This document discusses social networking sites and their use for business purposes. It begins with definitions of social networking sites and a history of major sites like SixDegrees, Friendster, MySpace, and Facebook. Advantages of using social networking sites for business include low-cost publicity, direct access to customers worldwide, and effective marketing. Challenges include privacy issues and lack of anonymity. The document concludes that social networking sites are an important marketing tool for businesses to connect with customers.

1. SOCIAL NETWORKING SITES &
BUSINESS
PRESENTED BY,
SOP 18
SREELATHA S NAIR
KIRAN BABU
SINTO K A
SYAM PRASASD
VISHNU MENON

2. WHAT IS A SOCIAL NETWORKING SITE?
 Web based services that allow individuals to
construct a public profile within a bounded
system.
 Identify other users with whom they share a
connection.
 View and traverse their list of connections and
those made by others within the system.
 Internal(private)
 External(public)

3. HISTORY OF SNS
THE EARLY YEARS…
SIX DEGREES
 1st recognizable social network site launched in
1997 – sixdegrees.com
 Allowed creation of profiles and listing friends
 Helped to send messages and attracted millions
of users
 2000-service closed

4. HISTORY (CONT.)
FRIENDSTER
 Launched in 2002
 Designed to compete with Match.com
 Gained wide popularity
 Later on encountered technical and social
difficulties
 2000 onwards many new SNSs were launched.
While socially organized SNSs solicit broad
audiences, professional sites such as LinkedIn,
Visible path and Xing focus on business people.

5. HISTORY (CONT.)
MYSPACE
 Begun in 2003
 Regularly added new features
 Teenagers joined in mass in 2004
 User policy allows minors
 Safety issues plagued MySpace after 2005

6. HISTORY (CONT.)
FACEBOOK
 Started in early 2004 as a Harvard only SNS
 Gradually spread to
schools, colleges, institutions, professionals
inside corporate networks and eventually
everyone
 Users are unable to make full profile public
 Features differentiating FB

7. ADVANTAGES OF SNS
 Virtual platform for communication &
information sharing
 More acceptability
 A single connection to multiple connections
 Builds brand awareness
 Low cost publicity
 Increases marketing effectiveness
 Access market in real time

8. ADVANTAGES (CONTD.)
 Makes people with common interest under one
roof
 Taking word of mouth to another level
communication
 Open environment – Easy gathering of right
customers
 Research platform

9. DISADVANTAGES OF SNS
 Lack of Anonymity
 Scams
 Harassments
 Lack of privacy
 Chance of loss of personal data
 Time consuming

10. BUSINESS OUTLOOK WITH SNS
 Effective on SNS personal users
 Direct connection with World- Wide Customers
 Business Networking & Expansion
 Important Marketing Tool
 Entertainment Marketing
 Low Cost publicity

11. EFFECT ON SNS PERSONAL USERS
 63% of total internet users uses SNS for
personnel purposes
 Unaware about manual marketing
 More effective in this particular group

12. DIRECT CONNECTION WITH WORLD WIDE
CUSTOMERS
 Rise of internet marketing
 Considers SNS marketing as best direct
communication
 No barriers regarding places or countries
 World communication under one umbrella
 Comfortable feedback device
 E.g.: Virgin Train & Twitter

13. MARKETING TOOL
 Chance to make trail experiments
 Researching tool
 Single networking system
 Low cost
 Attracts customers by discount coupons
 E.g.: Dell & Twitter generates 6.5 million $

14. MAJOR SOCIAL NETWORKING
SITES
 FACEBOOK
 TWITTER
 MYSPACE
 NING
 GOOGLE PLUS

15. FACEBOOK
 Launched in February 2004, operated and
privately owned by Facebook, Inc.
 700 million monthly users
 Facebook was founded by Mark
Zuckerberg with his college roommates and
fellow computer science students
 In January 2009 Compete.com study ranked
Facebook as the most used social networking
service by worldwide monthly active users.
 Most of Facebook's revenue comes from
advertising. Microsoft is Facebook's exclusive
partner for serving banner advertising

16.  Created in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey
 Online social networking and micro
blogging service, enables its users to send and
read text-based posts of up to 140 characters.
 200 million users in 2011, generating over 200
million tweets and handling over 1.6
billion search queries per day.
 SMS of the Internet.

