blonde poker forum

On Monday of this week, for the first time ever, over one billion people used Facebook.

The billionth user milestone was reached 3 years ago, now 1 billion in a single day.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-34082393




HALF of all online users, globally, use Facebook.

 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-33712729

Do you use Facebook? If so, why?


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You don't use Facebook?

Why not?




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i post on it less than ever

i have to use it to keep up to date with DTD stuff, they use it very heavily


far far far prefer twitter to follow what i want to follow and not to have to read so much crap

It's reach is so huge that it has, single-handedly, changed the meaning of words.

A "friend" is now someone you linked to on the internet.

 

It has become very Corporate, almost every volume retail business (including most Online sites) uses it.  

I wonder what the numbers might be without Corporate use?

Individuals feel they have to be on Facebook, or they will miss out on Offers & Freerolls. For the Business, engaging people on Social-Media is now extremely important. The Businesses get a direct link to a billion people. If we limit that to, say, the UK, they must have a direct link to what, 30, 40 million people? And it's (almost) free for Businesses to use.

Do use but not very enthusiastically.  

It does help keep in touch with old work friends and relatives dawn saff.

I try and use it for my work but I'm not that good at using social media so don't do it as often as I should.   I hardly ever post a personal status update but I do like to see what everyone is up too!

Never used any social media in my life.  Blonde is my only social media!

Good for being nosy, keeping in touch with some of the lads I was in the Navy with, and some of the MS groups are very useful, too.

Don't have an account. Don't think I'm missing too much.

"bit" of an overgeneralisation don't you think?

It's a small sample but I don't think any of my close friends or family use facebook to capture anything of any commercial value. I'd say it's primary use is to keep in contact with people you don't normally see because you live too far apart.

The only time I can think of contacting anything corporate on facebook is to get a bit of information from them or when it's an event that I want to keep updated about (so technically it's commercial but there's no monetary value attached once I've already decided I'm going/participating).

I think Facebook has only "become very Corporate" if you're mainly surrounding yourself with corporate accounts - if you're primarily following people you actually know then I find the commercial aspect of it very 'hands off'.

I stopped using it when I realised Chompy unfriended not once but twice, seemed like a new life low. I am back on now with the misson to win him back :)

Never used it. Been tempted a couple of times but the cons seem to outweigh the pros.

Never had one until earlier this year, when I joined to utilise a game that gives you stuff in Vegas.
Have mine in a made up name. Only have about a dozen 'friends' on there.

Useful for contacting people when you are abroad and for some sports updates, but could easily go without. Far too much crap gets posted on there

myVegas?

Be warned, if your name on FB doesnt match your ID, there have been reports of people's rewards getting rejected :(

No havent got an account.
dont want to talk to people now that i didnt want to talk to 20 years ago
from what ive seen its handy if you need to know if someones just had a shit

Not at all.

All major businesses that sell to the general public use Facebook, & are, imo, a very substantial part of Facebook's popularity & marketing strength.

Starbucks, Coca-Cola, Oreo, Skittles & Red-Bull each have more than 10 million "friends". Not too many individuals have anything like that.

These businesses actually employ a whole team of people in Social-Media Teams. Even relatively small businesses like SB&G have a dedicated Social Media Team, with a weekly report which includes reams of stats & graphs as to take up, engagement, length of views (total & under 30 seconds) for all Video Content, clicks, views, reach, & a hundred other things.

Social-Media - primarily Facebook & Twitter - are now a fundamental part of the Marketing Strategy for all public facing businesses.

Let's agree to differ on this one. ;)   

There is a bit of a gap from big business has to use social media to big business is a very substantial part of its popularity.   I can't say I have ever heard anyone say they go on facebook for the offers (and I know some serious tightwads), but I know several who have moaned about all the corporate stuff that gets in the way of you finding out how your friends are doing. 

Plenty of people sign up to Facebook simply to take advantage of offers, as Businesses deliberately offer "Facebook only" Promos & giveaways. If we look at the very small world of poker, some players do anything to gain admittance to a Freeroll. So they sign up, & then the Business has another contact to add to their database & attempt to "exploit" for want of a better term. & expose to future Offers.

Yeah was myvegas.
Didn't have any problems changing them up in vegas. Two others in my party opened new FB accounts just for myVegas and they didn't have any problems either.

It might just be a question of semantics - saying that Facebook has become very corporate to me suggests that it's hard to avoid the commercial aspect of it when you actually have to actively have to want to know about business's to get information about them. But obviously if you take it as meaning that all business's have to be aware of and use Facebook then its true that the vast majority (90% ish maybe) of business's will consider it in marketing.

I  had a quick look and the latest survey figures I could find were that 40% of FB users like at least one business on there - that's a lot of people; but still less than half. In terms of the other suggestion you had that people feel they might miss out on offers and deals if they don't connect - about 40% (again) was the amount who liked a business because of a deal or competition (the other factors were primarily communication and just because they like the business). So that's 40% of 40% - so only about 16% of facebook users care in some way about connecting for offers.

As Doobs suggested - there's a long way between business thinking Facebook is important to Facebook thinking business is important (to it's popularity at least - I'm sure it'd love to get the biggest chunk of it's marketing budget that it can get). A quick google suggests that there are about 25m business pages - compared to 1.5bn users that's pretty insignificant; similarly 10m friends for a business is a big number - but it's a minuscule proportion of the Facebook population. Having said that there's no doubt that the companies you mentioned such as Coca Cola et al will promote interaction on Facebook above what it would be if the business wasn't there, but the companies you mention are very much outliers. Most companies want to 'use' Facebook in marketing, but very few of them use it effectively. I read a very good report in one of the marketing magazines suggesting that it was precisely those companies that employ people full time to work on social media marketing that are reaping any benefit from it - very few do though. As well as there only being a handful of businesses who actively and effectively generate Facebook interaction - the one's that do are almost exclusively doing it to existing Facebook users. In answer to the question of what Facebook would be like without corporate users,  I'd have to say the numbers suggest - almost the same (until the lack of revenue started hitting Facebook in the pocket at least :) )

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I rarely see a Facebook ad when on my PC, with Adblock on my browser. And the fact I only like businesses for a reason and more often than not unlike after that reason has expired

There we see a great example of how a single internet site - albeit a huge one - can change the language we use.

We've already seen how Facebook has changed the meaning of "friend", now we see what it has done to "like".

I'd say it's impossible to run a successful local band without facebook page these days.
Getting a decent amount of page likes is obviously the first step, and something venues will look at before booking you.
Every gig gets it's own event page and is promoted hard.
Getting posts shared/liked/commented on by as many people as possible is vital.
The algorithms facebook implements to try and force you down the payment route makes life very hard.
Sometimes we post something and a couple of hundred people view it. Other times we'll go into four figures, and it's next to impossible to predict which way posts will go.

Communication between band members through facebook messenger has been a hugely beneficial tool too. Organising rehearsals and gig day logistics in a single conversation thread.

These are my two bands BTW ;)
www.facebook.com/dynamitebilly
www.facebook.com/menextandthegimmegimmes

please give us a like :)