Analysis of Facebook Strategy - Case Study Example

Topic: Facebook Strategy Introduction Strategy is a mechanism which accords an instrument to control marketand to gain leverage, either at the macro and micro levels. Strategist diversifies in methods at the corporate, unit and operational level. In social network development, informational technologists innovate by variegation of applications to encourage more advocates to use its programs and soft wares based on its practical utility. This essay will examine and argue that facebook, a leading online social network, uses prescriptive or emergent strategies, or both. It will also discuss by detailing the underlying theories of these two strategies as agents in the immediate growth of its users numbers populace. Information technology experts reported that among the 500 top websites are Google, Facebook, Youtube, Yahoo!, Wikipedia, Baidu, Blogger, Twitter and QQ (Alexa, 2011). Amazon ranked 11th but this essay will focus mainly on facebook as social networking utility. Strategies: Prescriptive & Emergent Strategists define prescriptive strategy as an approach in decision-making for elaborate risks and vulnerability management. It attempts to provide resolution to needs and problems arising from both administrative and customers or clients’ needs (Razvan, 2005). Prescriptive strategy includes provision of essential requirements for effective (a.) knowledge management style or consolidating information as essential component in decision-makings and resolution of problems; (b) determination of alternatives for decisions that are specific for company’s needs; (c) recording and programming of decision-makings made within a period as repository of facts which may become essential for complex operations; (d) risk management for situational cases and introduction of treatments. Prescriptive strategy is more effective to (a) identify immediate problems and symptoms that require quick resolution; (b) elaborate understanding about the character of decisions; (c) sharpen analysis using strategies of solutions for every circumstance; (d) and, determination of practical alternate potential solution as preferred option in case of ineffectiveness of primary identified solution (Razvan, 2005; Drucker, 1985). Stewart (2008), on the other hand, defines Emergent Strategy as a structured mechanism in managing an organization. This means that an institution is viewed and analyzed in accordance to organizational vision, mission, objectives, action plans, implementation processes, and assessed using the tools of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) instruments (Anthony, Johnson, Sinfield, Altman, 2008). Businessmen utilize this system to strategize their company in the market and gain leverage from other competitive forces (Anthony et.al., 2008; Burgelman, 2002). Leveraging in the market is often viewed as manager’s response to the problems backed with sufficient capital and use of technology in its operational system (Cattuto, Baldassarri, Servedio & Loreto, 2008.) Emergent theory (Bhide, 2000; Burgelman, 2002) is adaptive to evolutionary styles and these are effective to businessmen in a venture capital business-type of operation. In this strategy, managers are able to (a) identify the critical areas of vagueness; (b) conduct and execute experimental actions and decisions; and (c) maintain flexibility and redirect actions or decisions based on empirical results of experiment (McGrath & MacMillan, 1995). As such, theoretically, the manager would prefer the successful strategy but maintain flexibility and adjustment (Mintzberg & Waters, 1985). Moreover, managers should be guided by the internal best practice assessment; the market research; external benchmarking; and, business modeling but contextualized on its financial forecast, too (Chaffey, Fellis-Chadwick, Jonson & Mayer, 2005) and the rapid changes in the market (Mineu, & Oliveira, 2003). Experts opined that emergent business strategy is an innovative accelerator of business diversification (Anthony et.al., 2008; Chaffey, 2005). Facebook Strategies TIMELINE OF MAJOR DECISIONS MADE BY FACEBOOK February 4, 2004 Mark Zuckerberg launched the Thefacebook for Harvard students June 2004 Facebook Company established its office at Palo Alto, California and slowly gained investments, one of which was from Peter Thiel, Paypal.com co-founder. September 2005 Facebook became accessible for high school students. August 22, 2006 Facebook Notes, a blogging application which permeate tags and embeddable image, was introduced. September 26, 2006 Facebook is