MKT595:Facebook or not Facebook, that is the question.

The movie Social Media was launched this Friday with great expectation from millions of fans of the popular Facebook. The story is interesting, full of sarcasm,  betrayals , traitors, technology and ambition, enough to capture the attention of teenagers who think that one day they will develop an app that will make them a millionaire, like  Zuckerberg.

Facebook was launched in 2004 and almost immediately I adopted this social network in order to be in touch with my family and friends in Mexico. Learning the many benefits of Facebook resulted from the continuous training provided by my cyber daughter who spends more time  facebooking with her friends around the world than in talking with real people in Chicago. At the beginning my  activity in Facebook was limited to sending short messages and sharing pictures. Eventually I became part of new groups of many different colors and flavors, such a group of former United Airlines employees or a group of fans of Maitena,  a famous argentinian cartoon. Little by little Facebook was taking control of my rare spare time and the only thing that saved me from ever increasing addiction to posting and pooking was the appearance of the famous Farmville, that stole the attention of my friends but never seemed attractive to me, although I must admit that it is outstanding the way   Zynga has seen its profits skyrocketing through the virtual spaces of Facebook. Virtual goods and in game payments account displaced through this social gaming reaches figures of 10 Billion annually, nonetheless I refused to enter into this Farmville mania.

But don't think that I am an isolated example of a Facebook addict, in an article published by Nielsen in August 2010 titled "what Americans Do Online", it is mentioned that Social Media and Games are dominant activities, with 22% and 10% respectively of the time spend in on line. But also music and videos are highly prized by users, the amount of money spent on this digital content reached 10 billion last year and the average time American spend streaming online video is 3 hours and 15 minutes a month. To continue with  statistics, Women spend more time on line than men and Facebook's greatest growth has come from people aged 35-49, and worldwide adults are increasing adopters of Social Media.

Facebook is considered the number one Social Network, with 500,000,000 users, however, there are other similar social networks which are highly popular in other countries , such as Orkut Orkut, with 100,000,000 users in India and Brazil and Qzone which is popular in China with 200,000,000 users, Hi5 was also very popular in Latinamerica. In addition Other players in the arena of social networks have appeared on the scene, such as Ping which is being publicized as going live for the 160 million users of iTunes, and is available for both internet, iPhone and iPods.

More modest yet significant  other suppliers of social network environments have seen their numbers soar in the last few months, for example, Ning that claims to have more than 300,000 active Networks covering the most diverse topics,  ranging from  politics and entertainment to small business and education.  Thousands of users have made Ning the space for more focused social networks.  Ning's CEO Jason Rosenthal is a former Vice President of Hewlett Packard Software's Business Service Automation product line, one of the fastest growing  units within HP. I am a member of two social networks created under the Ning umbrella,  a social network for Hispanic Professionals in Chicago and an international network for digital photography students.

Experts claim that Facebook's revenue  will surpass  that projected for Google, with 635 Million in 2009 and an expected revenue of 2 Billion for 2010. There is no doubt about the success of Facebook's   on line advertising, which competes with Google Adwords and Google Adsense for the profitable business of  online advertising and  e-commerce. Traditional advertising in newspapers, TV and radio have been decreasing in favor of the new internet and mobile advertising. Consumer habits have been transformed, shoppers now make extensive research in web sites, blogs and social networks before deciding on any actual purchase, and this change is not specific to America. All over the world, the very effective marketing by word of mouth through Social Media is winning the race for consumer attention and is substantially affecting other media. Does this mean that the future of advertising is in the hands of a young entrepreneur who had the idea of creating a Social Network, just to become the most popular student in Harvard?  Google it and Facebook me if you find the answer.