Look at the development of SNS website from Facebook

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SNS (Social Networking Services, social network service, or social network service) is a kind of important application service in the new media of Internet in recent years, the development speed of its blowout type has made people have to be impressed. SNS sites around the world have mushroomed as they have stimulated the exemplary role of SNS sites such as Facebook and MySpace.

In the attention of SNS website scraping this whirlwind, many people began to pay attention to SNS site leader leading the direction of development. Not only does the copycat need to look carefully at the industry leader's operating ideas and trends, but the industry's leaders themselves are constantly exploring new technologies, content and marketing ideas.

The following will be the world's leading SNS Web site, for example, to explore the development of SNS website direction.

The development momentum is fast and the value reaches tens of billions

Among the leading players in the SNS industry, Facebook is undoubtedly one of the most remarkable. Facebook is now the top social networking site, with up to 87.3 million independent users in June 2009, according to data released by Nielsen, a research firm, published online in July 2009. It is understood that the number of Facebook users has more than 340 million. The high number of users and clicks not only brings Facebook a strong popularity but also benefits.

Despite the global economic downturn, the shadow of the financial crisis has not been significantly removed, and this year the U.S. market for social networking ads dropped, but the first half of the Facebook site advertising has increased by 9.5%, about 230 million U.S. dollars. Its CEO Mark Zuckerberg expects the company's revenue to grow by 70% this year and cash-flow earnings next year.

Facebook's value has been fully recognised by the market. Microsoft reached a deal with Facebook in October 2007 to buy its 1.6% stake in 240 million dollars. At the time, some in the industry believed that this meant Facebook was worth as much as $15 billion trillion. Although some think this valuation is too high, the May 2009 Russian Digital Sky Technology Investment Group (Digital Sky Technologies, "DST") spent 200 million of dollars to get Facebook 1.96% preferred Shares, The deal put Facebook's valuations at $10 billion trillion.

So what has made Facebook so strong? We can observe and discuss the three aspects of technology, content and marketing creativity.

Follow the technology trend and pursue fast and convenient

Technology creativity is not necessarily the invention of a new technology, but most of the existing technology is a certain combination of the creation of a number of new application forms. Facebook, which was particularly prominent when it started, was very attentive to the idea of sustainable technology.

First of all, pay attention to the partial network conditions of the user experience, to ensure the user's use speed. Facebook has launched a simplified version of Facebook Lite in the US and India. Compared to the standard version of Facebook, the simplified version is cleaner, prettier and faster. Although Facebook Lite is not supported for some applications, many users are using Facebook primarily to socialize and get data, and they prefer to get data quickly, and games and other features are dispensable for them. This shows that SNS Web site can not only pursue the development of more and more functions, simplification and speed is still must adhere to the basic principles.

Second, actively absorb the micro-blog (t.sina.com.cn) Some of the technical features to follow the trend of technological development. It is understood that Facebook announced in September 2009 that the "@" character will be added to the status updates of the website. When a user publishes a status update with a buddy tag, the feature will let friends receive updates. The "@" tagging system is very similar to the "@" message forwarding system of Twitter, the microblogging site, in fact, where Facebook has introduced most of the iconic features of Twitter, such as group sharing, real-time search, and a one-way "attention" feature like Twitter. This suggests that Facebook is actively absorbing the strengths of the strong Twitter boom.

Third, the importance of supporting a variety of operating systems and terminals to expand the user's use of the scope. On the one hand, facing the rapid development of new media of mobile phone, Facebook

launched a dedicated mobile version of the application. For example, Facebook apps on the iphone, released in August 2008, downloaded up to 12 million in September 2009 and ranked second in the 2008 's most popular iphone platform free apps. On the other hand, Facebook has recently launched its Mac version of apps, taking into account the needs of users of different computer operating systems, as well as the September 2009 Facebook apps for Android phones. In any case, broad support for various operating systems and terminals will create favorable conditions for Facebook to expand its user reach.

Technical creativity will often create conditions for specific applications, the pursuit of fast and convenient, with the times, to complement each other and expand the scope of support should be SNS Web site can be borrowed from the technical creative direction.

Enter Instant Search to share wonderful content

Content creativity is always respected by all kinds of new media. The problem that often puzzles SNS website is how to draw on other new media application's advantage to excavate SNS website's information resources superiority. Let's see how Facebook does it.

First of all, actively enter the field of Instant Search, to provide users with convenient support for the content. Facebook, which has long been aware of the importance of instant Search, successfully acquired another target in August 2009 after it failed to buy Twitter, a microblogging site known for Instant Search last year, FriendFeed. FriendFeed's Advanced search function is the most important reason for Facebook's popularity. After the FriendFeed search engine is integrated, more users will be using Facebook to search through their daily messages instead of relying on universal search engines, including Google. SNS website is combining instant Search with the huge advantage of its own users, trying to improve the convenience of content query. After all, Web2.0 characteristics of the SNS site has a large number of user-generated information content.

