Facebook

Data

What is the current size of the online advertising market? What is FB's market share? What are the market shares of its competitors (e.g. Google, et. al.)? What is the current number of FB users? 

How much time do they spend on the site (hours per visit are a good metric)? 
 

How many page views does FB receive? Growth: you may want to have these data for the two or three most recent periods so that we can see how the recent growth has been. Also, a projection
of growth figures would improve your work.
 

You are looking for “hard numbers”. That means that the source must be credible: a
government agency's or a good university website are highly credible. Jane Doe's blog is rarely credible. Other “open-source” material falls in between. Your data must be current to be useful. For context purposes, you might talk about 2010 data, but it's not complete to stop there.
 

You need the most recently available data.
 

Company problems
 

FB has been accused of violating the law and privacy (sometimes simultaneously). Discuss, briefly, at least one legal action (lawsuit, FTC, SEC investigation or similar) on this line in which the firm has been involved. What was the outcome? Did FB adhere to the agreed outcome?
 

Innovation
 

What have been some of FB's important innovations? In particular since social-media use is migrating to mobile devices, how have they been able to adapt (i.e. well or poorly)? How do we know if their innovations and adaptations are working out well?
 

Monetization
 

FB has many users, what are the company's strategies and tactics for gaining profits from
them? Have they changed over time? If not, are they working well? How do we know?
 

Financials
 

Please include the following for the last three years and the last four quarters: 1) Net income ($), 2) Net-income margin (= net inc./sales in hundredths of percent [e.g. 8.35%]) and 3) Price/earnings per share ratios (units are “times” denoted by “x” [e.g. 10x]). (Avoid a stock price chart except as it might elucidate the figures requested in this section.)
 

Culmination
 

What would you say is their overall strategy? (It's not important to use all the jargon from the class, however, selected terms could help.) What's most important here is—in your view and in 1 word, how are they piloting forward in their sector (e.g. accumulating market share, reaping profits, vanquishing competitors…..)? Is that approach working?; how can we judge the success of that approach?

General guidelines:
 

This paper should be approximately five double-spaced, twelve-point font pages. (Please
submit a Word-format document.) Writing business reports is not a volume business.

The following are some tips for achieving the requested page count:

• Get to the point(s)
• Omit needless words (every word must add something [a small point or nuance is fine]
and be non-redundant)
• Outline before writing (please do not submit the outline); even a very basic outline is
better than no outline for most writers
• Avoid overly long paragraphs
• Avoid overly long sentences
• Every paragraph has one main idea (usually stated in a “topic sentence”)
• All the sentences in the paragraph are relevant to the main idea