Facebook: Looking to the future. Week 9 Individual Case Study Assignment Week 9: Creating Value through Innovation Strategy Week 9 Readings, Multimedia and Assignments Reading · Schmitz, A. (Trans...

Running Head: FACEBOOK - LOOKING TO THE FUTURE 1
Assignment Title
Student Name
Course Name
Instructor Name
Date
FACEBOOK - LOOKING TO THE FUTURE 2
Introduction
Facebook is a popular social media company that went live on February 4, 2004. It was
initially used by the students as the digital directory in Harvard University (Barnett & Han,
2011). Mark Zuckerberg is the founder of Facebook who developed the social media website of
Facebook. Facebook gained popularity among school and universities students. Facebook was
making best use of their platform and provides more opportunity to the third parties to launch
their applications using Facebook website. It provided a better opportunity for the company to
get more innovative applications and innovative technology. There was a weakness in their
privacy policies, but changes in the privacy policy made them overcome the problem in an
effective manner.
The main requirement for the Facebook is to increase the user confidence. Facebook
should have best privacy policies to protect the user information and to gain user confidence.
Facebook has increased their user access by making use of local news and live sports streaming.
It indicates that Facebook always focuses on innovation. Detailed analysis about various aspects
of Facebook is performed in this paper to develop a suitable recommendation for Facebook to
achieve sustainable growth.
Competitive advantage of Facebook
Facebook began its journey from the universities. Facebook targeted US university
students to participate and be an active user of the social media. Facebook gained popularity
among school and colleges students. It made them capture the U.S. market quickly. The concept
of social media was less popular during 2004 that made Facebook gain a better response from the
users (Barnett & Han, 2011). Competition in the social media was accelerating that required
Facebook to introduce more new features to obtain the competitive advantage.
FACEBOOK - LOOKING TO THE FUTURE 3
Facebook introduced more new features like social bookmarking, virtual gifts, flyers pro,
m.facebook.com, social ads, Facebook Chat, Facebook Connect, Facebook Beta and Mini Feed
extension between 2006 and 2007 (Barnett & Han, 2011). All these features made users happy
and resulted in extensive use of Facebook. Facebook introduced F8 that enabled the third party
application developers to run their application on the Facebook website. Users of Facebook can
add them into their account at their discretion and can use these applications. The F8 group
developed about 1,500 new application, and the Facebook users used them (Barnett & Han,
2011). F8 group was termed as the social graph by the company.
Facebook was making the best use of their platform by providing more opportunity to the
third parties to launch their applications on Facebook. It provided a better opportunity for the
company to get more innovative applications and innovative technology. It resulted in
continuous innovation for the company. Facebook was providing good recognition to their
employees and was focusing on continuous innovation (Jaruzelski, Loehr, & Holman, 2011).
Facebook introduced “Like” button, “Usernames” and “Messages” that gained more popularity
among people (Barnett & Han, 2011).
Facebook’s main strategy that made them succeed in the competition was the acquisition
of small innovative technology companies (Heath, 2017). It resulted in Facebook to get better
access to more innovative technologies and applications that are essential for the company to
succeed in the competition. Facebook was consistently focusing on introducing new application
on their website so that they can keep up the level of excitement of the users (Wineclaw, 2015).
These strategies made Facebook stay ahead of competitors. Facebook ensured that their new
application and features are user-friendly so that users can get maximum benefit out of it.
Differentiation is the key strategy for their success.
FACEBOOK - LOOKING TO THE FUTURE 4
Weakness of Facebook’s privacy policies and features
There was a tremendous increase in the user growth in the website and more personal
information was shared by more users. It created more trouble to the privacy policies of the
company. Facebook was paying more attention to the innovative without addressing the growing
threat of privacy issues (Barnett &...