MBA632: Analyzing Facebook.com's Knowledge Management Systems

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of Facebook's knowledge management systems. It begins with an introduction to Facebook, its history, and the challenges it faces, including governance issues, monetization pressures, and declining user trust. The report then delves into Facebook's current knowledge management systems, including groupware, data warehousing, content management, and document management systems. It details how Facebook captures, uses, and manages its data, covering software like Memcached, Haystack, and BigPipe, as well as data mining and business intelligence practices. The business intelligence section explores descriptive, predictive, and prescriptive analytics and how Facebook uses them to improve operations and make strategic decisions. The report concludes by highlighting how Facebook utilizes stored data to gain insights and enhance future prospects, offering a detailed overview of the social media giant's approach to knowledge management.

Facebook.com
By
Institution
Professor’s Name
The Date

Introduction
• A thriving and reputable social network in the globe.
• Users can make registration and create account for free.
• Users can thus share different information like texts,
pictures, and videos.
• The organization thus ensures security in order to govern
the user’s activities (Hoffmann, Proferes, and Zimmer,
2018).

History
• Founded in the year 2004 in America.
• Headquarters; Menlo Park, California.
• The founders were students at Harvard University.
• Mark Zuckerberg, Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz, and
Chris Hughes pioneered the Company.
• Had over 1b users in 2012(Hall, 2019).

Challenges; managing and
capturing Knowledge
More bad Headlines
• Bad and negative stories continue to unfold.
• Various people continue to tarnish the platform through
uncouth activities.
• This include political warring and wrangles.
• The activities leads to platform’s scrutiny.
• The disruption thus may inhibit company’s key
concentration (The Street, 2019).

Challenges cont.
Monetization Pressures
• The company is under pressure of monetizing more of its products.
• An example is packing more ads on other platforms like Instagram.
• Challenge in expanding into greater varieties of content to carry
ads.
• Investors need to see that the company continue in innovating in
the core advert business before investing.
• Such investments include monetizing Messenger and WhatsApp
(The Street, 2019).

Challenges cont.
Governance Troubles
• The company is experiencing leadership rivalry.
• An example is some people have called for greater checks
for Zuckerberg who controls majority of voting shares.
• Shareholders proposal to split CEO’s and Chairman’s roles
underway.
• Conflicting governance may inhibit new insights (The
Street, 2019).

Challenges cont.
Declining Trust in Tech
• Social media has become very addictive.
• The issue has caused many mixed reactions.
• The results is that idleness especially among the youths is
high.
• Sensitization to combat addiction is ongoing.
• The awareness may negatively affect the platform despite
rebuilding its lost credibility (Hormes, Kearns, and Timko,
2014).

Current Knowledge Management
Systems
Groupware Systems
• Technology designed in order to help people collaborate
(Mostaeen, Roy, Roy, and Schneider, 2019).
• Facebook thus utilizes tools like communication tools.
• Communication tools makes communication easier among
the employees.
• This is because they can send messages, emails, and files
hence enhancing communication.

Current Knowledge Management
Systems
Groupware Systems cont.
• The teams in the organization also utilize
conferencing tools.
• The tool enhances e.g. for video and audio
conferencing.
• Appropriate even when all stakeholders are not
physically present in the physical office.
• Conferencing can suit all stakeholders to table a
meeting and share insights even at their home.
• Helps in saving on the travelling costs.

Current Knowledge Management
Systems cont.
Groupware Systems cont.
• The company also utilizes collaborative management
tools.
• The tools are responsible for managing group
activities.
• Thus ensures employees in Facebook collaborate in
workflow processes.
• Ideas and insights are shared to meet the set goals
e.g. on entitled projects.

Knowledge Management Systems
cont.
Data Warehousing Systems
• Entails the electronic storage of huge amount of data.
• Being a huge organization, it utilizes such systems to store
its voluminous data.
• The system is designed to query and analyze the stored
data.
• Thus it connects and analyzes the Company’s data from
heterogeneous sources.

Knowledge Management Systems
cont.
Data Warehousing Systems cont.
• The system is core for the BI system.
• Thus analysis for the purpose of reporting is
performed on the stored data.
• This enables the strategic use of data.
• Thus, deep insights are drawn from the stored data
to provide the management with strategic
knowledge.
• Informed decision is thus made for the next course
of action.

Knowledge Management Systems
cont.
Content Management Systems
• An application designed to manage web content (Goldberg,
Asok, and Lee, 2017).
• Strong firewalls and intrusion detection mechanisms are
enhanced to safeguard the available content.
• The system thus facilitates collaboration in the workplace.
• Collaboration is enhanced as result of integrating document
management.

Knowledge Management Systems
cont.
Content Management Systems cont.
• The system provides the available employees with
an access to organization’s digital assets.
• This can enhance sharing of insights via the web.
• Further research among the employees is enhanced.
• This is a result of concentrating a pool of ideas via
the system.

