在現代社會,網絡通信非常流行,給現代人帶來了方便，社交網絡,電子郵件和所有其他在線交流服務變得非常重要且成為他們“社會”生活中受歡迎的一部分,不僅僅是青少年,甚至是適合所有年齡段的人。最受歡迎和有名的社交網絡無疑是Facebook。從一方面來看這個社交網絡看起來只是個簡單的網站,允許你交流和發現新朋友，就是一些普通的事情,但從另一個角度來看,Facebook是大型公司,有很多各種各樣的業務和管理流程,此文章是我個人的分析，關于Facebook的“其他”的一面。
 
首先,Facebook成立于2004年,是由哈佛大學的二年級的天才學生馬克·扎克伯格創建的。馬克想出了主意,要把大部分的工作都成功完成。此外馬克并不孤單;有其他一些哈佛學生和他一起參加，如:愛德華多,達斯汀·莫斯科維茨和克里斯·休斯。在那個時候,Facebook是只能給當地的哈佛學生用,從那之后它擴展到其他高校。最后,通過大量的廣告和廣告基地,Facebook擴張到全球。在這段時間,2011年,Facebook團隊宣布他們有超過5億的活躍用戶。
 
These modern days, when network communication is very popular and convenient for people of this generation, social networks, emails and all other kind online communication services became very important and popular part of their "social" life among not only youth but actually among even all ages' people. The most popular and known social network is definitely Facebook. From one point of view this social network looks just simple website, that allows you to communicate and find friends and nothing more special, but on other point of view, Facebook is 'giant' company which has a lot of various business and management processes that is going to be analysed in this individual essay of me about Facebook's 'other' side.
 
To begin with, Facebook was established in 2004 by Harvard's sophomore genius student Mark Zuckerberg. Mark came up with idea and put a lot of work to make that come true. Moreover Mark was not alone; he was accompanied by few others Harvard students such as: Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes. At that moment, Facebook was available only for local Harvard students, but after that it expanded to other colleges and Universities. Finally, after plenty of advertising and success local, Facebook expanded worldwide. At these moments, 2011, Facebook team announced that they have more than 500 million of active users. That's amazing numbers, for instance comparing with their competitors or any other kind of online users. In addition to that, the growth of Facebook was outstanding; for instance as it was announced, in 2009 doubled in size (New York Times).
 
Secondly, probably the most interesting part of all Facebook would be its business environment strategies and processes. First of all, I would like to cover vast majority of Facebook's business environment side and other features by using S.W.O.T analysis.#p#分頁標題#e#
 
To begin with, Facebook has pretty impressive number of Strengths. First of all, in my opinion probably the most important factor is amount of users. Since 2008 Facebook was expanding in enormous steps as we can see in a graph provided below. In 2011, company announced that they have even more than 600 million of users worldwide. That allowed Facebook to gain the great reputation that makes them even more likely to get invested in or attract more potential users or investors. Moreover, Facebook has plenty of opportunities for helping to expand other businesses, small companies by offering plenty of features and getting profit as well. For instance: free business pages, easy sharing, announcements, apps, polls and advertising. All this features are very effective and profitable for both sides in many different ways. In addition to that, most of Facebook revenue comes from advertising. Facebook advertising system is very 'attractive' and pretty effective for companies because of the popularity of this social network. On the other hand, very popular and profitable activity is online applications on the Facebook. For the same reason as advertising - big popularity and reputation, the most popular applications makes huge money by offering upgrades, VIP status, virtual money, game credits and etc. For instance, the best example would be social network games developer company - Zynga. Facebook and Zynga announced 5 years partnership on 18th of May in 2010.(facebook.com press) By attracting amazing number of users, 85 million of players as Zynga announced, both are making great profit.(gamasutra) Moreover, Facebook has certainly tried to guide the development of its online economy through fiscal and monetary policy. In 2010 Facebook started to use new online currency for purchasing virtual goods in many online applications on this social network by Facebook credits. (allfacebook)
 
Apart from those, one more very strong advantage of Facebook is great recognition and reputation internationally. This social network is translated in more than 70 languages by helping 300,000 of users using translation applications - according to Facebook. Because of that Facebook is very likely to attract big international 'fishes' - investors. At this moment Facebook is in partnership with Microsoft - who expanded in 2007 advertising partnership, PayPal - who will be the main payment option in Facebook for advertising and other features, Goldman Sachs - who just invested 500 million US dollars and made of total 50 billion US dollars Facebook value. On the other hand Facebook still works on ideas on how to expand even more overseas outside North America. Despite amazing high amount of users, Facebook still faces the problem that in some regions and countries Facebook's market penetration is still pretty low. "Penetration (of Facebook into regional Internet markets) is highest in North America, at 69 per cent, and Middle East-Africa, at 67 per cent, and still pretty high in Latin America (58 per cent) and Europe (57 per cent)," explained Andrew Lipsman, senior director of industry analysis at traffic firm ComScore. "But there is still a lot of room for growth in Asia-Pacific, which currently has just 17 per cent market penetration."- (cnet news)#p#分頁標題#e#
 
The last but not least strength of Facebook is very convenient and effectively Facebook mobile feature. According to Facebook stats, there are more than 250 million active users currently assessing their website through mobile phones.
 