available for 13 yrs. & older with a valid email address. February 8, 2007 Facebook launched Virtual Gifts July 20, 2008 Facebook introduced "Facebook Beta", a redesign of its user interface  May 14, 2007 Facebook opened Marketplace, an application which give users opportunity to post free classified ads October 24, 2007 Microsoft purchased 1.6% share of Facebook for $240 million & made Facebook with total implied estimated value at $15 billion April 7, 2008, Facebook released a Comet-based instant messaging for "Chat" September 2008 Facebook began migrating all users to the new version  October 2008 FB set up its international headquarters in Dublin, Ireland June 13, 2009 FB introduced a "Usernames" feature, e.g. http://www.facebook.com/facebook; FB introduced applications for operating systems under Android, iOS, and webOS, Nokia and Research In Motion also provide Facebook applications for their own mobile devices. Reports mentioned that more than 150 million active users of this application through 200 mobile operators in 60 countries. May 2009 FB upgraded its album loading capacity from 60 to 200 photos per album November 2010 Second Market Inc. figured that FB value reached $41 billion & became the third largest U.S. Web company after Google and Amazon November 15, 2010 FB introduced new "Facebook Messages" service believed to compete with Gmail emailing system. February 23, 2010, FB was granted a patent of its News Feed. February 2011 FB uses hCalendar microformat to mark up events, and the hCard microformat for the events venues March 13, 2010 FB traffic increased and features widened to include photos, interests, contact information, and communication apps hasten contacts with friends, both in private or public messages and a chat feature. They also created interest groups and "like pages". Customizable privacy features were also developed to make FB more users-friendly. March 2011 FB removed 20,000 profiles/day due to spasm and infractions Early 2011 FB moved its new HQ in Menlo Park, California April 2011 FB got 2,000 employees and offices in 15 countries; FB enabled live voice calls via Facebook Chat for free through T-Mobiles new Bobsled service. The application also allow adding of voice to the current Facebook Chat & leave voice messages on Facebook; June 2011  DoubleClick reported Facebook reached one trillion pageviews/month July 6, 2011 FB launched its video calling services using Skype thru Skype Rest API. September 14, 2011, FB launched a Subscribe button & improved September 22, 2011 September 23, 2011 FB Timeline and Open Graph was released on F8 (Olivarez-Giles, 2011) From August 23, 2005 to June 9, 2011 FB was able to purchase its domain, Parakey, ConnectU, FriendFeed, Octazen, Divvyshot, Friendster Patents, ShareGrove, Next Stop, ChaiLabs, HotPotato [status updates], Drop.oi, FB.com domain name, Rel8tion, Beluga [group messaging], Snaptu, Dayturn and Sofa [software designs]. Figure 1. Timeline of Consolidated Major Decisions made by Facebook. (Ostrow, 2011; Astrom, 2010a; Astrom, 2010b; Antoci, Sabatini, & Sodini, 2010; Schoneboom, 2011; Smith, & Kidder, 2010; Pierpoint, 2011) This brings us to the question “is facebook using a prescriptive or emergent strategy in marketing?” This researcher conjecture that facebook, as a leading social network, is using both strategies. Alexa (2011), an online analytics, pointed that Facebook ranked second to Google among major and leading social network sites around the world. It has general application since its inception in 2004. It has currently more than 800,000 users, from allowable age of 13 years old above (Alexa, 2011). Top Websites Rank Description Kind of Strategy Adopted Google 1 Enable search information, webpages, images, and videos.  Emergent and prescriptive Facebook 2 social utility which connects with friends, upload photos, share link etc. Both emergent & prescriptive Youtube 3 Upload, tag and share videos for people Prescriptive Yahoo! 