Knowledge Management Systems
cont.
Document Management Systems
• Refers to how an organization stores, manages, and tracks the
electronic documents (Drewry, Sharma, Cribb, and Ashwin,
2015).
• The company has powerful physical servers to store data.
• Despite the powerful servers, it does not deter it from utilizing
the cloud.
• The company can be able to utilize a private cloud.
• This ensures that there is a secondary backup for its documents.

Knowledge Management Systems
cont.
Document Management Systems cont.
• Thus, Facebook ensures that the available data is:
Well stored, managed and enhances easy retrieval.
• This implies that the stored content to enhance knowledge
is:
• Securely stored and managed.
• Thus can be retrieved for building more insights on the
available personnel.

Data Capture, use and Management
• Facebook utilizes various software to capture data.
• The captured data is hence translated to permanent storage
like the powerful permanent servers and the use of cloud.
• The software includes:
Memcached software.
• Facebook utilizes it as a catching layer between MySQL and
web servers.
• The company has enhanced the servers with tens of terabytes
of cached data (Pingdom Royal, 2019).

Data Capture, use and Management
Haystack software.
• The software enhances high performance for the huge
amount of photos uploaded.
• Thus enhances easy storage/retrieval of the uploads.
BigPipe software.
• Pertains to a dynamic web page that enables the company to
serve each web page in sections.
• E.g. chat window and news feeds are retrieved separately
(Pingdom Royal, 2019).

Data Capture, use and Management
cont.
Data Mining
• Facebook Company performs data mining on its captured
data.
• Data cleanup is enhanced through this process.
• Helpful insights are drawn from this data.
• The data is presented to the management to perform the
appropriate course of action.

Data Capture, use and Management
cont.
Business Intelligence
• After performing data cleanup, the Company utilizes BI for
further insights.
• This includes;
Data analytics which entails analysis of data in order to
draw insights.
• There are of 3 types i.e.

Data Capture, use and Management
cont.
Business Intelligence cont.
1. Descriptive analytics i.e. helps the Company to know what
has been happening from the ongoing activities.
2. Predictive analytics i.e. helps the Company to make use of
past and current data to determine future market
patterns.
3. Prescriptive analytics i.e. helps the company to know how
the desired outcomes can be made to happen (Drewry,
Sharma, Cribb, and Ashwin, 2015).

Data Capture, use and Management
cont.
Business Intelligence cont.
• After performing data analytics thus Facebook is able to;
Improve its current operations in order to align with the
future market predictions.
Concentrate on the areas that have been determined to be
auspicious in terms of returns.
• Thus, through the use of the stored data the company is
able to make helpful insights to enhance future prospects.

References
Drewry, J., Sharma, R., Cribb, G. and Ashwin, P., Mobile Iron
Inc, 2015. User interface for secure virtual document
management system. U.S. Patent 9,122,887.
Delen, D., Moscato, G. and Toma, I.L., 2018, January. The
impact of real-time business intelligence and advanced
analytics on the behaviour of business decision makers.
In 2018 International Conference on Information
Management and Processing (ICIMP) (pp. 49-53). IEEE.

References cont.
Goldberg, A., Asok, S. and Lee, D.T., Box Inc, 2017. Desktop
application for access and interaction with workspaces in a
cloud-based content management system and synchronization
mechanisms thereof. U.S. Patent 9,652,741.
Hall, M. (2019). Facebook | Overview, History, & Facts. [online]
Encyclopedia Britannica. Available at:
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Facebook [Accessed 11 Dec.
2019].

References cont.
Hormes, J.M., Kearns, B. and Timko, C.A., 2014. Craving F
acebook? Behavioral addiction to online social networking and its
association with emotion regulation deficits. Addiction, 109(12),
pp.2079-2088.
Hoffmann, A.L., Proferes, N. and Zimmer, M., 2018. “Making the
world more open and connected”: Mark Zuckerberg and the
discursive construction of Facebook and its users. New Media &
Society, 20(1), pp.199-218.

References cont.
Mostaeen, G., Roy, B., Roy, C. and Schneider, K., 2019. Designing
for Real-Time Groupware Systems to Support Complex Scientific
Data Analysis. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer
Interaction, 3(EICS), p.9.
Pingdom Royal. (2019). Exploring the Software Behind Facebook,
the World's Largest Social Media Site - Pingdom Royal. [online]
Available at: https://royal.pingdom.com/the-software-behind-
facebook/ [Accessed 12 Dec. 2019].

Ref cont.
Stock Market - Business News, Market Data, Stock Analysis -
TheStreet. (2019). 4 Key Challenges Facing Facebook in
2019. [online] Available at:
https://www.thestreet.com/technology/4-key-challenges-
facing-facebook-in-2019-14815098 [Accessed 11 Dec. 2019].

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