1. Facebook and Skype
“Merger Case – Managerial Finance Subject”
Prepared By:
Eka Darmadi Lim
3094802
Class: Y
University of Surabaya
Faculty of Business and Economics
International Business Networking
2012

2. Case Facebook and Skype
Not long after the big news of Microsoft purchasing Skype, the trending buzz is now about
the integration of Skype into Facebook which combines both social networking and video
talking/conferencing into one social media platform.
The merger of Skype into Facebook has elicited more positive reactions from Facebook users
who now have the option to initiate video chatting and conferencing with their friends and
loved ones from across the globe, making it more convenient than ever to stay in touch.
On the other hand, the news also triggered reservations from Skype users, mostly small to
mid-size businesses, which fear that the merging will affect the Skype clientele on non-
Microsoft platforms.
However, Microsoft confirmed in a news release that they will still continue to invest in and
support Skype clients on non-Microsoft platforms. Hence, Skype users have nothing to worry
about after all.
In fact, the merger between Facebook and Skype might even give way for more business
opportunities and advertising tools for small to mid-size businesses. Video conferencing has
become beneficial for individuals who work from home, as well as small to mid-size business
who leverage on video communications as a good way to hold web meetings and connect
with far-flung teams. It is not only cost-effective, but as well as more productive and
convenient. Imagine attending a web conference in the convenience of your own house, or
anywhere you might be at that time. With a laptop, smart phone, or Ipad and a Wi-Fi
connection, you can get online and connect with your team on the fly.
The revolutionary video chatting application in Facebook will allow Facebook users to create
an impromptu video chat in mere seconds. Most companies, from small to mid-size, have
already leveraged the power of social media like Facebook to expand their reach and create
an online presence.

3. Most businesses have set up their own Facebook pages and Facebook groups to get more
exposure and elicit more followers through online social interaction. With the new video
conferencing application, this will even give way for companies to interact with their
followers in a more personalized way to build trust and credibility.
The same way it will be easier for "groups" to discuss and share ideas on relevant topics with
the use of video conferencing. Businesses can also leveraged on video conferencing in
Facebook when launching a campaign or hosting an event.
They can send out invitations to their followers to join them in a web conference for any
product launch or promotional event. This is actually a creative way for business to reach out
to their fan base or groups. A live, online video meeting will allow the participants to see
their facial expression and body language, eliciting a more personalized approach.
Video conferencing is also a good way to connect with business partners, suppliers and
colleagues across different offices, and even overseas. It is also useful for businesses wanting
to outsource staff from other countries and conducting interviews and web meetings. It is a
FREE resource that any business can use to grow and expand their network of followers,
secure business opportunities and outsource services from overseas, all in the same social
media platform.
With the merging of Skype and Facebook, we can only expect for more revolutionary
changes in social media in the future that will only give wings to businesses to grow their
online presence in a whole new level.
Source: EzineArticles.com

4. Skype Get Facebook Integration
Skype 5.0 for Windows has just been released with a slew of improvements and feature
additions, most significant of which is the inclusion of a Facebook tab that allows users to
SMS, chat or call their Facebook friends via Skype right from the News Feed.
Skype’s Facebook integration is both sophisticated and sleek, and brings your Facebook
experience inside Skype. Skype now offers a gateway to immediately call, text or chat with
your Facebook contacts.
Facebook and Skype play nice inside the new Skype Home area of the application. Click the
home icon and you’ll get the expanded Skype Home area, which is just a personal dashboard
with news, alerts and a digest of mood messages. The new Facebook tab lives in this area,
and this is where you can go to view your Facebook News Feed and Phonebook inside
Skype.
The Facebook News Feed option will display a digest of activity nearly identical to what you
would see if you were on Facebook, except that below each status update there are two
noticeable Skype buttons: SMS or Call. The buttons appear if Facebook friends have included
their phone number in their Facebook profile.
If the friend is a mutual connection on Skype, you’ll also have the option to initiate a free
Skype call. And, if the Facebook friend is not already a Skype connection, but both of you are
on Skype at the same time, the same free Skype call option is visible and an additional plus
button will show up so you can add the Facebook friend as a Skype contact.
Skype’s News Feed integrations are great for initiating spontaneous contact around real-time
updates, but you can also toggle over to the Facebook Phonebook section — a.k.a your
Facebook contact list — should you want a more direct way to search for and reach specific
friends.
These features are significant, but Skype’s latest 5.0 release includes way more than
Facebook — there’s improved 10-way group video calling, much enhanced contact lists,
more emphasis on profiles and a completely retooled user experience.

