Facebook: Building a Business from the Social Graph

Chapter 8: Facebook: Building a Business from the Social Graph 1. What competitive asset does the application platform initiative help Facebook strengthen. For instance, how do apps make facebo0k stronger while compared to rivalsFacebook made a set of application programming interfaces (APIs). APIs are application that specifies how a programs can be made and written to run inside the Facebook. With APIs any programmer in the world has the ability to make and write an application to run inside Facebook. So with API an programmer has the ability to make the Facebook’s users to be their users if their application is good enough to get users to use it. Programmers will be able to charge a small fee for its application to the users and the biggest thing is that Facebook lets developers keep all the money they made on the applications. So these made all the programmers come to Facebook and start making apps for it. All the new application created by the programmers eventually added more value to Facebook outside of what the firm provided for its users.
2. What markets has Facebook entered? What factors have allowed the firm to gain share in these markets at the expense of established firmsFacebook has positioned itself as the main source of social interaction with its users. This allows Facebook to venture into different but related businesses like video and photo sharing, link sharing, bookmarking, and messaging. Facebook has become the best communication tool in the world for people to use. Such as using its messaging features, photo sharing features, game features, music features, video features, and many more. By doing this they have put a lot of companies at nervousness about the futures of their services and their company. Companies like Google, Yahoo, MySpace, etc. Companies like these are always trying to buy new and upcoming services/companies to compete with Facebook. But Facebook has established themselves as a walled garden. Which means…