Facebook: what it is, features of use and interesting facts. What is the social network Facebook and why it should be used in business
Facebook is the most popular and largest social network in the world. If you are interested in learning more about Facebook, how to use the network and some of the “tricks” of FB, this material is just for you!
Facebook - what is it
Facebook is not only the largest social network in the world, but also one of the 5 most visited sites in the world. We now know what Facebook is (a social network), but what is the very concept of a social network? To answer this question, let's look at the definition from Wikipedia:
By building social interaction we should understand such things as communication, sharing photographs, images, videos, audio files and other content, evaluating and discussing this content, creating thematic groups and public pages.
This is such an immodest statistic! But that’s not all - the most interesting facts about Facebook:
- Facebook Inc also owns such well-known social networks as Instagram and WhatsApp.
- In 2016, the company earned $10 billion, and revenue amounted to $27.638 billion. Thus, Facebook earns $52,583 per minute (fifty-two thousand five hundred eighty-three thousand dollars)
- The most popular people on Facebook are Real Madrid football player Cristiano Ronaldo, Colombian singer Shakira and Hollywood actor Vin Diesel. All of them have more than 100 million likes on their pages.
- At one time, the main social network in the world was MySpace, and Facebook was just a copy of it. At that time, MySpace bought FB twice, but twice refused to pay the amounts requested by Zuckerberg - $75 and $750 million. And in vain - after 2 years, Microsoft bought a 1.5% stake in Facebook for $240 million (thus, the entire social network was worth $15 billion. And now the company is valued at more than 400 billion US dollars! And now few people even remember about MySpace .
- The Facebook application is the third most popular in the world and is second only to the browser and email applications.
- Every registered FB user knows every other user through 3.57 friends (six handshakes theory)
- Mark Zuckerberg, immediately before creating Facebook, worked on a similar site - Facemash, but then the Harvard administration demanded that the project be closed and accused Zuckerberg of violating security and privacy.
The history of the founding of the social network Facebook
Facebook was founded in the winter of 2004 (February 4) by four guys who were roommates at Harvard University. These guys were actually Mark Zuckerberg, Dustin Moskovitz, Eduardo Saverin and Chris Hughes. Then the social network had a slightly different name, Thefacebook. At the first stage of development, registration on the site was available only to Harvard students through their email. After some time, access to Facebook was opened to other higher educational institutions in Boston, and after a while - to all US students and teachers. And only starting in the fall of 2006, the social network was able to be used by all the inhabitants of the Earth - but only if the person was 16 years old and had his own email. That is, in fact, for two whole years, FB functioned as a niche intra-university network!
Video: Live broadcasts on the social network Facebook
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What is the difference between Facebook and other social networks?
For a long time, Facebook was a monopolist in the world of social networks (and still is in most countries of the world), and there was practically no one to compare it with. Well, maybe - except for MySpace, which FB surpassed at the dawn of its existence. However, recently more and more social networks similar to Facebook have begun to appear, and we can talk more confidently about comparisons. At the global level, the analogues of Facebook are Google Plus and Twitter. Also, some countries have their own national analogues - Odnoklassniki in Russia, Orkut in Brazil, Mixi in Japan, QZone and WeChat in China, Draugiem in Latvia.
Since we live in Russia, we can confidently say about the differences between Facebook and VK and Odnoklassniki. And the main ones are:
There are still some differences, but they are more cosmetic than fundamental.
Facebook - registration
Registration on Facebook is not a complicated process at all and every person can easily cope with this process. To get started, go to the FB home page. If you are not registered yet, the system will in any case redirect you to the registration page. You will see the following fields:
Fill out these fields, then confirm your registration by phone or email - and your Facebook profile will be created completely! Read more about how to create your own personal account on this social network in the special material - in 5 minutes! There you will find answers to all questions on this topic!
Facebook - how to listen to music on the social network
Many users are accustomed to not only communicating on the social network, but also listening to music. On Facebook, you can listen to music through special applications and add-ons.
