E-commerce. Social Networking Sites Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2750 words

E-commerce. Social Networking Sites - Essay Example Facebook’s most important method of earning revenue is through advertising. A major chunk of its revenue is generated by the self-serve advertisement system which allows companies to decide who they want to market to, based on various preferences such as age, gender, marital status and the likes (Guardian 2009). The same report talks about Facebook selling virtual advertising estate on their websites to anyone who can dole out the cash, directing them to pages or profiles as they see fit. Finally, Facebook’s base of 3rd party apps has been the basis for many credit-card based transactions (in games for example) of which Facebook receives a certain percentage. All of these methods have helped Facebook’s revenue rise enough to be able to breakeven with its day to day costs which is a major breakthrough for any social networking site (Guardian 2009). MySpace The leading social networking site before Facebook was established, MySpace had made its name in the field for being a site that was preferred by upcoming musicians for its ability to allow easy sharing of music. It was considered the youth’s most preferred network, since it was the first site that allowed them to ‘relate to brands and bands’ (Web Strategist 2008). ... MySpace The leading social networking site before Facebook was established, MySpace had made its name in the field for being a site that was preferred by upcoming musicians for its ability to allow easy sharing of music. It was considered the youth’s most preferred network, since it was the first site that allowed them to ‘relate to brands and bands’ (Web Strategist 2008). However, the site currently owned by Specific Media, failed to innovate and lost a lot of its market share after the advent of Facebook, and has a current active user-base of 110 million users (The Next Web 2010). MySpace’s revenue model also revolves mostly around advertising. The site uses the basic two types of advertisements that are used by a lot of popular websites, namely pay-per-view and pay-per-click. In the former, the marketer pays a certain amount of money to have his Advertisement Banner up on MySpace’s pages while in the latter; he pays a certain amount (usually a few pennies) for every click that his advertisement gets. Although that may not sound like much, but with MySpace’s users still numbering in the million, the numbers certainly add up with the company making more than $550 million in revenue in 2007. However, since MySpace has fallen behind its major competitors, it needs to attract more users and perhaps find a more effective way of earning revenue than just relying on their current method, which seems ‘archaic’ in comparison with Facebook. Twitter Launched in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey, Twitter revolutionized the concept of communicating through social network sites. Instead of relying on photos or music, the heart of Twitter