Moving to weaknesses, Facebook has faced to lots of criticism for poor privacy issues over the last years. Mostly all privacy problems were highlighted during 2009-2010 years. The peak time was probably when Facebook made some privacy policy changes that have limited what users can keep private, also sharing and publishing personal data that you don't even want to be shown in public. There were some reports that some personal chat messages were exposed to public that was against consumer protection laws. After this dramatic 'downfall' of reputation, Facebook called a meeting and came up with Ideas to neutralise the problem. Now Facebook offers for user to control his privacy setting manually.
 
In addition, Facebook has very positive opportunities to expand because of trends in our society. These days, when technologies makes very big influence to our life, Social networks has great odds to continue growing. Moreover, Facebook has very great opportunity to expand even more because of always developed new and updated applications which offer for users to experience always something new and interesting.
 
The last part of S.W.O.T Facebook Business environment analysis would be Threats. Probably the biggest threat and issue that Facebook faces is Government of some countries around the world. Some Islamic countries such as Pakistan and Bangladesh have banned Facebook because of religion purposes, mostly of 'insulting' prophet Muhammad. Moreover, few countries that is still in some ways in dictatorship, for instance, Vietnam, North Korea, Iran, Syria, countries that want to limit people's word of mouth, forbidden to use Facebook. (The nextweb.com) The similar situation was even in Egypt recently after lots of protests against president; Government restricted all usage of social Networks and media in order to stop spreading anti-government announcements. (webupon) In addition to threats, competitors are obstacle for Facebook too, but actually it can be called as already past threat, for instance MySpace, Hi5 or Twitter which were very popular project till Facebook 'crushed' them. (penn-olson.com)
 
As it is very successful Social Network as any other big companies, Facebook Corporation requires very good management in order to remain and continue rising. To run the company that has more than half billion of users worldwide, Facebook has very wide of head people with difficult and responsible management roles. First of all, the Head CEO is Mark Zuckerberg, who is the founder of Facebook too. Mark is responsible for setting company's strategy, website design and development of Facebook all infrastructure and core technology. Mark is very good example of Great CEO because he managed to grow Facebook from small Social network to the biggest. Also he managed to build great executives team to keep growing and avoid making mistakes in managing Facebook. In Managers team we can find very talented and experienced people to make Facebook's management effective, for instance Christopher Cox who is Vice President of product, then David Ebersman Chief financial officer, David Fischer - Vice president of Advertising and Global Operations, Lori Goler vice president OF Human relations and recruiting, Jonathan Heiliger vice president of technical operations, Sheryl Sandberg who is Chief Operating Officer, Brett Taylor - Chief Technology Officer and few others head workers. Moreover, Sheryl Sandberg was even 'attracted' from other giant company - Google. That definitely show how Mark Zuckerberg wanted to build very experienced and professional team for his Social Network. All this 'Line-up' of professionals CEO's and Vice Presidents is to make Facebook's Management and development very effective and efficient.#p#分頁標題#e#
 
Moreover, Facebook is organised using 'Tall' strategy structure. The main CEO, Mark Zuckerberg is responsible for all company's decisions that are made and is always reported by head managers of specific departaments. As I mentioned before, Facebook has a lot of Chief Officers and Vice Presidents for each specific structure of Social Network management processes. They are responsible for to follow Mark Zuckerberg's strategy plans, always report to him and keep advancing with Ideas and Features development. Facebook is almost like nation which has more than half billion of people, it is very clear that they need very good 'government' - management in order to be effective and well organised 'nation'. Mark Zuckerberg does that. He already earned respect as a great leader of biggest social network from other people. For instance, even from British Prime Minister David Cameron, which took interview to get some tips from this Great CEO. (Economist)
 
In addition, Facebook has decided to make partnership with other huge companies in order to be more effective company in many ways. In other words they try to follow technology and make 'unions' with companies that could even more improve Facebook. There is no doubt, that next big this Social network goal, knowing that it has more than half billion people, to grow to 1 billion.
 
In addition to that, overally Facebook announced that they have more than 2,000 employees and a lot of offices around the world in 15 countries in the biggest cities. Facebook's Headquarters currently are in Palo Alto in United States.
 
To sum up, Facebook is great Social Network company, it has shown amazing numbers in the last past months with number of users - 500 billion, but even at enormous profits even at these Economic Recession times. Because of that, there is no doubt that Facebook is great company with its amazing Business Environment results and professional management with Mark Zuckenberg ahead. On the other hand, Facebook faces some internal and external threats as well. Probably the biggest internal issue would be Facebook's privacy issues that were highlighted recently, that Zuckerberg works on. And external threat in my point of view is government. Countries by banning this Social Network stops Facebook's way to jump into that country's market niche and like that growing even more. For instance Republic of China has banned Facebook to use in their country, which could have 'offer' 1.3 billion more of new potential users.