Here are some of them:
- Spotify
- MySpace Music
- Deezer
- Music in Facebook messenger
- Zvooq
- Soundcloud
Read more about music on Facebook in this material:
How to create a group or page on Facebook
- In a Facebook group you can restrict access to materials
- Facebook page is public by default
There are also some differences between them in the interface, but in general, groups are created for more thematic communication, pages for free communication and presentation of products or services to all network users.
To create a group or page, click on the triangle in the upper right corner and select Create page or Create community (group) from the drop-down menu. Next you will be asked to select the type, topic, and name of the community. After creation, proceed to designing and setting up communities.
How to delete a profile
On the social network Facebook, there are two ways to terminate your page. The first method is to temporarily deactivate, but not delete the profile. In this state, your page will not be visible in searches, but all photos, videos, and your recordings will be saved and you can resume everything after your next login. The second method is the final and irreversible deletion of the profile.
Deactivating a Facebook profile
To deactivate your page, follow the Settings link (triangle icon in the upper right corner of the site), then go to Security (menu on the left) and there you will see the Deactivate account item. Click on the link, then you will need to briefly explain the reason for deactivation, enter your password and verification code to confirm the action. After this, an email will be sent to your email with a link to activate your account. Everything is quite simple as you can see.
Deleting a Facebook account
Deleting a Facebook account To get started, go to the Help section (via Privacy Settings) and enter a request to delete your account there. In the results, go to the profile deletion page. You should be redirected to this page:
www.facebook.com/help/delete_account
Click on the “Delete my page” button, after which you need to confirm this action - enter your password, verification password and briefly write about the reason for deletion. Click OK. However, this will not be a permanent deletion - your account can still be resumed within 14 days. After these two weeks, the removal will be irreversible.
How to recover access and password to a social network
If you have forgotten your profile password and cannot log into Facebook, no problem, access can be restored!
To get started, follow the “Forgot your password” link on the login page. Then follow the link to restore access and you will be sent an email with a special code to renew your account. Enter this password in the special window that will be visible on the FB website. Click the “Continue” button and you will be taken to the next step - creating a new password. Create it by entering it twice and also click on the Continue button. After this, you will be redirected to your profile page - already restored and with a new password. Remember it so you don’t forget next time!
How to search and add friends on Facebook
The most convenient way to invite friends is in the following ways:
- Enter the first and last name of your friend or acquaintance in the search field and find it among the search results
- Go to a special section for finding friends - “Find friends” and search by a set of criteria - name, school, city, university, email, mobile number
- Add at least one of your friends, and if he has an open list of friends, start adding your acquaintances to yourself - you probably have a lot of mutual acquaintances with him.
There are also other search methods - for example, importing from other social networks, but these three are quite enough for a starting addition.
Until recently, the Internet was used mainly for searching for useful information and exchanging messages via e-mail. Today, Internet users spend more and more time on social networking pages. Thanks to Mark Zuckerberg, who founded Facebook, human communication has reached a new level, the existence of which one could only guess. The social network has become an integral part of the lives of billions of people on our planet, and from time to time they have a question - what is Facebook for?
Ample opportunities for communication
Initially, Facebook was conceived as an online analogue of a university album with the names and photographs of students, but Zuckerberg decided not to stop there. He turned it into a huge social network where users can communicate through messages sent via PM or left on the wall. Today, the capabilities of Facebook have expanded significantly, but the main goal is still communication.
Why create an account on Facebook if you can communicate using traditional means of online communication? Yes, for the simple reason that this is a more advanced level. For a long time, the main method of virtual communication was email correspondence. With constant access to the Internet, users switched to ICQ, while representatives of the American and European Internet communities communicated on MSN Messenger.
Facebook is an international social network, which includes residents of hundreds of countries, and makes it possible not to limit communication with compatriots. In addition, it creates a feeling of real communication, because... users do not hide under mysterious nicknames, but have a profile that allows them to paint a more or less real picture. Thus, by registering on Facebook, you can simultaneously conduct a dialogue with a work colleague sitting in the next office, a friend located on the other side of the city, and a pen pal living in the United States. Fast, convenient and, most importantly, completely free.
