Individual Assignment

Prepared by:
Ashikur Rahman
102 0202 030
Section: 01
Prepared for:
Aditi Mansur Mahmud
Senior Faculty
North South University

What happened in the case?
Facebook is an online social networking service headquartered in Menlo Park, California. After
being launched in 2004, Facebook became a popular platform for people around the world. As
people remain busy throughout the day, they want something that is portable and can be use on
the go without hassle. Back in 2010, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg was not
aware of creating separate apps for different mobile phone devices. It didnt took long to make
Marks decision prove wrong as Googles Android and Apples iOS soon became the dominant
mobile operating systems. Facebooks operation was buggy and slow and crashed often. The
company that created a lot of hype in its initial years was missing the next big shift in
technology. Zuckerberg confessed in an interview in 2011 that they made a huge mistake not
considering their scope of building apps for different platforms. He was determined and instead
of going faster his team of engineers took time for new release of Facebook; moreover,
addressing a large pool of audience it had to emphasize on one operating system. Facebook
Home was introduced in April whose aim was to provide users rich experience on mobile
phones. The company revamped its software for iPhone and Android devices. Status updates,
newsfeeds, chat are the first things users can see before they unlock their devices using the new
release of Facebook version. Mark took a huge risk depending on Googles Android which is
Facebooks one of biggest rivals and alienating Apple. As a result it prevents him from reaping
the potential benefits in quality and user experience mostly that could have come from
developing and controlling own operating system. Cory Ondrejka who is in charge of mobile
engineering convinced Mark to stop the companys effort to improve its existing app and divert
all its resources to write and prepare a new code for Apple operating system. Facebooks iPhone
and Android apps were hybrid and the problem was that apps built explicitly for iOS and
Android were much attractive and cooler. Ondrejka planned not to change anything about the
apps design and strongly believed that redesigning the look and feel of the apps would be a
distraction from the more pressing need to improve speed and usability.
In December 2011 Mark recognized the company to embed mobile engineers in all product
teams. In June 2012 Facebook hold an annual meeting to make it clear that it wants to become a
mobile company. Ondrejka and Schroepfer began integrating mobile developers into product
teams. Web and mobile platforms work very differently and as Apple and Google are operating
owners changes to apps can take time; in addition consumers also need to remember to update
their apps which take time. Making a mistake in developing apps takes a longer time to fix. In
summer 2012 Facebook began offering a mobile skills training program to engineers for a
weeklong course either in iOS or Android. Engineers are then join to product teams and put their
new skills to work. By August 2012 a new version of Facebook was released that was twice
faster and got four and five star rating in the Apps Store. Facebooks stock price got up and was
traded at $28, 10 bucks below its $38 a share.
There was a rumor that Facebook was going to launch its own mobile device but Mark turned
down by stating that the company is not going to build something that is only going to help out
3% of people. During Fall Zuckerberg asked a small team of designers and engineers to look for
additional features that can be embedded in Android devices. The output was creation of
Facebook Home which has three components: the glossy cover feed, users can scroll the
newsfeed and comment on or like posts from home screen and the app launcher. Home has
inserted a layer of Facebook between an Android user and her app and it has made Facebook and
text messaging simpler and less intrusive. If the company is successful with Home it may also
have implications for Apple as no one has been able to disrupt Apples design interface though
many tried before. In the 21
st
century Facebook needs to overhaul itself yet again and figure out
a way to make a device and develop its own operating system.




