By giving people more power to share, we’re making the world more transparent. - Mark Zuckerberg
Stepping into the market in the 21st century, Facebook has left an unprecedented mark in the tech industry. Not only has the world become more transparent but also much more connected. Yet, the journey of this platform had its peaks and valleys.
Facebook was neither the first social media platform nor the best one. It started off as a college student website but surprisingly took over its competition, MySpace, and it became sensational by engaging up to 5 million users in a year. Within 4 years, Facebook became a thing Zuckerberg never imagined to be this huge!
The third-party integration turned out to be the golden recipe for Facebook, and this is how it transformed from a Product to a Platform. Facebook led the way towards incredible success by giving itself the freedom to build technology. This strategy was even used by huge companies like Amazon and was also responsible for the unpredicted success of Apple, as the birth of the App Store made history.
The insane revenue stream passed through Facebook and has made it a billion-dollar company today!
Eventually, Facebook has become the third most famous site in the entire world. But, it is involved in a war of words with Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, because of the privacy policy. Facebook determines the areas of interest for all the users, checks engagement, and shows advertisements accordingly. Facebook made up to $29.14 billion just by digital advertisements in 2020, and this has brought a revolutionary change in the digital marketing world.
This App Tracking feature of Facebook was contradictory to Apple’s privacy policy, which always asks for permission from the users before tracking the apps. The majority of Apple users deny the permission to track, and therefore, Facebook suffers a setback.
This dependency on advertisements has only one solution; Brands becoming Creators. Since a modern problem requires a modern solution, most big selling brands have owned the strategy and boomed the creator economy.
The companies have taken up the responsibility to promote the brand and reach the target audience, in their own hands. Although Facebook endured this revenue depletion, it is still on the verge of becoming a monopoly. Facebook’s strategy to Buy, Copy or Destroy its competition has helped it conquer.
For Example, as soon as Instagram grew in popularity, Facebook brought it for $1 billion and WhatsApp for $16 billion approximately. This is how Zuckerberg converted the threat into an asset for the company.
There was a long buzz about Facebook vs Snapchat, and we know the results! Today, the relevance of Snapchat is questioned.
While Instagram posts were always about being perfect, Snapchat Stories embraced the imperfect you!
But since Snapchat refused Facebook’s purchase offer, it led to a master-stroke by Facebook: Introduction of Instagram Stories. This update made Snapchat irrelevant overnight!
Facebook was also held responsible for stunting the growth of some social media platforms. It overtook MySpace in less than a year and knocked down Vine, an American social networking app, by detaching Facebook’s third-party integration from the app.
Facebook has stood constant and observed the market very closely to fight back its competition. Mark Zuckerberg proved that; There are many spectators in the market, but only a few can see.
Just when we thought Facebook has had enough triumphs that helped it win over the market, Mark Zuckerberg rebranded Facebook as Meta on October 28, 2021 in an attempt to own the Metaverse.
The entire world is talking about ‘Metaverse’, So what is it?
Metaverse stands for a 3D version of the internet that several companies are working on- basically, the future of the digital world.
However, Metaverse is said to be Zuckerberg’s escape hatch, a way to excrete from Facebook’s unpleasant state of affairs and kick start from a new page.
The success story of Facebook gave the youth a vital business lesson.
It was just a simple feature of mutual friends that acted as an X-factor for Facebook and won the social media market. So, We all have brilliant ideas, but implementation correctly separates Legendary entrepreneurs from the many good ones.