Wednesday, September 9, 2009

"Facebook has more followers than Buddha..."



The link to this story in  Forbes tells how executive Sheryl Sandberg is helping Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg make his website profitable. Sandberg and Zuckerberg have made Facebook into the most popular social networking site (250 million members and growing), but still are not bringing in enough revenue.  



Zuckerberg made many attempts to earn money through advertising on Facebook. When users found out that he was basically selling user data, they were outraged at the violation of their privacy. Users signed petitions and Zuckerberg eased up on some of his data-selling practices. It was Sandberg who really helped Zuckerberg realize that Facebook needed to work on its image as a protector of its user's information. Together they began to work on helping users control who sees their information. 
As far as PR goes, Sandberg was a lifesaver for Zuckerberg who was sinking under criticism from users, privacy advocates, and investors. Obviously Facebook needs to find some way to earn revenue for the site to continue, but they must be careful not to violate their user's privacy. Facebook's popularity with a broad demographic of users makes it a huge database of information. In the article, Zuckerberg describes his idea of a "social graph", or the broad network of friends, acquaintances, and companies that surround everyone. Advertisers would pay tons of money for access to this information, but what is important is how they gain access to that information and how many privacy rights Facebook users must give up in the process. 





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