How Mark Zuckerberg though about launching Facebook?
The origins of Facebook have been in dispute since the very week a 19-year-old Mark
Zuckerberg launched the site as a Harvard sophomore on February 4, 2004. Then called
"thefacebook.com," the site was an instant hit. Six years later, the site has become one of the
biggest web sites in the world, visited by 400 million people a month. A keen computer
programmer, Zuckerberg had already developed a number of social-networking websites for
fellow students, including Coursematch, which allowed users to view people taking their degree,
and Facemash, where users could rate people's attractiveness. In February 2004 Zuckerberg
launched "The facebook", as it was originally known; the name taken from the sheets of paper
distributed to freshmen, profiling students and staff. Zuckerberg wrote the software for the
Facemash website when he was in his second year of college. The website was set up as a type
of hot or not game for Harvard students. The website allowed visitors to compare two student
pictures side-by-side and let them choose who was hot and who was not. Within 24 hours,
1,200 Harvard students had signed up, and after one month, over half of the undergraduate
population had a profile. The website'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
gradually most universities in Canada and the United States, corporations, and by September
2006, to everyone of age 13 and older to make a group with a valid email address.
Facebook was initially incorporated as a Florida LLC. For the first few months after its launch,
the costs for the website operations for thefacebook.com were paid for by Mark
Zuckerberg and Eduardo Saverin, who had taken equity stakes in the company. The website also
ran a few advertisements to meet its operating costs. Facebook has investors including PayPal
co-founder Peter Thiel, Accel Partners, and Greylock Partners. In 2007 Microsoft jumped in and
invested $246 million for a 1.6% share in Facebook. The next month Hong Kong billionaire Li
Ka-shing made a large investment too. Yahoo! and Google both offered to buy Facebook, but
Mark Zuckerberg says that Facebook's not for sale. Zuckerberg expanded on this initial project
that semester by creating a social study tool ahead of an art history final. This is how Facebook
came into existence and has totally changed our lives. Today Facebook has become a part of our
daily life.



Positive effects of Facebook
Keeping in touch with family and friends-Facebook is a great way to keep in touch with
family and friends who live far away. With instant messaging and even video chat, Facebook is
the perfect environment to stay connected. With the status updates, photos, and profile
information, it can keep us up to date on the happenings of all of our close ones.
Making new friends-Facebook makes meeting new people extremely easy due to the fact that it
allows us to add thousands of friends, and acts as a social melting pot of the internet. If we
comment on a friends status, and one of their friends comments on it, maybe we two will strike
up our own conversation. This can lead to a great friendship down the road. Most people find it a
lot easier to start a conversation with someone over Facebook than in real life, so a lot of high-
school relationships tend to start there.
Relaxation- When we are caught up in a tiring task and want a quick refreshing break,
Facebook proves to be highly favorable.





Negative effects of Facebook
Cyber-bullying- On Facebook it is very easy for cyber bullies to thrive. They can harass and/or
gang up on one person even easier than they could in a school environment. There aren't
moderators that go around monitoring what people say to each other. Anything can be said.
There are also a relatively small amount of parents that have Facebook accounts and keep up
with their children's. More than once I've witnessed this form of bullying, whether it be about
race, appearance, intelligence, etc.
Ruined relationships- Facebook is notorious for causing couples to break up. For instance, no
one wants to see their girlfriend/boyfriend telling other people that they look cute, or liking their
pictures, or instant messaging them constantly. It builds up jealousy, which causes quite a bit of
tension in a relationship. The fact that many people try to hook up with others over Facebook
while not realizing that these people are in a relationship doesn't help the issue.
Stalker friendly- Facebook is a very stalker friendly website. Theoretically, someone that we
don't even know can say that they go to my school, add me, and get all of my information. This
may include phone number, house address, and locations I visit frequently. Not to mention the
fact that they will be able to go through all of our pictures and get to know me completely
without ever knowing. This is a scary thought, but it is a real issue.







References:
1. Ostrow, Adam (September 22, 2011). "Facebook Now Has 800 Million
Users".Mashable. Retrieved September 26, 2011.
2. Erickson, Christine (February 3, 2012). "Facebook IPO: The Complete Guide".Mashable
business. Retrieved March 23, 2012.
3. Helft, Miguel; Hempel, Jessi (March 19, 2012). "Inside Facebook". Fortune 165(4): 122.
Retrieved April 3, 2012.
4. Jacob Bunge, Jenny Strasburg, and Ryan Dezember (May 18, 2012). "Facebook Falls
Back to IPO Price". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved May 18, 2012.
5. Eichler, Alexander (May 24, 2012). "Wall St. Cashes In On Facebook Stock Plunge
While Ordinary Investors Lose Millions". Huffington Post.
6. Carlson, Nicholas (March 5, 2010). "At Last The Full Story Of How Facebook Was
Founded". Business Insider.