The Facebook Economy

I was amazed in reading this article. I know that Facebook has a lot to offer and opportunities for development, but I never knew it could go as far as it did. On top of creating a whole new breed of social networking, Facebook has enabled business to grow and others to develop to manage those businesses. For example, appoholic.com, is a website that developers of Facebook applications use to analyze market segments and define new creations. The applications first took off as programmers created fun, virtual ways to interact with friends. But now there is even a business that manages the applications and provides data on trends, usage, and more. WOW.

My company does not use Facebook (as far as I know) for anything. I think there is a huge opportunity for every company to utilize its features both internally and externally.

Walgreen’s potential to integrate with Facebook:

• Implement a network for employees to communicate. This would enhance productivity, save time and resources, and allow easy sharing of information
• Targeted consumer advertising. Facebook categorizes users and provides the data to companies who publish on the site. Walgreen’s could identify specific market segments and advertise their products and services to the users who will most likely buy them. A good example of this is advertising a new drug for MS on a MS Support Group page. This would raise users awareness of the product, increase Walgreen’s place in the market, and make customers to go to their pharmacy to get the drug because that is how they heard about it
• Market research. Walgreen’s could analyze Facebook users’ trends, and interest to obtain information about various customer bases. We could introduce new products or carry preferred brands based on the findings. Also, we could get feedback from our own advertisements to determine how likely users were to click on our ads.