What makes Facebook a successful consumer brand?

 

Facebook was not the first social networking website in the market but it was a ‘fast mover’. That is what made Facebook what it is today. Just as the fictional Mark Zuckerberg said to the Winklevoss brothers in the movie The Social Network, “If you had invented Facebook, you would have invented Facebook.”

16 years ago, Facebook was just another ‘cool’ project that 19 years old Mark Zuckerberg launched on 4th February 2004 from his Harvard dorm room, along with his friends Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes. Now, it is a billion-dollar worth social media giant based in California, with more than 2.7 billion month active users across the globe.

Today, I’m going to talk about what made Facebook last for so long and why did it win over other social networking websites of that time, like MySpace and Friendster. Facebook became popular among the youth overnight because of its ‘exclusivity’. Initially, Facebook limited its access to the Harvard students only, who could log into the website through their Harvard email ids. Within less than a month, 50% of Harvard students were Facebook users. Thereafter, Facebook expanded its membership to other educational institutions like Yale, Stanford, Columbia, MIT. ‘Facebook me’ had become a common expression over time.

As Facebook began to grew in the rest of the world, Zuckerberg and team focussed more and more on the product and what the users want. If your product is worth the hype, business will follow. For the longest time, even after the launch of Facebook, Zuckerberg did not research the market nor ask approval of his idea from anyone. Thousands of start-ups bring forwards similar ideas, but how many of them succeed? Zuckerberg made people realise that ideas just remain ideas if not executed; they are a dime a dozen. Mark did not look for ads to be the website, because he was Facebook to be ‘cool’ and ads were not cool.

Facebook works on simplicity. Initially, the brand name was ‘thefacebook’ but later, Zuckerberg and team dropped the ‘the’ and it was renamed as ‘facebook’. The company works on the strategy of not to over-build. Over the years, Facebook did not stop introducing new innovations. The website started off as a very simple social networking site where you can connect to your friends, see their basic information and pictures. It was in September 2006, when Facebook released its ‘News Feed’ feature that provides users access to interesting information about their friends from the home page.

Facebook is ‘user-friendly’. For example, unlike other platforms, Facebook is easier to operate. If you want to tag a friend, you just need to type their name on your status and it will know what you’re doing. While, on most applications, you have to type ‘@’ before the name in order to tag.

Another big selling point for Facebook ‘privacy controls’ option is another selling point behind the brand’s popularity among the masses. People with verified email ids and in your same network or community can view your profile. Recently, Facebook introduced the ‘Lock your profile’ feature which made the website a safer place for its users. Users can control who can view their profiles and who cannot. Also, if someone tries to access your account, you will immediately receive a notification on your registered email.

All these innovation and strategy have helped Facebook to reach every individual in this world. Facebook’s main app has continued to be the most downloaded app, followed by the Facebook Messenger app. Later in 2012, Facebook took over the next two most used applications, Instagram and WhatsApp for $1 billion and $19 billion respectively.