17.  Launched in August 2003 and is headquartered
in Beverly Hills, California.
 Owned by Specific Media LLC and pop
star Justin Timberlake.
 80 million monthly users
 From 2005 until early 2008, Myspace was the
most visited social networking site in the world.
In June 2006 Google surpassed myspace
 But on April 19, 2008, Facebook overtook
Myspace in the Alexa rankings

18.  Online platform for people and organizations to
create custom social networks
 Launched in October 2005
 Offers customers the ability to create a community
website with a customized appearance and feel.
 There are over 90,000 (as of June 2011) social
websites, known as Ning Networks, running on the
Ning Platform.
 As of June 2011, Ning has 65 million monthly
unique visitors globally on its platform
 Ning was co-founded by Marc Andreessen and Gina
Bianchins.
 On September 21, 2011, the company announced its
merger with Glam Media.

19. GOOGLE PLUS
 A social network operated by Google.
 Launched on June 28th, 2011 with integrations
across a number of Google products, including
Buzz and Profiles.
 Key element is ‘CIRCLES’
 I t has a section specifically for viewing,
managing and editing multimedia
 ‘Hangout Feature’

20. SOME BUSINESS SNS
 XING
 RYZE
 LINKEDIN
 ECADEMY

21. XING
 11 million member
 Professionals meet up, find jobs, generate ideas
 Available in 16 languages
 5000 specialist groups
 www.xing.com

23. RYZE
 5,00,000+ users,200 countries
 Helps people make connections and grow their
networks
 Build career, find job, make sales
 Networking among business firms
 www.ryze.com

25. LINKEDIN
 Launched in may 2003
 120 million registered users,200+ countries
 Available in 9 languages
 10 million+ members from India
 More than 2 million companies have LinkedIn
pages
 For building professional business
relationships
 Formal communication
 www.linkedin.com/

27. ECADEMY
 Began in 1998
 1,00,000+ members
 Meant for business owners and entrepreneurs
 Simple learning steps-know me, like me, follow
me

29. SOME FACTS ABOUT SNS
 70% SNS users access SNS everyday
 According to telecom regulatory authority of
India, there are 83 million internet users in India
 Mobile devices comes with a built in SNS
 SNS through mobiles expected to reach 72
million by 2014
 SNS is a fast emerging medium for seeking
information

30. COMPANIES THAT SUCCESSFULLY MADE
USE OF SNS
1) JET AIRWAYS
 Launched their facebook page in January,2010
(www.facebook.com/jetairways)
 Extended its presence to LinkedIn &
foursquare(a location based mobile SNS)
 Saw an immense response,1.5 lakh fans

31. 2)MARUTI SUZUKI
 largest selling automobile manufacturer in
INDIA
 Common man’s first preference
 Maruti’s Brands in SNS – SX4, SWIFT
DESIRE, RITZ, ALTO, A STAR
 Targeted youth who spends time in SNS
3)MAX NEWYORK LIFE INSURANCE
 Started an SNS page to attract customers and
answer to their queries

32. 4)HBO – Largest fan base in entertainment
channels category
 ADIDAS took over from NIKE & REEBOK during
2011
 Leads with 7 lakh+ fans
5) Warner Bros.
 Launched ‘batman’ in facebook
 Viewed with the help of facebook credits

35. SNS AS A BUSINESS TOOL
 Seeking and exchanging of information
 interaction with customers
 building relationship and trust
 improving internal communication
 business performance
 More valuable connection with customers
 branding
 Comparatively cheaper means of brand
promotion

36. POINTS TO BE CONSIDERED
 Understand the fundamentals of communication
and technology
 Never create pages just on the buzz
 Have knowledge on SNS marketing
 Have to be more about conversations than
declarations
 Should involve free expression and &
relationship building
 Has to be frequently updated
 Should use SNS with traditional means of
Marketing intelligence and communication

37. SNS AS A BUSINESS TOOL(CONT.)
 Competitive insights
 Recruitment and retention of customers &
business partners
 Reputation building
 Helps to gain customer support
 Helps to handle complaints, questions and
delivers real time solutions
 Influences revenue & market shares

38. CONCLUSION
 In this present age of increased
consumerism, business are trying to bring in
new strategies to attract customers. As a
result, the relevance and use of social media by
the business has been on a rise in the recent
years.
 It’s a cheaper marketing strategy
 Consumers promote the brand
 Forms an important part of a ‘netizens’ life
 SNS has been the most desirable platform to
share and connect with friends, family or online
community at large.