5. Video calling, for instance, now includes a “dynamic view” option that automatically
positions the person speaking in the larger video window. In addition, Skype promises
improved (and still free) 10-way group video calling, and the company has released an
automatic recovery feature that will get disconnected audio and video chatters back up and
running in seconds.
Contact lists got a face lift with the prominent inclusion of photos, and members will be now
nudged to add a photo to their profile. Profile photos will factor into the search experience,
which should make it easier for members to better find and add their friends to Skype.
Ultimately, these big changes point to Skype’s designs to be more than a secondary utility,
and instead the primary connector between friends, family and our social contacts.
Unfortunately, we Mac users will have to wait patiently for these features to make their way
to us. Skype makes no promises on timing, but does tell Mashable that a similar Mac version
is coming soon.

6. Introduction of Skype
Skype is a proprietary voice over Internet Protocol service and software application originally
created by Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis, and owned by Microsoft since 2011.
The service allows users to communicate with peers by voice, video, and instant messaging
over the Internet. Phone calls may be placed to recipients on the traditional telephone
networks. Calls to other users within the Skype service are free of charge, while calls to
landline telephones and mobile phones are charged via a debit-based user account system.
Skype has also become popular for its additional features, including file transfer, and
videoconferencing. Competitors include SIP and H.323-based services, such as Empathy,
Linphone, Ekiga as well as the Google Talk service.
Skype has 663 million registered users as of September 2011. The network is operated by
Microsoft, which has its Skype division headquarters in Luxembourg. Most of the
development team and 44% of the overall employees of the division are situated in the offices
of Tallinn and Tartu, Estonia.
Unlike other VoIP services, Skype is a peer-to-peer system rather than a client–server system,
and makes use of background processing on computers running Skype software; the original
name proposed – Sky peer-to-peer – reflects this.
Some network administrators have banned Skype on corporate, government, home, and
education networks, citing reasons such as inappropriate usage of resources, excessive
bandwidth usage, and security concerns.
Feature of Skype
Registered users of Skype are identified by a unique Skype Name, and may be listed in the
Skype directory. Skype allows these registered users to communicate through both instant
messaging and voice chat. Voice chat allows telephone calls between pairs of users and
conference calling, and uses a proprietary audio codec. Skype's text chat client allows group
chats, emoticons, storing chat history and editing of previous messages. Offline messages
were implemented in version 5, but removed after a few weeks without notification. The
usual features familiar to instant messaging users — user profiles, online status indicators,
and so on — are also included.
The Online Number, a.k.a. SkypeIn, service allows Skype users to receive calls on their
computers dialed by conventional phone subscribers to a local Skype phone number; local
numbers are available for Australia, Belgium, Chile, Colombia, Denmark, the Dominican
Republic, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Japan,
Mexico, New Zealand, Poland, Romania, South Africa, South Korea, Sweden, Switzerland,
Turkey, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