Entertainment and integration options
In order to expand the user audience, Facebook management decided not to limit the capabilities of the social network to simply exchanging messages and photos. The developers received the green light to create applications for the site, including many interactive and multiplayer games. With their help, Facebook users enjoy passing the time by competing with friends and setting personal records. A nice bonus is the ability to play the same game both in the computer version of the social network and in applications developed for smartphones. In this case, the results will be summarized, for which you only need to log in to the application using your Facebook account.
By the way, another good reason to create a personal page on the social network Facebook is the possibility of integration with applications and other Internet resources. You can share interesting articles outside of Facebook with your friends with the click of a button. Or evaluate the information found using the same Facebook “like”. In addition, one profile will solve the problem of registration on thousands of Russian and foreign sites. Instead of entering your information each time when registering, you can simply click the “Log in with your Facebook account” button. We can say that a Facebook profile is a kind of universal “key” that gives access to a huge number of Internet resources.
SMM – expanding the boundaries of marketing
Naturally, Facebook is of interest not only to ordinary users, but also to representatives of the business sector. Marketers have long realized that social networks are a great place to promote a brand, and even created a separate marketing area called Social Media Marketing (SMM). As it turned out, the return on advertising in traditional types of media is much lower than on competent SMM.
Facebook is one of the most popular and effective SMM platforms. In the ranking of traffic to Internet resources compiled by the well-known statistical site alexa.com, the social network Facebook ranks second, second only to Google. About a billion users are active on the social networking site every month. This means that by creating a company page on Facebook, you are launching a mechanism for self-distribution of information. The main thing is to attract and interest users. Everything else will be done for you.
So, Facebook is a social network with really broad capabilities. For ordinary users, it is primarily needed for easy communication with friends, not limited by time or space. For business representatives, Facebook is a powerful SMM platform that allows them to expand their audience. And yet, to the question “Why is Facebook needed?” everyone must give their own answer, because, by and large, this is just a site that has become an Internet giant precisely thanks to the interest of users.
Alexander Ivanov
In this article we will talk about what Facebook is, its capabilities and why it is needed for any business.
This social network is designed both for communication and for attracting customers. It was founded in 2004 by the now well-known Mark Zuckerberg while studying at Harvard University and is one of the five most visited websites in the world.
In 2017, Facebook's audience exceeded 2 billion users. There are many thematic communities where you can find like-minded people and friends with similar interests.
Any user can easily expand their professional contacts, search for clients and colleagues. To establish business connections, certain information that can be provided during registration helps.
Initially, Facebook was intended only for communication, thanks to which companies have the opportunity to receive almost instant feedback from personal clients and partners.
Reviews play a very important role in the promotion process, as a person will always trust the opinions of others. Therefore, just creating an advertising company is not enough. This is where business begins.
Features on Facebook
- Testing demand for new products or services.
- Attracting partners and clients.
- Receive instant feedback on published information.
- Advertising of goods or services.
- Posting information about the company and its activities.
- Direct communication with your audience.
In addition to all this, you can create business pages, personal pages, groups (communities), applications, and so on. This is how groups of people are formed according to interests, views and type of activity.
On their pages, users can publish fresh and useful information for a specific target audience, thereby increasing interest in their project.
If you manage your account correctly, you can quickly and successfully expand your customer base and, of course, increase sales.
How to Create a Successful Business Page
The basic principle is that the page should convey the idea that is reflected in the title. The design should also match the theme so that users can quickly find their way and make their choice.
Your main task is to gather as many target audiences as possible, which includes not only people interested in this idea, but also potential buyers.
The name should be unique and immediately catchy, and not repulsive.
Facebook has a personal internal search that many people use. Therefore, it is recommended to mention the keywords for which you would like to rank in the title of the page.
The main business idea should be written on the wall: add the necessary links and contacts so that the user can easily go to your site or contact you somehow.
The first thing the user notices is the cover, which should be bright and catchy. It should also reflect well the idea of your business.
The left menu contains tools that you can use to create tabs or any other purpose.
The next step is to fill out the page.
In addition to posts that will bring potential customers to your site, you should note other interesting information on the topic.
For example, you can post news from your personal website once a day and provide useful advice or educational and training materials the same amount.
