It’s a marketeer’s wet dream – 25 million users, averaging roughly 4 million new users every month. People from all around the world, from all walks of life, providing enormous amounts of personal information about themselves and their habits, their likes and dislikes. All for free. Too good to be true, right? Well, it is, unless you – like millions of users around the world – happen to believe in Facebook.

“The Facebook” was created in February 2004 by a young American student (Mark Zuckerberg) in contentious circumstances (a lawsuit by rival company, Connectu, who were Mr Zuckerberg’s employers is pending). Originally intended to be a networking site for students to stay in touch with their friends, it has recently been opened up to the whole world. As noted in a recent article on the BBC , Facebook is the more grown-up version of MySpace. Where MySpace has the chaotic and unruly appearance of a teenager’s bedroom, Facebook opted for the more simplistic and easily navigated format that has made it such a success with university students (the initial target audience). Facebook seems to cater to an audience that does not have a lot of time and probably does not want to spend ages trying to read undecipherable fonts written in illegible colours on nausea-inducing backgrounds (can you tell that I’m not a fan of MySpace?). Perhaps it is also a recognition of the fact that students are more likely to have moral objections to using an entity owned by Rupert Murdoch.

A September 2005 survey (during the time that Facebook membership was restricted exclusively to US, Canadian and British universities) found that 85% of students from eligible institutions had an account and 60% of those logged in daily. That’s a whole lot of potential consumers… So where’s the marketing angle?

In a word, applications. Applications are where the marketing world can get a good look at the users. Facebook allows independent entities to create applications that users can then choose to add to their profile. By adding these applications, the user is also agreeing to share all of their personal data with the makers of the application. Obviously the key to success here is to create a fun application that people actually want to add to their profile. A few examples of the applications that my friends are using:

- Zombies. Become a zombie. Bite your friends. Turn them into zombies. The more zombies you create, the higher your rank. The low-ranking zombies are dressed in what looks like a Star Trek uniform. Progression through the ranks is accompanied by changes in title and uniform. One bone of contention – the programmers clearly could not spell ‘Lieutenant’ correctly, choosing instead, to spell it phonetically (‘Leftenant’).

- X Me. Enter a description of what you want your friends to do to you. Then – when they visit your profile – with one click of their mouse they can do it. Or they can choose to do something else by simply typing it into the field. The most popular actions include hugging, spanking and giving beer to the nominated person. Other similar applications allow users to throw virtual sheep or food at one another.

- Chuck Norris Legends. My personal favourite, this application plays upon the recent internet phenomenon of Chuck Norris Facts (I’ll write an article about that soon). Users who install this application have a daily updated Chuck Norris ‘fact’ posted on their profile and one that is emailed to their chosen friends.

By June 2007 Facebook had reached the somewhat startling figure of 1,000 independent applications. Some – the vast majority, no doubt – are thinly veiled attempts to capture the ‘youth’ feel of the site without displaying any real understanding of what it is. Others, however, offer the right balance of simplicity, entertainment, humour and addictiveness. A prime example is the afore-mentioned Zombies application. The user’s progression is directly related to how many new users they can get, thus the users themselves are encouraging their friends to add the application. It worked on me – I’m just one bite away from getting promoted to Lieutenant.

Apart from applications, Facebook also offers sponsored advertisements in links all around the site. Admittedly, I have so far only clicked on one of these – the one that guaranteed a free Nintendo Wii – but maybe I’m in the minority.

And 'groups'. Facebook offers 'groups'. Anyone can create a group and anyone can join or leave a group with a simple click of the mouse. If a group is deemed offensive, complaints can be made and Facebook will adjudicate. This has led to a mind boggling variety of groups. There are groups with a political agenda (such as "Free Palestine"); there are groups with a more tongue-in-cheek approach (such as the group using the re-election of George W. Bush as justification for the reclamation of British sovereignty over the USA); there are groups dedicated to self-loathing (such as the group that claims that "Games Workshop is a parasitic growth upon my wallet. But still I love it"); there are even groups set up to gather essential information (such as the "I got mugged at knifepoint so can I have your mobile numbers please?" group).

The potential for groups to be set up to promote a message about a new product or service is enormous but – and this is a HUGE ‘but’ – there are accompanying risks. Today’s webusers are a savvy bunch and (as the Coke Zero fake blog debacle showed) they don’t take kindly to being patronised by corporations. Any attempt to falsely manipulate public opinion has the potential to backfire spectacularly.

This is by no means a complete and full introduction to Facebook – merely a teaser. There are many more possibilities and opportunities lurking within but (as I have discovered) the best part about Facebook is the discovery element. It’s a real dive-in-and-swim kind of world, so why not discover it yourself? After all, I’m going to need to bite a whole lotta people if I want my zombie to make the rank of General…

www.facebook.com

 UPDATE - 18th July 07:

I have finally got around to writing that Chuck Norris Facts article I mentioned above. Should you be interested, here's the link:

http://blog.luon.com/dblog/articolo.asp?articolo=366