Love it or hate it (and let’s face it, opinion is still very much divided) Facebook seems to be here to stay.  The question of whether it is a useful business tool or a waste of everyone’s time has been widely debated in the six years since its birth and no doubt will continue to be discussed amongst devotees and critics for more years to come.

There is no doubt that the origins of Facebook have tainted the views of some critics.  It was launched in February 2004 exclusively as a social networking site for students of Harvard College, being the brainchild of a former Harvard student.  Soon afterwards it was extended to Boston University and within two months all the Ivy League schools were in on the action.  It spread rapidly during its first year throughout universities all over the globe. Anyone with a university email address was eligible to join the exclusive domain.  In February 2006 it opened its portals to high schools and some large companies and since September 2006 it became a free-for-all for anyone over the age of 13 years. 

- should probably say do i give a Facefook?

Today the site has more than four million active users worldwide and, inevitably, criticisms are levied against it on a regular basis.  The main concern relates to privacy in general and child safety in particular.  It is a paradise for stalkers and hackers and has turned many people into Facebook junkies, with users spending more time interacting on Facebook than interacting with the real world.  For this reason it has also been banned in many places of work as employees were spending more time on Facebook networking than on their paid work.  Advertising has also been mismanaged and a large number of companies have felt obliged to withdraw their advertising accounts from Facebook.  Despite the saying that no publicity is bad publicity, companies were finding their ads on the pages of groups or individuals with whom they would not wish to be associated.  And therein lays another problem.  It has proved difficult to cancel accounts without having to manually and laboriously delete all content.  Censorship of Facebook has also been criticised as being too lax in allowing antisocial groups or forums to promote controversial subjects indiscriminately.  Finally there have been cases where individuals have successfully sued Facebook for intellectual property violations.

But Facebook is not all doom and gloom.  The phenomenal success of Facebook suggests that its devotees far outweigh its critics.  It is a social networking site that in the original spirit of its conception served a valuable purpose in allowing university or college students to form new acquaintances and get to know each other, thus alleviating loneliness and homesickness.  It is an easy and convenient way to communicate with friends and family all over the globe and has much to be said in its favour in that respect.

However it is also an extremely valuable business tool.  According to Facebook Statistics of February 2010 the latest estimate of its active users now exceeds 4,000,000.  This is an unprecedented potential audience for business owners wishing to promote their products or services to prospective users.  This is not a new concept.  Many businesses have seized the opportunity to promote themselves through Facebook and reaped handsome rewards.  This is why Facebook has evolved from its original status as a domestic social network site, to a business-to-consumer and business-to-business platform for marketing and commercial networking purposes. 

And the way to take advantage of the potential business opportunities proliferating Facebook, couldn’t be simpler.  All that is needed is an attractive and persuasive web page.  Because pages are public, they will be picked up by search engines, thus bringing more potential business traffic to the web page.  Web presence can be optimised by using categories which will associate it with specific keywords and improve search engine ranking. 
Although some businesses have created Facebook groups, which are useful for discussing topics of interest, this is not necessarily a better alternative to business pages.  This is because groups do not figure in public searches as they are not indexed.  Users would therefore need to be invited to join as they will not come across them by chance.  Applications in Facebook groups are also limited in number and range.

A good business page is far more versatile in the applications it supports.  Whatever activities are posted in the page will also be posted in the news feeds of its fans and seen in turn by all the Facebook contacts of those fans.  Exposure is therefore maximised due to high visibility, because every time users log into their accounts, they see the recent activities of all their contacts.  Businesses can also be advertised on Facebook by using Facebook Ads which again will enhance web presence.  This is easy to do thanks to Facebook’s large array of available management tools which allow for easy customisation of placed adverts.

Essentially, whichever side of the Facebook debate you subscribe to, it cannot be denied that Facebook provides a valuable platform for marketing business large and small. The sooner businesses seize this opportunity and make Facebook work for them, the sooner they can look forward to the dizzy heights of success.