Be sure to add a poll, generate a review, and post a video once a week.
It would be nice to organize some promotions or competitions once a month. This way you can quickly engage visitors who will like, comment, and repost.
How to promote your business page
To promote, you can use paid or free methods.
The free ones are as follows:
- leave comments on behalf of your business page. The title will appear as a link, which will encourage you to go to your personal page. To do this, next to the “main” inscription, select the desired one from the list;
- you can join an unlimited number of thematic groups that suit your topic, and attract users from there using posts with links;
- You can attract traffic to business pages from your personal Facebook profile;
- if you have a website, then use it to promote the page. Install relevant widgets or links;
- You can exchange posts with other public pages of similar topics.
Paid promotion methods include:
- Targeted advertising - in the right column or news feed;
- Advertising through the owner of the community you are interested in, who, in turn, publishes your post on his page or group.
In order to make the most of all the features of Facebook, you can check out this cool online training .
What can you promote on Facebook?
Before we talk about what exactly can be promoted on this social network, let's figure out why Facebook?
In the vastness of the RuNet, about 30 million users visit this network every month, which is several times smaller than the audience of VKontakte. But at the same time, the age range of these people is from 18 to 45 years.
This is a fairly active audience, which, moreover, is much more solvent. And this has not been a secret for a long time.
You can only register on FB from the age of 13, and it does not contain free content such as music and films.
A business page can act as a business card for your own or corporate website. On it you can publish announcements of new materials or articles on similar topics, thanks to which your site will be constantly visited by the target audience.
Information businessmen who sell courses, trainings, seminars or coaching, owners of their own businesses, online stores, and networkers are actively promoting on Facebook.
Conclusion
To summarize, I would like to say that Facebook is a powerful marketing tool. Profiles, pages and groups make it possible to quickly achieve success, expand your customer base and increase sales!
A huge number of companies are proof of this.
This is where I end. Don't forget to subscribe to blog updates and the Telegram channel t.me/site, as well as share information on social networks.
Happy promotion!
It is difficult today to find a person who is not registered on any social network. And how can you resist spying on how your friends, colleagues and classmates live? Facebook is rightfully considered one of the most popular social networks around the world. It was created by Mark Zuckerberg in 2004 and already has over a billion users.
In order to become the owner of a Facebook account, you will have to go through a simple registration. Anyone over 13 years of age with internet access can register. First and last names written in Russian are automatically translated into English. When specifying your email, you need to take into account that it can only be used on Facebook once. That is, subsequently no one will be able to authenticate under it.
Upon completion of registration, a confirmation letter from the social network Facebook will be sent to your email address. As a rule, the message arrives in a short time, and if it does not appear for too long, check your spam folder.
Having a personal page, you can use all the services and capabilities of the Facebook interface. The top horizontal panel will help you control your personal account. There are buttons for setting up personal data and setting the privacy of finding friends. You can search for friends on Facebook using email, Skype, ICQ or QIP number, and importing from other social networks. If your friends are already registered on Facebook, then you can add them to your account, otherwise, invite them to this social network.
The FaceBook social network was developed in early 2004. In the same year, it was implemented by Mark Zuckerberg. At first, the site was called “TheFacebook” and was accessible only to students at Harvard University. Later, the social network spread to all universities in the United States. And two years later, anyone over the age of thirteen could get an account on this social network.
All that was required to register was a valid email address. After the audience of the social network was significantly expanded, it changed its name to “Facebook”. It is under this name that it exists today. It is the largest social network on the Internet. The number of registered participants from around the world has already exceeded six hundred million. The Russian-language version of the social network appeared just 4 years after its creation.
Despite the huge number of participants in the social network, they can be divided into two categories. The first group includes adherents of this social network, and the second group includes users who are not satisfied with the functionality of the resource.
Registration on FaceBook
To get an account on the FaceBook social network, you will have to go through the registration procedure on the official website. Here you will be asked to fill out a standard registration form. It will ask you to provide your first name, last name, email address and password, as well as your date of birth and gender. After registration, you can hide your date of birth so that it is not available for viewing by other users of the social network.