4 major internet portal and service provider with search results, customizable content, chat etc. Both emergent & prescriptive Wikipedia 5 free encyclopedia collaboratively done using wiki software. prescriptive Baidu 6 leading Chinese language search engine Both emergent & prescriptive Blogger 7 Free, automated weblog publishing tool that sends updates via FTP Both emergent & prescriptive Windows Live 8 Search engine from Microsoft Both emergent & prescriptive Twitter 9 Microblogging & social networking Both emergent & prescriptive QQ.com 10 China’s most used internet service Both emergent & prescriptive Figure 2. Top 10 websites (Alexa Web Information Company, 2011) Facebook, which was originally just a reunion site for classmates, has grown more responsive to its advocates and users needs. People registered in this site do not only connect with friends (Anthony et.al., 2008). They can nowadays write blogs, update status, upload albums of photos, subscribe to co-members, create groups for interactions, link e-sites, enjoyed tagging systems, with running twitter-like feeds, video-chat room, emailing structure, pages for advocacies, and transparent sharing system (Anthony et.al., 2008). Games for teenagers are also constantly upgraded to fit with holidays and celebrations with high interactive level among participants, as well as, other variety of applications for greetings during birthdays, holidays, and celebrations (Anthony et.al., 2008). All these catered the needs of clients who used many websites and applications. It can now even raise questions for interactive polling system which proved useful for online research. It is noted that the top 10 of 500 websites have common features: analytics and captive audience in continued interaction (Alexa, 2011). Like coldwar, the competition of these e-sites is stiff. While facebook dominate as a top social networking site, Google, on the other hand, sustained its capability to organize the world’s information using its search engine (Alexa, 2011). Managers of these sites vary in their worldviews, too, albeit they served their clients in complementary manners. As center of socialization, facebook diversified itself to numerous applications as e-satellites (Alexa, 2011). Google struggle to gain leverage in socialization thru its Google+ but it still needs to make use of many apps to make networking more exciting (Alexa, 2011). Although both sites prefer not to talk about its competition, it’s however clear at the outset that Google attempts to clone Facebook features. On the other light, Amazon –prominent market of e-books online and other goods, ranked 11th of the top 500 webs (Alexa, 2011). It’s preferable accessed by professionals and students as online info-bookstore but the management still needs to improve its services to make business more attractive. As this progress, Nokia-- leading cellphone brand, also develop its own FB apps for mobile social networking to be abreast with trend and to keep phones sustained its viability (Alexa, 2011).. Moreover, with regards to the manner about how Facebook is managed, the company maintains its prescriptive strategy. The utilization of this social networking site is governed by rules, policies, regulations and set ethical behaviors for its users. It’s also maintaining decisive actions for potential threats from rival sites who seek to tarnish its institutional reputation being the leading social network by spreading virus and spams. It has also maintained interactive communication with its users to determine what problems needed corrective actions from its administration. Such include banning those users who are abusive with co-facebook registrant. Facebook administration likewise encourages its users to report users who are making use of the site with ill-intentions (Anthony et.al., 2008; Razvan, 2005; Drucker, 1985). Figure 3. Steady growth rate of Facebook, competing with Google based in US-based users alone. FB has more average monthly minutes spent per visitor compared to Google (Helft & Hempel, 2011). Conclusion Social networking site, like facebook, necessitate also business strategies to make its operations systematic and operationally wholesome. As innovative platform for international, diplomatic, business and relational communication, facebook have adopted both emergent and prescriptive strategies. Through these, it has sustained its reputation as a leading institution for social networking and intercommunication with clarity of plan, pattern, perspective, measures and systems of coordinated, controlled and organized management. It can be inferred that through emergent and prescriptive strategies, facebook administration are able to develop its micro and macro business environment, albeit the challenges it confronts. It has likewise gained institutional integrity and reputation by ensuring that its services support branding and quality service, contextualized to its user-centered friendliness and accessibility (Razvan, 2005; Drucker, 1985; Anthony et.al., 2008). References Anthony, Scott; Johnson, Mark; Sinfield, Joseph; Altman, Elizabeth, 2008, Mastering Emergent Strategies: Taking Uncertain Ideas Forward. 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