7. A Skype user can have local numbers in any of these countries, with calls to the number
charged at the same rate as calls to fixed lines in the country.
Video conferencing between two users was introduced in January 2006 for the Windows and
Mac OS X platform clients. Skype 2.0 for Linux, released on 13 March 2008, also features
support for video conferencing. Version 5 betas 1 for Windows, released 13 May 2010, offers
free video conferencing with up to five people.
Skype for Windows, starting with version 3.6.0.216, supports "High Quality Video" with
quality and features, e.g., full-screen and screen-in-screen modes, similar to those of mid-
range videoconferencing systems. Skype audio conferences currently support up to 25 people
at a time, including the host.
Skype does not provide the ability to call emergency numbers such as 911 in the United
States and Canada, 999 in the United Kingdom and many other countries, 111 in New
Zealand, 000 in Australia, or 112 in Europe. The U.S. Federal Communications Commission
(FCC) has ruled that, for the purposes of section 255 of the Telecommunications Act, Skype
is not an "interconnected VoIP provider". As a result, the U.S. National Emergency Number
Association recommends that all VoIP users have an analog line available as a backup.
In 2011, Skype partnered with Comcast to bring its video chat service to Comcast subscribers
via their HDTV sets.
SWOT of Skype
Strengths
* Cost advantage
* Asset leverage
* Effective communication
* High R&D
* Innovation
* Online growth
* Loyal customers
* Market share leadership
* Strong management team
* Strong brand equity
* Strong financial position
* Supply chain
* Pricing
* Real estate
* Reputation management
* Unique products

8. Weaknesses
* Bad communication
* Diseconomies to scale
* Over leveraged fiancial position
* Low R&D
* Low market share
* No online presence
* Not innovative
* Not diversified
* Poor supply chain
* Weak management team
* Weak real estate
* Weak, damaged brand
* Ubiquitiouegory, products, services
Opportunities
* Acquisitions
* Asset leverage
* Financial markets (raise money through debt, etc)
* Emerging markets and expansion abroad
* Innovation
* Online
* Product and services expansion
* Takeovers
Threats
* Competition
* Cheaper technology
* Economic slowdown
* External changes (government, politics, taxes, etc)
* Exchange rate fluctuations
* Lower cost competitors or imports
* Maturing categories, products, or services
* Price wars
* Product substitution

9. Introduction of Facebook
Facebook is a social networking service and website launched in February 2004, operated and
privately owned by Facebook, Inc. As of July 2011, Facebook has more than 800 million
active users. Users must register before using the site, after which they may create a personal
profile, add other users as friends, and exchange messages, including automatic notifications
when they update their profile. Additionally, users may join common-interest user groups,
organized by workplace, school or college, or other characteristics, and categorize their
friends into lists such as "People from Work" or "Close Friends". The name of the service
stems from the colloquial name for the book given to students at the start of the academic
year by some university administrations in the United States to help students get to know
each other. Facebook allows any users who declare them to be at least 13 years old to become
registered users of the site.
Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg with his college roommates and fellow students
Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes. The Web site's membership was
initially limited by the founders to Harvard students, but was expanded to other colleges in
the Boston area, the Ivy League, and Stanford University. It gradually added support for
students at various other universities before opening to high school students, and eventually
to anyone aged 13 and over. However, based on ConsumersReports.org in May 2011, there
are 7.5 million children under 13 with accounts, violating the site's terms of service.
A January 2009 Compete.com study ranked Facebook as the most used social networking
service by worldwide monthly active users. Entertainment Weekly included the site on its
end-of-the-decade "best-of" list, saying, "How on earth did we stalk our exes, remember our
co-workers' birthdays, bug our friends, and play a rousing game of Scrabulous before
Facebook?" Quantcast estimates Facebook has 138.9 million monthly unique U.S. visitors in
May 2011. According to Social Media Today, in April 2010 an estimated 41.6% of the U.S.
population had a Facebook account. Nevertheless, Facebook's market growth started to stall
in some regions, with the site losing 7 million active users in the United States and Canada in
May 2011.

