Facebook – are you part of the phenomenon?

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Some of you will be 100% familiar and socially immersed in Facebook; the rest of you won’t have a clue what it is. There's not that many people in between; once it gets you, it's got you. Once you start updating your status message there really is no going back… For those who are not familiar, Facebook is a social networking website. It’s the 2nd biggest such site on the web today, surpassed only by MySpace, for now... It started off life in the US college community in February 2004, and, after various rounds of venture capital funding, has since become available to anyone and everyone. There’s a comprehensive Wikipedia article on Facebook, here if you want to do some further reading: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook Over the last few months Facebook usage and active accounts has grown exponentially. Many attribute this to them launching an API that allows the community to develop applications to be used on the website. Within weeks, hundreds of user generated applications sprang up (and continue to), including PlusNet’s first (and not last) Facebook application “PlusNet Referrals” written by our very own Dan Dunford. We also have the PlusNet Staff Facebook Group that, as of writing, 56 staff and alumni are members of, and also the PlusNet Customer Facebook Group where staff and customers can interact on a social basis. It’s a prime example of the community driving usage and spreading the word. Facebook never advertise the service themselves. Why should they? They have 26 million users who are doing that for them; every day. You can’t buy that sort of exposure. So, how has this got anything to do with PlusNet? Well, Facebook's success is down to them providing a service that their users demand. There’s plenty of competition in the social networking sector; Facebook just happen to deliver a product that people want. These satisfied customers then feel confident enough to recommend the service to their circle of friends. Then these friends do likewise to their friends, and before you know it, they have tens of millions of users. PlusNet operates in exactly the same way in terms of customer acquisition. We need to understand and appreciate the type of service that our customers demand of us and their Internet connection. If we can fulfil these demands then we’ll have some happy customers who will choose to recommend us to their friends and family and colleagues. If we continue to listen to our customers and evolve to suit their ever changing demands, we’ll continue to generate happy, referring customers. If we get things wrong, there’s plenty of other Internet Service Providers out there… Google and Yahoo are also developing their own Social Network sites. We’ll soon have “Yahoo Mosh” and “Google Socialstream”. You can read more about it on Mike Arrington’s Blog, here: http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/07/08/google-yahoo-both-working-on-next-generation-social-networks/ So, Social networking; its here to stay; and let’s face it, it’s always been here. People have always found a way to congregate and form communities since the dawn of man. It just so happens that we have this thing called the Internet that we’re all now umbilically linked to so we can all socialise without getting off our [-Censored-]...that’s progress for you. It’s the future of PlusNet though… Matt Grest Head of Future Development PlusNet plc