Competitive advantages through facebook

Social networking sites are increasingly attracting the attention of academic and industry researchers intrigued by their affordances and reach. Today social networking commonly refers to all those activities that are carried out within specific online services that provide free space software tools which allow creating networks of people. In other words the social networking service is a web site that allows s individuals to construct a public or semi-public profile.

User's data are not only constituted by vital statistics, but they include a lot of other information which pertains to user hobbies, passions, interest and professional background and so on. This kind of personal data, all spontaneously provided by the users her/himself, permit to create interconnected networks of people who decide to put in common their interests and to have an online identity which fully describe them.

The rise of social networking websites such as facebook over the past decades has been nothing short phenomenal. Once regarded as nothing more than a passing “fad”, these websites have grown to astronomical proportion each websites currently boasts 60+ million unique visitors each month. Certain businesses are beginning to notice the potential for reaching out to their target audience through this new medium and have already begun a series of advertising efforts in order to do so. However the spend on this form of advertising is relatively minor compared to other efforts.

Facebook belongs to the online social networking industry. Companies like facebook usually do not release official visitors or revenue number. But good estimates are available online.