10. Impact of Facebook
Media impact
In April 2011, Facebook launched a new portal for marketers and creative agencies to help
them develop brand promotions on Facebook. The company began its push by inviting a
select group of British advertising leaders to meet Facebook's top executives at an
"influencers' summit" in February 2010. Facebook has now been involved in campaigns for
True Blood, American Idol, and Top Gear.
Social impact
Facebook has affected the social life and activity of people in various ways. Especially with
its availability on many mobile devices, Facebook allows users to continuously stay in touch
with friends, relatives and other acquaintances wherever they are in the world, as long as
there is access to the Internet. It can also unite people with common interests and/or beliefs
through groups and other pages, and has been known to reunite lost family members and
friends. One such reunion was between John Watson and the daughter he had been seeking
for 20 years. They met after Watson found her Facebook profile. Another father-daughter
reunion was between Tony Macnauton and Frances Simpson, who had not seen each other
for nearly 48 years.
Some argue that Facebook is beneficial to one's social life because they can continuously stay
in contact with their friends and relatives, while others say that it can cause increased
antisocial tendencies because people are not directly communicating with each other. Some
studies have named Facebook as a source of problems in relationships. Several news stories
have suggested that using Facebook causes divorce and infidelity, but the claims have been
questioned and refuted by other commentators.
Political Impact
Facebook's role in the American political process was demonstrated in January 2008, shortly
before the New Hampshire primary, when Facebook teamed up with ABC and Saint Anselm
College to allow users to give live feedback about the "back to back" January 5 Republican
and Democratic debates. Charles Gibson moderated both debates, held at the Dana Center for
the Humanities at Saint Anselm College. Facebook users took part in debate groups
organized around specific topics, register to vote, and message questions.

11. Over a million people installed the Facebook application "US politics" in order to take part,
and the application measured users' responses to specific comments made by the debating
candidates. This debate showed the broader community what many young students had
already experienced: Facebook was a popular and powerful new way to interact and voice
opinions. An article by Michelle Sullivan of Uwire.com illustrates how the "facebook effect"
has affected youth voting rates, support by youth of political candidates, and general
involvement by the youth population in the 2008 election.
In February 2008, a Facebook group called "One Million Voices Against FARC" organized
an event in which hundreds of thousands of Colombians marched in protest against the
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, better known as the FARC (from the group's
Spanish name). In August 2010, one of North Korea's official government Web sites and the
official news agency of the country, Uriminzokkiri, joined Facebook.
In 2010 an English director of public health, whose staff was researching syphilis, linked and
attributed a rise in cases of the disease in areas of Britain to Facebook. The reports of this
research were rebuked by Facebook as "ignoring the difference between correlation and
causation".
In 2011 a controversial ruling by French government to uphold a 1992 decree which
stipulates that commercial enterprises should not be promoted on news programs. President
Nicolas Sarkozy's colleagues have agreed has said that it will enforce a law so that the words
"Facebook" will not be allowed to be spoken on the television or on the radio.
In 2011, Facebook filed paperwork with the Federal Election Commission to form a political
action committee under the name FB PAC. In an email to The Hill, a spokesman for
Facebook said "FB PAC will give our employees a way to make their voice heard in the
political process by supporting candidates who share our goals of promoting the value of
innovation to our economy while giving people the power to share and make the world more
open and connected."

12. SWOT of Facebook
Strengths
Clean Layout
One of the major strengths of the new look Facebook is the clean layout and the simplifying
of the profile page so that when you click on a friends profile you immediately have access to
their wall/news feed and can quickly see what they have been up to recently and send them a
message directly.
Tabbed Browsing
The Profile has been divided up into tabs so that all your personal information is in one place
and all your applications are on one tab now called boxes. For many people this has been of
huge benefit. You now don’t have to wait for ages for a profile to load if a friend has installed
200 applications. Overall the platform seems to be running a lot faster than it did before.
Although the tabbed feature is only limited to the profile and doesn’t yet extend to other areas
where it is desperately needed.
Integration of Wall and Minifeed
Facebook have integrated the wall and the minifeed into one aggregated feed that takes up
70% of the space on your profile page. This major prominence is because Facebook has
always been designed to focus on creating and maintaining real relationships and building a
sense of community. Quickly being able to know what all your friends are doing plays an
important role. It has a number of settings and wall filters so you can see only posts made by
yourself, others or you can see the stories that Facebook has selected for you. You can edit
your privacy setting to make sure you only display what you really want to the world.
Makes Sharing Even Easier
Facebook has made the sharing of videos and photos even easier with one dedicated tab and a
host of new features to play around with. For more information you can check out a recent
blog post Facebook the unofficial guide. This clearly shows that Facebook can see the future
and want photo sharing, video chats and video postcards to be on their system and not on
other external services like Flickr, ooVoo or Skype.

