Facebook Under the Business Magnifier

Facebook has coloured our days almost for the whole time. Everytime we go online either using our desktop, laptop or mobile, most of use will open Facebook. According to Facebook Inc, it has had 1 billion users at the end of 2012, yet it is not allowed in China, where the highest internet users are. At university, every time I have group work, everyone will say, 'Hey, we should create a Facebook group.' Not wikispace, but Facebook group. Everyone expects everyone to have Facebook and we are seemed to have it more than social network.

Either we realise it or not, Facebook is not only used for maintaining relationships by posting to someone's timelines. More than that, Facebook is used as a marketing tool, wiki, blog, events, reminders and so forth. Despite of its popularity, Facebook itself has its own dark side.

By going public since 31 May of 2012, with $38 as the opening, Facebook share price has been declining, until now, $19 per share. Its current price is only half of the beginning price. Why is this happening? Is it probably because of public does not trust Facebook? Probably. In what?

http://blog.compete.com

Facebook does have a lot of security issues. Everyone can create a Facebook account, no formal identity verification when establishing a new account. Even though there is a security setting, the users do not seem to be educated enough not to show their profile for public. A lot of criminal offences came with Facebook as its source when someone can stalk and pretend to be someone else and finally rape and murder cases occur. Even with the security setting as well, there are some deficiencies which may not seem to be significant but affect our security. For example, the photo of you and your friend published in your friend's album. You cannot really prevent them not to show your face to your friend's friends in Facebook. Even though security setting seems to be promising, it is still not a perfect system. Also, the issues of cyberbullying and cyberstalking through Facebook are not new topics. A lot of people have become the victims and they cannot simply get out from that position because when it goes cyber, then everyone sees it and there is no place or time boundaries. It will bombard them anytime and anywhere.

Seeing the implication of the price of the share that keeps declining, it might be possible that public does not trust that Facebook will exist in a future. There is an indication of a short-term trend, such as Friendster which has disappeared by now, was popular in the early 2000. The regulation about social network, including Facebook is still unclear as well. Even though there are actually a lot of offences (physical or non-physical) have occurred in social network, there is still no law regulating the operation. There are still blurs around the issue. There is possibility that Facebook will no more exist in years ahead.

However, with the number of active users that keeps increasing and how people use it everyday, Facebook has become needs for some. The advertising that appears on the website everyday has appeared to a promising income and people might be just too skeptical about this new type of business.

Hidden Cigarette Bitterness

http://ariefabian.blogspot.com.au

Cigarette is not a new products traded across the world. This product has been sold since the early 1900's. Even though it has been traded for quite a long time, the existence of cigarette never seems to be faded, or does it? In the US, for example, the cigarettes shops are closing. We see a lot of health revolution in the past decades around the developed countries such as the US and Australia where cigarette advertising is banned and smoking publicly is prohibited in most of the places. However, how does the big tobacco industry still making money? The answer is they move the market.

Indonesia is one of the targeted area where the this industry is free to grow in a rapid pace. Cigarettes advertising are everywhere, on the streets and sponsors for the big events. Smoking is considered being cool and attractive. Not only the legal people, the underage also consumed cigarettes, mostly the teenagers. One of the ex-marketer from Indonesian cigarette producers spoke up about this. The biggest lies are cigarettes do not cause diseases and it does not market the children. So, when we saw the Indonesian 4-year old kids smoked, that what the industry has brought the country into.

Seeing it from the marketing side, how great it is for the tobacco company to create such a huge influence using their notorious products. Even though people know that it is dangerous, people are still buying it. It is notorious yet loved in Indonesia, especially by the government. Tobacco industries pay over USD 8 billion for the taxation only, annually which is the 10% of the government's revenue. Millions of jobs are created from this industry as well. This implies that probably, the tobacco industry will still earn the glory at least in the near future.

Saying so, public health is at risk. There are a lot of costs involved to recover the health of the people. As well as people are becoming poorer because of addicted by smoking and spend money to buy cigarettes. Education of the danger of cigarettes is lacking.

There are a lot of pros and cons about tobacco, especially when there is a question of will the benefits outweigh the costs for the whole society. Will money outweigh the health of people? I guess the option is on the hand of the consumers, us.

-thanks for Vanguard for the video of Sex, Lies and Cigarettes, to see more of this video please click here-