Facebook's Cybersecurity Measures

This assignment delves into Facebook's strategies for maintaining user safety in the face of online threats. It examines the company's efforts to prevent cybercrime, such as ipredator attacks, by outlining its security measures and analyzing relevant frameworks like Porter's Five Forces and SWOT analysis. The document also touches upon PESTEL analysis and Facebook's advertising strategies.

Table of Contents
Table of Contents........................................................................................................................................0
Abstract.......................................................................................................................................................1
Introduction.................................................................................................................................................1
Pestle analysis.............................................................................................................................................2
Porter’s 5 forces..........................................................................................................................................3
Strategic capability analysis.........................................................................................................................4
SWOT analysis.............................................................................................................................................5
Generic strategy (porter’s model)...............................................................................................................7
Facebook safe analysis................................................................................................................................8
Bibliography................................................................................................................................................9

FACEBOOK STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT
Abstract
Facebook, a social site, is used to connect people all over the world. It was founded in 2004 and
by 2016; it has been able to reach more than 1.5 billion people worldwide. Zuckerberg alongside
other people was able to bring the new invention into the market, familiarized the functionalities
of the product to the people and finally succeeded in the social market. This report focuses on the
strategy of Facebook Inc. which is divided into introduction, PESTLE analysis, Porter’s 5
Forces, strategic capability analysis, SWOT analysis, porter’s 4 international strategies and
selection of optimum strategy.
Introduction
Facebook was founded on February 4, 2004. It is a social networking site which was founded by
Mark Zuckerberg alongside his college roommates from Harvard University. They include
Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz, Eduardo Saverin and Chris Hughes. Its mission is to
make the world more open and connected. This is achieved through giving people the power to
share whatever they want to whomever they want no matter where they are. Over the years,
Facebook has gained popularity all over the world, and millions of people use it every day to
connect with friends, upload photos, share links and videos among other social things.
According to Zuckerberg, he said his three pillars towards achieving this mission is to build the
best and most appearing mobile product, to build a platform where every new application that is
created can be social and enable people to share, and to build strong monetization and economic
engine that will eventually build Facebook into one of the world’s most valuable companies.
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Pestle analysis
An external analysis of the most important factors in a company’s remote environment is done
through this model. Facebook being a top player in the social media market, its market capability
can be maintained through popularity, brand development, and R&D investment. However, this
model shows that Facebook Inc. needs to adjust its strategies to ensure that its products remain
competitive enough so as to maintain their lead in the market. This work will now put its focus
on the factors that affect Facebook
i) Political factors. Under this we have; political stability in developed countries, that is
an opportunity and it enables facebook to continue diversifying its business in these
markets, governmental support for globalization and this gives facebook an
opportunity to expand its social media and display its advertising services worldwide
(opportunity), political barriers for example in Chinese market (threat) and this may
delay its global growth (Young, 2016). These, however, are just a few of other
political factors.
ii) Economic factors. They include; it has the opportunity that can increase its market
penetration efforts in the developing and stabilizing countries. Another opportunity is
that the rapid development of these developing countries also increases the
telecommunication factor which is an added advantage for Facebook Inc. when a
country develops, the disposable incomes of that country increases. This means that
more people are able to buy gadgets with better features for internet connection and
this is an opportunity for Facebook (Young, 2016).
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iii) Social/social-cultural factors. Among them include; the preference for high-quality
services. This happens when there is increased financial capacity and improved living
conditions. Increased online buying creates an opportunity for Facebook to retail
some of its products online since purchasing is easy.
iv) Technological factors. Among them is the increasing worldwide use of mobile
devices, this is a great opportunity for Facebook. The advancement in technology has
also led to the increase in social media companies which are a big threat to Facebook.
Another big threat for Facebook business is the fact that some online retailers have
diversified their business and are now offering advertising services.
Some other factors include; environmental factors and legal factors. This analysis
recommends that Facebook should address some major opportunities as well as
threats so as to reach more people and the result is increased revenue (Young, 2016).
Porter’s 5 forces
This analysis deals with five forces that shape industry competition. They include
competitive rivalry, bargaining power of suppliers, bargaining power of customers,
the threat of new entrants, and the threat of substitute products. We will now look at
how each of this affects Facebook.
i) Understanding current competitors. Currently, Facebook is facing competition
from social networks such as Google plus, Tumblr, twitter, LinkedIn among
others. Facebook Inc. faces direct competitions from these sites which pose a
moderately high risk.
ii) Customer bargaining power. If all Facebook customers ceased to use the
social site today, nobody would pay for his or her advertisements to be done
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on Facebook. For this reason, Facebook must work extra hard to make sure
that most of the customers are not just checking in for a while but they are
also actively using the site. When more users stay active, Facebook makes
more money through ads and market research.
iii) New entrants’ assessment. Most Facebook customers are the youth. If a
person today comes up with an app that would be addictive to them more than
Facebook, then that person would have beaten the odds. Unfortunately,
getting enough brand recognition would be the biggest challenge. For this
reason, Facebook remains unchallenged, and the risk is low.
iv) Supplier bargaining power. Here we are talking about the people who build
and maintain the servers, software developers and anybody else who
contribute to making Facebook run properly. For example, if the internet