13. New Features
Facebook have brought in a lot of new features that help to make Facebook the pivotal part of
your daily life. They have introduced a new blog subscription service where you can join
your favorite blog and enjoy all its content without ever having to leave Facebook.
Another nice feature is the ability to create a profile badge that you can place on your website
or blog that can show your current status and act like a business card and pull people from
outside of Facebook to become your friends. To access this feature you can find a link on the
bottom left of your profile page. This still had a few bugs in when I last tested it but I am sure
Facebook will iron those out pretty soon. I would also like to be able to customize what is
displayed a bit more.
Facebook Notes
The Notes feature has increased in prominence, which is great because it gets more people
involved in conversations. Anyone who has a blog can import their posts automatically and
then tag their friends to come and make a comment. This runs straight into the wall feed and
you can make comments directly on your wall/minifeed and keep updated on the topic
without having to go back to the post and scroll down to the bottom each time a new person
makes a comment.
I would like to hear your positive comments about the new look Facebook, what you consider
to be its greatest strengths and any other new features you may have discovered that you
would like to share.
Weakness
Vista or XP
Some users have made the comparison that the new look Facebook is like using windows
Vista, it looks fancy but its full of bugs and problems that still need ironing out. I was quite
surprised that I found so many obvious issues that hadn't been solved and also many
omissions and functions that had apparently been taken away. It makes me wonder how the
beta test group hadn't picked up on them and what sort of demographics they chose for this
test group (100,000 college kids???) I also wonder if Facebook actually listen to feedback
from their users. I should maybe apologize for the rather strong language that I included
when I posted my initial feedback after my first 4 hours of frustration on the new platform.

14. Initial Teething Problems
I was reminded by one comment I read on the Facebook page that in the early days people
could go and change things on other peoples walls and even delete things on other peoples
profiles. Maybe I should just have a bit more patience and not be so quick to criticize. I have
also found that a lot of things have been moved around so you need to go and find them
again. Mari Smith has made some great camtasia videos that take you through the new look
profile, you can check them out on her fan page
Harder To Customize
While researching for this blog post I spent a long time reading all the comments and
complaints on the Facebook group page. From this I gathered that a lot of people felt that
Facebook had taken away their ability to express their individuality on their profile page. By
forcing everyone's profile to look almost identical. Many users had custom skins for their
applications and bumper stickers, pictures and videos so their profile had become almost a
work of art. Many users were furious at this forced uniformity and even went on to accuse
Facebook of big brother like tactics at the time of writing almost all the applications that I
would want to be show on my main page can't be sent there. Instead they are left hidden
inside my boxes tab where no one will ever find them. I hope that in the future this will
change.
Harder To Judge by First Impressions
For business users this is a big disadvantage of the new look Facebook. On the old system if
you knew what you were doing you could create a very powerful presentation by combining
the right types of applications. People could instantly see in a glance what type of business
were in and what type of networker you are . It now takes longer to decide who you want to
accept as a friend. You have to hunt around for the telltale signs that attract and also repulse.
Instead of scrolling we are now forced to click around different tabs. I suspect that with time I
will still able to make the same assessment within 30 seconds that I can on the old Facebook.
It just takes a bit of getting used to
No shortcuts on the Profile page
Facebook has removed the shortcuts menu that used o be to the left and below your profile
picture. It is now relegated to a position to the right and low down on the Home Page. I used