After all fields of the registration form have been filled out, you must click on the “Registration” button. The system will automatically send a letter to your email in which your registration on the FaceBook social network will be confirmed. To fully use all the features of the social network, you need to complete a few more steps.
1. Search for friends: after completing the registration procedure, FaceBook will offer you to search the network for your friends and acquaintances with whom you communicated via Skype or email.
2. Profile information: in addition to basic information about yourself, you can also add your place of work or study.
3. Photograph: you can upload a ready-made photo from your computer, or take a photo using a webcam.
FaceBook is a classic social network. Here, if you wish, you can provide personal information about yourself, for example, the country and city in which you live, education, age, etc. You can also upload your videos and photos, create a list of preferences (music and films, clubs and restaurants, athletes and favorite groups). You can correspond with friends, post and use built-in programs and applications of the social network (surveys, games and other entertainment). The service can be used not only as a simple social network. FaceBook can be used to promote your own business and attract new clients.
Relationship between users
Adding other users as "friends"
To ensure the security of your account, the developers have provided restrictions when adding new friends in the form of a limit of 5 thousand users. In addition, if you and a potential friend do not have common information, for example, a school or higher education institution, then when you add a person as a friend, you will be asked if you know him. If the answer is no, you will earn a warning. Due to the large number of warnings, the administration of the social network may block the account.
After adding a new user as a friend, you can subscribe to his page. To do this, click the special button in your profile. Until a potential friend confirms that you know him, you will be automatically subscribed to his updates. You can later easily unsubscribe from them, and the user will remain on your friends list. By default, all friends are divided into groups, according to the information you provided. So, for example, in your friends list you can find categories such as loved ones, relatives, university friends, school friends, etc. If you feel comfortable, you can create your own groups.
Using the Wink feature in FaceBook
For many, the purpose of this function still remains a mystery. This is simply a kind of greeting to another user. “Winking” no longer carries any functional load. Moreover, you can wink at other users countless times.
All messages on the social network FaceBook can be divided into only two types: incoming and other. The second group includes messages that you receive from users who are not on your friends list. This separation of messages is used to reduce the amount of spam on the social network.
For correspondence on the Facebook social network, a special email is used. What is she like? Your personal email address looks like this: “your social network name”@facebook.com. To view the archive of correspondence, simply go to the “Messages” tab. This will open a window displaying a list of interlocutors. The site also has the ability to quickly exchange messages like a chat. In this case, each of your correspondence will be displayed in a small window located at the bottom of the browser window. This is very convenient because you can chat with friends and explore your news feed at the same time.
Your own website and FaceBook
Today, almost every entrepreneur has a community on a social network. Many people use the social network to create a page with their business. You can even create a whole group to promote your business. If you already have your own website and a page on the social network FaceBook, then in order to attract new clients and spread information about your business, you need to make sure that these two Internet resources overlap with each other.
For this purpose, it is possible to place a widget for your FaceBook group on the website. The group widget is a small block that contains important information about your page on the FaceBook social network. This could be information about the last post posted or the number of subscribers. Using the widget, any visitor to your website can join the community on a social network and receive the latest news about your business.
To add a FaceBook widget to your website, you need to insert the html code into the website page. You can get it from the developer section on the FaceBook website. There you need to click on Live Box and create your own widget. To do this you need to fill in the following fields:
— FaceBook Page URL – the address of your group on the FaceBook social network;
— Height – widget height;
— Width – widget width;
— Show Friends’ faces – when you check the box next to this item, the faces of your subscribers will be displayed on the widget;
— Show Posts – when you check the box next to this item, the widget will display the latest posts posted in the group.
After all fields are filled in, click on the “Get code” button. That's all! All that remains is to copy the result to the page of your website.
FaceBook: mobile version
Today, a huge number of Internet resources exist in two different versions: regular and mobile. FaceBook is no exception to this rule. The mobile version has a somewhat simplified interface. There are no unnecessary videos and pictures, which allows you to significantly speed up the page processing process. Using the mobile version of FaceBook should not pose any particular difficulties. Just like in the regular version, here you can view user pages, exchange messages, comment and change status. About 30% of all social network users have already switched to the mobile version.