providers would make the internet extremely expensive today, this would
reduce the amount of time people spend on Facebook and others would also
stop using it.
v) The threat of substitutes. In terms of new technologies and shifting trends,
social networking is very vulnerable. If a certain feature on Facebook
becomes outdated or unfashionable, many users will shift to the up-to-date
substitute. For it to stay in business, it must keep pace with the changing
technology.
Strategic capability analysis
Concerning face book’s resource view, its biggest recourse is the over 1 billion users’
information stored in its database. It also had a million business pages, which allowed companies
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to attract potential customers and tell about themselves. Facebook home is the mobile experience
that connects people with their friends using a mobile device. Facebook messenger is a
messaging app that is used for texting friends on Facebook for free (Naik, 2013). Facebook Inc
also uses Instagram app which it acquired to increase its value. It is also the owner of Whatsapp,
a free messaging app. It also bought face.com a face recognition platform enabling the auto-
tagging feature on shared pictures. Facebook’s financial resource is also another resource that
enables it to perform its functions at best. The can invest heavily in R&D and also buy some
other small companies that seem to be a future threat to the company. All these resources allow
Facebook to have a competitive advantage over other imitator companies.
SWOT analysis
For a company to be successful, it must be having its strengths and opportunities that keep it
growing or that drives it. For this reason, Facebook Inc. has its strengths and market
opportunities that keep it going. However, it can never be all smooth as we also have some
external threats that if not carefully looked at, it would hinder its growth and prosperity. The
internal strategic factors (strengths and weaknesses) as well as external strategic factors
(opportunities and threats), play a big role in the dynamics of the online social networking
environment as well as an online advertising market. Despite Facebook Inc being the leader in
the social media market, there are still issues which have to be continuously addressed for the
company to stay in the lead.
Some of the major strengths that keep Facebook in the lead include;
i) It has a strong brand image. Over the years, Facebook Inc has gained trust in that it is
a reliable social media service provider. The strong image has been built through their
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interesting feature which has proved to provide to meet the social needs of many
people around the world ad especially the youths. As an example, features like the
LIKE, COMMENT, and SHARE among others have made people love Facebook.
ii) It has got a large consumer base. Since its launch, it has seen millions and millions of
new users every year signing up into the social platform. The more the number of
users it gets every year the more it attracts, even more, number of new users the
following year. This particular strength makes it more difficult for new social media
platforms to compete with Facebook.
iii) Its revenue is amazingly high. For a company to have a strong research and
development center which is vital for new developments to deliver what the consumer
want, it must invest heavily. Facebook has put a lot of funds in this sector helping it
maintain its competitive advantage as well as attractiveness.
However successful Facebook Inc. may be, it also has some weaknesses. Some internal
strategic factors that may contribute to slow or reduced growth include;
i) Their products and services can be copied easily. This includes basic features such as
LIKE and COMMENTS among others. Many companies can copy these features
which in my understanding is a threat because some people will use other social
platforms to do what can be done on Facebook.
ii) The advertisements which are the main source of income for Facebook have a
negative impact on user experience. This is because some users could have the
perception that some advertisements which are not in their areas of interest are
nuisance to them.
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iii) It suffers from a low level of business diversification. It highly depends on its social
networking website and mobile apps related to the site. This makes it vulnerable to
market risk exposure because in case one or both of them fails; then the business
would not survive for long.
From the external strategic factors, Facebook has some opportunities.
i) Business diversification is one of the best opportunities that Facebook has. This
would reduce the business risk.
ii) Product innovation. Innovating more complementary products to the social site and
mobile apps is a good opportunity too.
iii) Market penetration and development. The more it penetrates across the world the
more the revenue it gets.
The last element of SWOT analysis is the threats. Some of them include; imitation. Many
networking companies have tried or have created websites which are similar or serve the
same purpose as Facebook. This poses a major threat in Facebook as a business. Another
threat is the cybercrime. The higher the number of new users it attracts, the higher the rates
of cybercrimes it experiences. In case a user’s accounted have been hacked as a result of this,
then it reduces the attractiveness of the social site to the user. Of many more such cases then
it might become a disaster for Facebook Inc.
Generic strategy (porter’s model)
It is through cost leadership generic competitive strategy that Facebook Inc. grows its
business through. The strategy involves minimizing the costs of doing business. Now that it
provides its services globally, it uses advanced computing technologies to maximize speed so
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as to serve its customers better. Its online nature makes it possible to easily reach users across
the global market thus satisfying the broad competitive scope of the generic strategy.
To understand Facebook selection and justification of the optimum strategies, we will look at
some advanced ad targeting strategies that it uses. These are:
 Target the people who already know you.
 Target the audience that looks alike. After marketing to the people you know, the
next target is the people who look like those you know because they might be having
the same preferences.
 Combine lookalikes with interest targeting.
 Use detailed targeting.
 Use behavior and life events targeting.
Facebook safe analysis
With technology advancement and many people having access to internet enabled devices,
there is increased cyber-bullying, cyber harassment, cyber-stalking, online sexual predation
among other crimes. These are crimes that some facebook users experience during their
online activities in the app. However, these crimes have to be controlled if not prevented. For
this reason, facebook has put measures to prevent its customers from these attacks
(Nuccitelli, 2013). The group of these cyber attackers can be made up of children, adults,
nations and if they attack they are known as ipredators and facebook have put enough
measures to prevent the ipredators from attacking many of its clients (Nuccitelli, 2013).
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Bibliography
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Nyamweya (2014) A focus on FaceBook using Pestle and porters Five forces. Available at:
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Forces (Accessed: 20 December 2016).
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Scissors, D. (2012) Available at: http://www.heritage.org/research/testimony/2012/07/the-most-
important-chinese-trade-barriers (Accessed: 20 December 2016).
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