15. this shortcuts menu all the time to access the groups pages. Making it harder to get to places
will obviously reduce the numbers of people who go there so I foresee a potential decline in
group activity, especially among new users who might not even know that groups exist.
Facebook have supposedly given you the option to create your own new tab on your profile
but you are limited to a few applications that they recommend. I suspect that this is just a bug
right now and will be changed in the future.
Viral Potential Restricted
Facebook new look has definitely reduced some of Facebook viral potential by making things
harder to find and not immediately visible. This is especially the case for 3rd party
applications if you can't see them you can’t spread them so easily. A good friend who works
for one of the top applications developers sent me some screen shots of how my profile was
going to look 6 weeks ago. She warned me of how bad it was for application developers who
have been abandoning Facebook in droves. Facebook seems intent on courting the big money
from major advertisers who will be utilizing all that extra white space in the future.
Application Developers
Facebook applications developers have also been hit because you can no longer share you
applications with friends. Admittedly this might reduce the number of forced application
invites that people receive but it takes away the easy ability to share something of value. I
suspect this will change as this is an important part of the Facebook experience and also an
integral part of some of the game applications. There were a lot of complaints about this issue
on the Facebook group page.
Designed for Advertising
The new profile is a much wider. Wide pages go against the natural tendencies of our foveal
vision you can't take it all in in one glance, so physically it makes the design uncomfortable
to use, your eyes keep jumping around all the time
The Money Spot
Facebook has switched the advertising to the right hand side of the page, clearly to take
advantage of the natural tendencies of people to focus on this area of the page. Marketers
have already proved by using eye tracking software and split testing that the top right of a
page is where the money spot is

16. Flash Distractions
I also found the animated flash graphics to be very distracting. One of the reasons I have
always hated MySpace was because of this. But again, tests have shown that people click on
things that move more because they grab your attention. When I was using the Facebook chat
facility the flash banner add was running right through the chat box and to get it out of the
way I was forced to scroll the page downwards. I found this very annoying.
Opportunities
A Great Place To Network
Regardless of the changes Facebook is still a fantastic place to network and share information
with your friends. You can make valuable business contacts just as easily as before and you
can use Facebook to promote yourself, your business, your product or any services you offer
.The strategies that you need to adopt are generally the same and you still need to avoid
certain practices, for more information check out my Facebook made easy guide
Facebook Pages
Facebook pages have become somewhat easier to find as they are now appearing in the
search box with a little yellow flag on them. With the obvious refocus on advertising those
who learn how to use Facebook social adds will have a great opportunity to get very targeted
advertising.
Marketing Tools
Facebook has a range of powerful marketing tools like polls and surveys that you can use
relatively cheaply to test your markets before investing too much time and energy into a
project. With all the demographic data they have collected they will be set to compete with
google as they know everything about all their users likes, dislikes and online habits.
Integration with Other Services
Facebook recently announced what they call Facebook connect this allows users to link all
their social media activities together sites like Dig. For more info check out this recent article
on techcrunch . In the future they will all flow seamlessly together and your friends will
follow you regardless of what site you are on. This will really unleash the full power of Web
3.0 and will make the internet a much more Tribal place. Knowing this smart marketers and

17. business people will be positioning themselves to serve these communities not as an outsider
looking in but as a full member and participant. This forces even greater transparency and
also a higher quality of service. Poor products and bad services will quickly be exposed
because of the power of word of mouth. Scammers and con artists can also quickly be
excluded from these types of networks. The Cream will naturally rise to the top and peoples
identities will be more determined by the communities and tribes that they belong to.
Power structures will Change
As Facebook matures the structures of power will change. People who are within your
network are not all equal in the strictest sense. Those people who have popularity, or large
networks and groups have a much greater viral visibility and influence. Their messages,
thoughts and Ideas will spread further because they have the structures in place to do this.
With so much information available the normal person will pick a few people to follow who
will act as their filters. They will follow their recommendations and trust that they will inform
them of the latest changes and strategies that they need to adopt and keep them updated with
the latest news and gossip. Malcolm Gladwell terms these people Connectors, Mavens and
Salespeople in his excellent book the tipping point.I will be exploring these concepts in much
more detail in a later post.
Thread
Facebook Is Now In Control
Facebook now has total control over what people see when they land on your page. So
whatever is currently in your wall/mini feed will be there for all to see. You might not want
what either you or some of your friends are doing presented so openly to the world. A spam
my wall post or an embarrassing photo that someone tagged you in might not look so good to
a potential employer, client or JV partner. Of Course Facebook may argue that you can adjust
your settings but how many normal users ever take the time to explore the maze of controls
and adjustments.
Spamming
Wall spam has now become a much bigger issue with the merging of the mini feed and wall.
Before any ugly links and signature tags could be relegated to the bottom of your profile now
they are brought to the forefront. And it’s up to you to take the time to edit them and delete
anything inappropriate.