Secondly, it attaches importance to the development of information docking function, while promoting information sharing while increasing the number of visits. All Facebook users share more than 1 billion photos and 10 million videos a month, and publish 1 billion items including dynamic updates, web links, and blog posts. After acquiring FriendFeed, Facebook users can now search for news links, hot topics and status updates posted by friends and many registered users of the site. Facebook's tentacles are not limited to its web site, with Facebook Connect services designed to share user data, where users can log on to other sites with Facebook accounts and share information with Facebook friends. In addition, Facebook has launched the Twitter App, which allows users to sync with Twitter as they update their Facebook pages. Thus, a full range of information docking and sharing will make SNS website information utilization greatly increased, the result will naturally lead to increased access.

SNS Web site has a lot of information, Instant Search can help users to quickly query them. If the SNS website can be connected with the outside world, the utilization value of SNS website will be further greatly improved.

Broaden the way of profit based on social features

Marketing or operational creativity is related to the return of capital investment, whether the enterprise can obtain long-term sustainable development. In the last year or two, Facebook has made a big difference in marketing, robbing its old rival, MySpace, of its huge share.

First of all, give full play to the advantages of Word-of-mouth marketing, so that users are not forced to accept advertising. As the number of users and clicks Spurt, Facebook has become more and more valuable in advertising, and they are good at compulsive, ad-accepted ads. Unlike search ads, SNS website each user is the friend and the fan identity is interconnected together, the user frequently communicates the advertisement information with other users in the communication, between them transmits the consumer experience or the product recommendation effect naturally better than other type of advertisement effect, this actually is the Word-of-mouth marketing superiority.

Second, to attract large enterprises into the SNS website for brand promotion, expanding the influence of Facebook. In August 2009, the Financial Times said that more than 80% of the big U.S. advertisers were using Facebook to promote, suggesting that American companies have accepted SNS as the mainstream advertising platform. Many big brands are joining Facebook users, with millions of of "fans" such as Starbucks and Coca-Cola, fully affirming the value of Facebook's platform. SNS website is building a new platform for innovative interaction between consumers and enterprises, this innovative customer relationship will be the future of online marketing, big brands can even consider their user exchange circle to the mainstream SNS site.

Third, actively promote the development of the open platform, so that Facebook and developers benefit. As Facebook unveiled its open platform F8 in May 2007, more and more Facebook platform game developers are earning revenue from selling virtual goods. Eric Alden, chief editor of VentureBeat, a financial blogger, predicts that the biosphere built by these game developers and other companies that serve them will generate 500 million of billions of dollars in revenue this year, and Facebook expects to achieve only 500 million dollars in revenue this year (mostly from advertising), It can be seen that the market potential of various applications developed with open platform is enormous. Open platform can not only make developers get a lot of income, also can let SNS website to obtain more traffic and share, this nature has formed a double win situation.

Four, try to have social networking site characteristics of the profit way, explore SNS many friends and fans value. In September 2009, Usocial, an online advertising company, launched a Facebook buddy sale service that allows users to pay for friends or fans. In this service, Facebook users are required to buy at least 1000 friends or fans at a price of 177.30 dollars. 5,000 and 10,000 friends or fans are required to pay 654.30 dollars and 1167.30 dollars respectively. Therefore, SNS website has been regarded as a very effective marketing tool. Although the effect of this form of sale remains to be seen, but its efforts to explore the SNS resource value is worth affirming.

Increased competition needs to be proactive

Although Facebook has a lot of references and benchmarks for the industry, there are still many problems in the fickle new Internet media that require attention and thinking from all those engaged in SNS operations and research.

First of all, SNS Web site is facing the development momentum is fierce micro-blog threat. While Facebook is far more than Twitter in terms of traffic and user numbers, Twitter has grown faster than Facebook, with an independent 21 million per cent visit to the US market, up 1928% from June 2008 to June 2009. The high level of micro-blogging is unlikely to strain SNS sites, including Facebook.

Secondly, the competition between SNS websites intensifies and the situation of mutual infiltration occurs. Facebook's rival, MySpace, acquired the developer Ilike, the biggest music app on Facebook, and became one of Facebook's biggest app developers. Similarly, LinkedIn, a business social networking site, also has a Facebook app called bumper stickers. That means Facebook's key service offerings are in the hands of rivals, and this poses a lot of challenges for Facebook.

In addition, SNS website's rapid development may face many unexpected problems. Early this year, the US fast food giant Burger King made a "very creative" marketing on Facebook: Every 10 friends removed will get a real burger for free. It is understood that at that time a total of 82,771 users were involved in the event, and the number of friends deleted reached 233906. Although the end of Facebook to stop the game, but other companies to promote products and damage the interests of SNS website, this is the rapid development of SNS, while not thinking of new problems.

For now, social networking sites, including Facebook, are still in a fast-growing period, but there are challenges that need every SNS site to make the effort to innovate in technology, content and marketing to ensure that the next year or two continues to develop at a high speed.