If I asked you who Mark Zuckerberg is would you be able to tell me?
I wouldn’t have been able before this weekend. (So don’t feel too bad if you don’t.)
Rather than keep you in suspense, I’ll just come right out and tell you Mark is a former-Harvard student who created Facebook. When it launched in February 2004 it was used to communicate between other Harvard students. It quickly gained considerable notoriety and was soon being used at Stanford, Columbia and Yale. Zuckerberg ended up dropping out of Harvard to pursue his dreams and began running Facebook full time.
When Mark Zuckerberg showed up in Palo Alto, he had no car, no house, and no job. In August 2005, “thefacebook” (it’s original name) was officially called Facebook and the domain facebook.com was purchased for a reported $200,000. Today, Mark is at the helm of a smokin’-hot social-networking site. Back in 2007 it was projected that Facebook would generate $969 million in revenue, with 48 million users, by 2010. At that time The New York Times and others reported that Yahoo had made a $1 billion offer to buy Facebook.
Zuckerberg and his partners turned it down.
That was 2007 and it’s now 2009 and Facebook has far exceeded expectations. Back in April this phenomenon went over 200 million registered users, with 100 million logging in and using a combined 5 billion minutes every day.
I found a couple other stats that blew me away:
- More than 900 million photos uploaded to the site each month
- More than 10 million videos uploaded each month
- More than 1 billion pieces of content (links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photos, etc.) shared each week
- More than 2.5 million events created each month
- More than 35 million active user groups exist on the site
In this day and age, if you’re NOT on Facebook, you’re missing out. It’s hard to believe that I’ve been a member of this community for just over a year now. (Although I didn’t do much with it at first.) As I started to see others join the community and began to read how it was exploding I became more interesting in this new way of communicating and sharing.
I have to be honest, I do have a small problem with Facebook and Twitter, among other Social Networking sites.
It’s addictive as hell!
When I first started to see the possibilities, I spent far too much time playing and not enough time working. I could spend hours just reading and posting and never got anything productive done. Given time however, I was able to curb my Social Networking craving and put it in the same place I put most of my internet surfing from about 8am in the morning until about 2 or 3 o’clock in the afternoon.
Off limits.
More recently, I’ve found both Facebook and Twitter of all things a productive tool when it comes to gathering and researching information. Yesterday I wrote an article entitled “Tweeting for Travel Deals” on Examiner which described how both Facebook and Twitter can be a valuable resource for travel deals. Earlier in the week I found another “tweet” about Tybee Island and how it was voted America’s Healthiest Beach. Of course you can’t consider either a be-all-end-all resource, but a number of stories I’ve written for both this blog and Examiner were born from either Facebook or Twitter.
As a side note: because both stories were being discussed via Social Networking sites, and I picked them up and expanded on them, both stories got considerable readership. (Even bumped me into the Top 5 list this week on Examiner.com.) In addition, it was very cool to see suppliers like Pleasant Holidays “re-tweeting” my article a several times yesterday. (You need to follow Pleasant Holidays by the way, the do an awesome job of keeping you up to date on specials and deals on Twitter.)
Speaking of people you need to follow…
Late last week, our very own Coach Tomer got his own fan page on Facebook. I’ve often teased Coach that he doesn’t even know how to turn on a computer let alone know how to use one. Who says you can teach an old dog a new trick? (If you consider a 75 year old kid an old dog.)
Coach talked about his participation on Facebook this past weekend on his Leadership Call. His new Facebook page is a result of listening to what we in the field would like to see. It’s comforting that the home office is not only listening but moving forward with many of the suggestions and comments we’ve asked about. (As opposed to just telling us they’re listening and then doing what they want anyway.) I know it’s a small step, and many of the changes we’ve seen over that last few months have been small. But when you start to add them up, they begin to pile up to very large transformation.
If you’re not on Facebook, I encourage you to do so. (Just don’t get wrapped up in it like I did.) There are hundreds of others in YTB who are also on the network and it’s been a great place to share ideas and stories about our success within the company and the industry. Oh, and as far as the ban on Social Networking sites…I wouldn’t worry about it. Although critics might have a problem with it, when was the last time our company had an ounce of concern over what critics wanted or thought?
Hope to see you on the Network!
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Doug & Ronda Bauknight
AKA: TravelPro
Travel Agent / Networker
Phone: 678.458.5812
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Tags: Coach, Facebook, Twitter, YTB
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on Monday, July 13th, 2009 at 7:00 am and is filed under Coach, Facebook, Network Marketing, On-Line Marketing, Pleasant Holidays, YTB, YTB News.
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