18. Go away on holiday for a couple of weeks and who knows what might have been on display
for all to see. Also users who are less active on Facebook but who want to keep a presence
can't safely leave their profiles unattended unless they set their privacy restrictions so high
that no one can see anything.
Allow More Choice
This is a major design flaw in the new system and I think it would be a good option to allow
users to decide if they want their news feed to be merged with the wall and at least have an
option to display them separately, maybe even on different tabs.
Self-Expression
To be able to pick exactly what page is displayed to new visitors would also be a good option
to add. The more sociable people could have the standard layout with the wall as the landing
page. People who want to express more creativity and express their individuality or those
who want to present a carefully designed business profile could have the option to do so. I
believe user control and choice is what made the old Facebook so great.
Tagging
There is also a bigger danger in upsetting you friends when you tag them in a note, this goes
directly into their profile page so you need to become more sensitive and take a few moments
to decide if its appropriate. I discussed this issue in my previous blog post. If you want to
restrict what comes into your newsfeed from a certain person but don't want to take the
drastic step of removing them as a friend you can adjust your wall settings. Your news feed
can be adjusted by scrolling to the bottom of the Home page. Click on preference for top
stories .From there you have the options to adjust who you want to hear more about and who
you want to restrict.
No Email Controls
Facebook still haven't implemented proper filters and controls for messages and emails that it
sends. Consequently facebook's message service can no longer be relied upon as many users
who have not kept up to date with their inbox are overwhelmed. Important messages are
being lost and users are moving away to use other services such a twitter or Skype. I often
switch to these services when I want to be sure a message gets through or just to receive a
confirmation. Skype is also much faster are more reliable than Facebook in-house IM service

19. What happens if Facebook Sell out
If Facebook choose to sell to another company all the structures are in place to turn it into a
much more commercialized network like myspace. Full of animated flash graphics and a
constant bombardment of offers and advertisements. Utube is also set to go this way too with
AdSense being presented along with their videos. If you have built your business within
Facebook you face the real danger of losing all your customers if they choose to migrate to
another service. And also you lose the control to decide what adverts will be presented
alongside your products. For people with strong ethical principles this may be an issue.
Build Your Business outside Facebook
It makes it even more imperative if you have a presence on Facebook to build your business
outside its walls. That way if anything too drastic happens you still have everything in place
to switch activities to greener pastures. It seems clear to me the direction Facebook is moving
in and it is aimed at monetizing the masses of normal users who just use Facebook to
communicate with their friends and stay connected. People who use Facebook for business
are in a small minority. This will probably increase over time once more people realize the
opportunities that are available but You should not expect Facebook to design the system
solely for your needs.
A Missed Opportunity
Facebook had the opportunity for setting the new standards for social networks in the future.
But I believe they have fallen far short of the mark. While I agree there is some
improvements with the new design it is far from perfect and could be made much more
intuitive and user friendly. The new profile layout is confusing and many features are hard to
find and difficult to configure.
An Open Market
This market is still wide open and I wouldn't be surprised that a new contender emerges in the
next few years that utilizes Facebook connect and integrates all the social networks into one
place or control panel. The new browser by flock and services such as Ping FM and Hellotxt
are maybe precursors to this next generation of web 3.0 tools.

20. If You Still Really Hate It
For some people change is difficult to adapt to, I myself got very frustrated when I first saw
the new profile and thought that Facebook had unknowingly castrated this amazingly
powerful tool. If you still hate it with a passion you can switch back by clicking in the top
right hand corner. I myself will be staying. I believe Facebook are intent on forcing all its
users to adopt the new look profile so the quicker I learn to adapt and discover how to utilize
the hidden potentials the better.