo viewer was added to display larger photos with comments shifted to the right-hand side.

All these improvements were the baseline for Facebook’s UI infrastructure, continuously improving controls for users whilst streamlining tools. The shift from the predominant technology to the current service today has seen extraordinary leaps in growth in both userbase and infrastructure upgrades over the past decade. These also include monetizing the service through advertisements as well as the cost of running business pages. Added mobile-phone user compatibility with the Facebook messenger application has also been one of the major successes which provided more outlets for using the network.

Early Market Development

The earliest development cycle of Facebook initially saw its market limited to universities prior to expansion. This was the market niche the service was initially designed for. Soon after, Zuckerberg deemed the ‘next logical step’ to be a high school version, then a corporate version sprawling across Apple Inc and Microsoft.

Role of Functional Enhancement

Functional enhancement was obvious in the face of early competition between social networks. These existing markets were dominated by Facebook’s ability to implement a user interface that was easily navigable with high userbase scalability. Thus, the network was a pure enhancement to the transportation of ideas and communication tools within the digital world.

Role of Functional Discovery

The global scalability of the Facebook was realised within a matter of years and by 2006, the network was implemented to the global market. Serving new markets, such as community groups and businesses sprung to fruition soon thereafter as more features were integrated down the line for added functionality.

Facebook and Policies

The role of policy development during the birthing phase of Facebook wasn’t as significant until its exponential growth where the service was subject to increasing legal pressure. However, general Social Media policies were to be strictly adhered to as to create a safe environment for the entire userbase. These are innately locked into Facebook and include:

1)     Statement of Rights and Responsibilities

These are terms which are agreed upon when a user signs up for the service. They include matters relating to privacy, sharing content and information, safety, registration and account security, protecting other people’s rights, mobile services, payment services, developer applications as well as account termination and disputes.

2)     Data Policy

These regulate the rights of users on how information is collected, used and shared by Facebook. It has always been “locked in” such that users can always manage or delete the content they share.

3)     Community Standards

These policies relate to prohibited material and behaviour as well as guidelines to reporting such activity. The underlying principles behind setting community standards maintains userbase safety whilst embracing everyone’s right to have a voice despite how diverse the range of views may be.

Most models of social media networks follow these general guidelines and are stringently embedded as almost law of the digital world.

The Growth of Facebook

Ever since its inception, Facebook’s growth has followed the S-curve model in terms of population increase. The actual growth of the mode began in 2008 where the userbase saw a spike in registrations as depicted in figure 2.

This began earlier than predicted in reference to the S-curve model due to the real-life implications of a booming innovation. Both the private and public sector attributed to this growth as Facebook was recognized as a tool that can be used by practically everybody. In October 2012, a key milestone was achieved when Facebook passed 1 billion active monthly users. This growth has had impacts across all platforms including media, economics, social, emotional as well as political aspects.

The growth of Facebook has opened doors for media and news outlets to use the service as a creative agency for promotion. In addition, Facebook’s platform lowers barriers to entry as well as costs for start-up businesses with fresh innovative ideas. The issue of scalability is much better resolved through monetizing on the platform as it uses no resources for advertising that would be used otherwise. More than 182,000 jobs were created through Facebook in the U.S in 2011 which translates to a total economic value of $12 billion. Despite these favourable outcomes, the social implications have been geared negatively. The way the network functions has thrown society into being receptive to dopamine rushes where people are struggling with addiction. Politically, the site has been used as an agenda for promoting campaigns or even swaying votes as seen in the recent 2016 election with the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Facebook has grown to a level where it reigns extreme influence over the world, hence policies relating to data security and privacy have become more stressed than ever before.

The Maturity of Facebook

Facebook has been approaching its maturity phase as evident in the declining rate of growth in the social network over recent years. Attempts to adapt to such change through delaying the decline are obvious with continuous updates to the model infrastructure. The most important strategy that Facebook has adopted in delaying the decline phase has been the acquisition of successful companies such as “Instagram”. The market for social media has been continuously growing however, Facebook has been “locked-in” through its core model and any extreme modifications would be unwelcome. Therefore it is logical for the service to stay at the top through acquiring new entrants in the market which have high potential to be the next big service. Any opportunities to “re-invent” Facebook are quite scarce as it dominates the scene in a monopoly-type fashion, so only small improvements over time offer the possibility of innovation.

A Quantitative Analysis

Overview the life-cycle of the mode.  Using S-curves (status vs. time), identify the periods of birthing growth, and maturity.  For status use variables that reflect the level of deployment or use of the mode (number of vehicles, kilometers of track, passenger-kilometers traveled).  You may develop these curves for the US, some other country, or geographical unit, as data availability and your focus dictate.

The S-Curve Model

This function predicts population growth with respect to time.

where: $S(t)={\frac {K}{1+exp(-b(t-t_{0}))}}$

S(t) is the measure of user base growth as a function of time (t) in years.

K is the saturation level of the network, estimated using linear regression and selecting a value with an R² closest to 1.

t₀ represents the inflection time where K/2 is achieved and b is a coefficient.

Linear Regression

The dependent variable Y is related to K logarithmically via the function:

$Y=ln({\frac {\text{Population}}{K-{\text{Population}}}})$

Linear regression conducted in a convergence type manner to obtain the best estimate of K.

K	2200	2250	2300	2350	2400	2450	2500	2550	2600	2650	2700	2850
R2	0.943	0.954	0.947	0.940	0.933	0.928	0.923	0.918	0.913	0.911	0.907	0.904

Therefore the best fit occurs when K=2250 or when the Facebook user-base reaches 2.25 billion people.

	Coefficients	Standard Error	t Stat	P-value	Lower 95%	Upper 95%	Lower 95.0%	Upper 95.0%
Intercept	-219.9182	17.6898608	-12.431878	1.0878E-11	-256.51242	-183.32398	-256.51242	-183.32398
b	0.11110832	0.00894777	12.4174302	1.1136E-11	0.09259847	0.12961817	0.09259847	0.12961817

Further regression analysis has shown that the t-stat > 2, indicating that the results are statistically significant.

The Dataset

Year	Population (Millions)	Predicted Population (Millions)
2004	1	3
2005	6	6
2006	12	11
2007	58	23
2008	145	47
2009	360	94
2010	608	184
2011	845	347
2012	1056	610
2013	1228	972
2014	1393	1369
2015	1591	1711
2016	1936	1949
2017	2129	2092
2018	2196	2170

The S-Curve for Facebook’s Growth (2004-2018)

Analysis

The Birth Phase (2004-2007) – In the first 3 years of the conception of Facebook, the actual growth corresponded in parallel to the predicted growth. This indicates that from 2004-2007 the technology followed the mathematical parameters set by the S-curve model.

The Growth Phase (2008-2017) – These were the dominating years of Facebook’s surge in userbase population. In 2008 the actual userbase spiked and moved thrice the value as predicted. This trend continued very strongly as the actual growth surpassed the predicted values significantly as the world adopted Facebook as one of the main social media powerhouses. Predicted values crossed over by 2015 and rose higher than actual growth as registrations started to slow down.

The Maturity Phase (2017 – Current) – A decrease in the gradient of the S curve indicates the slowing of growth as illustrated in 2017. The S-curve re-aligns itself here with the actual values of population growth, trending more closely to real data.

Overall, it can be concluded that the model is quite accurate in illustrating the birthing and maturity phases of Facebook’s growth, however slips under during the growth phase due to mass-adoption.

This S-Cruve will help you understand growth of Facebook

References

https://5thingz.blogspot.com/2019/11/disadvantages-of-facebook.html