Introduction
The chosen application for this Consumer review is the Facebook social networking application. It is an application version of the Facebook website. Allowing users to create pages and talk to friends etc. This review accesses the application version on a Samsung Galaxy S3 and all conclusions are biased to its functionality on this device. The Facebook website is used as a comparison of the applications abilities.
Review
Target Market
Facebook itself has a large target demographic allowing for old and young users to familiarize themselves quickly with its layout and functions. Because of its nature as a social networking application it has a wide appeal from Grandmothers to School Kids. Facebook Mobile users are so many that online statistics site Statistics Brain puts the number of Mobile Users at 680,000,000 (Statistics Brain, Facebook). With this it is hard to see the specific target market and one must generalize that Facebook try’s to appeal to a wide range.
Accessibility
Widely Accessible available on all platforms and nearly all version for android operating system. It is also available on all iPhone and windows 7.5 and 8 phones. Its high availability is a testament to the power behind the application and the website that started it Facebook.com.
Why an Application
The Facebook application is a condensed version of the Facebook website allowing nearly all the available features of the website as an application to help with mobile data usage. The pages are already framed and saved inside the application meaning only the bare data of the updates needs to be acquired.
User Interface
The user interface is designed with a top down menu system, with 5 buttons across the top of the page allowing all navigator around the application. The First button is a menu button that is a dropdown menu allowing full navigation around the application. It has a search bar at the very top allowing you to search all available contacts first then continues to search all of Facebook. The Next three button are quick link buttons the first button being find friends allowing you to search for or add friends that have requested access to your page. The next button is a chat button allow you to see all messages received in order of recency from other Facebook users to your Facebook account. The third button is a notifications button that shows all recent notifications relating to your Facebook account. The final button on the far right is a contact button that allows you to contact any of your Facebook friends instantly by clicking on their name and profile picture.
Functions
Some of the Features the Facebook Application allows you to do are:
• View Your Page which shows things you have posted on your page.
• News Feed shows up to date new as you have specified you want to hear from your friend posts to pages you have likes.
• Messages from users using not sms but mobile data allows you to communicate directly with other Facebook users computers with Facebook logged in or mobile phones with Facebook logged in.
• Search for Nearby Places using Locations stored as Pages
• Events Page where you can add or see upcoming events you have specified
• Find Friends by searching for their names
• Create or Talk in Groups
• Facebook Apps Centre Access (3rd Party Apps)
• Allows you to Create Additional Pages
• Search for People Based on your Established Groups
• Post and Share Images and updates via your phone.
Pricing and Additional Features
Facebook also houses many business website for promotion purposes while Facebook allows for free advertising they also have some paid services allow you to promote your website and businesses at a cost to you. Facebook also recently allowed for you to pay to promote your posts allowing people to see that you consider this an important post and pay more attention to it. Facebook also has 3rd party applications which you can pay for mainly games and such that people become very fond of these are available inside the application as well allowing for download onto your phone and integration with your Facebook account allowing other to see your achievements and such in the game on your Facebook page.
Profit
Facebook itself is mainly an advertising driven business with Yahoo Finance showing that in 2010 88% of Facebook revenue was from advertising (Yahoo Finance, How Does Facebook Make Money). This is important to remember as social applications such as Facebook still are business driven. They hide advertising amongst the application and use user data you supply legally to drive to towards businesses that appeal to you. This is a sore spot for people as it involves their interests and privacy becoming company knowledge.
Privacy Issues
Facebook itself has seen some issues with privacy and user misusing it for their own purposes. A lot of users have issue with some of Facebook removal of privacy controls now allowing all users to be searchable as detailed in International Business Times (Ibtimes.com, Facebook Removes Search Privacy). But the strength of Facebook is its sheer number of users with Statistics Brain putting the number of Mobile Facebook Users at 680,000,000. (Statistics Brain, Facebook). Facebook cannot be held liable for misuse of its content by other or others acquiring the content without permission of the pages owner. Facebook does however make an effort to crack down on fake profiles and misusers of its functions.
Stability
While the Facebook application try’s to mimic the full functionality of the Facebook website the website version while badly framed on mobile devices is a lot more stable with the Facebook application sometimes appearing buggy and slow to load for pictures and updates.
Conclusion:
The Facebook application is an extremely popular application as its number of mobile users is huge. It is constantly being update to run more smoothly and with less mobile data to allow more users to navigate and receive updates more quickly. It is well designed and generally pretty smooth for a mobile application that has so many features. That being said it is not as stable and tends to crash back to OS desktop more than the website version. This is its only real flaw and with new releases this problem becomes less common. The Facebook application is a shiny example of a strong social application and I do not see it dwindling soon as it appeals to many demographics despite privacy issues some people have with it.
References:
Facebook Removes Search Privacy: Is It Time To Delete Your Profile? International Business Times, Ryan W Neil. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.ibtimes.com/facebook-removes-search-privacy-it-time-delete-your-profile-1422948. [Accessed 13 October 2013].
Facebook Statistics | Statistic Brain. 2013. Facebook Statistics | Statistic Brain. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.statisticbrain.com/facebook-statistics/. [Accessed 13 October 2013].
How does Facebook make money? - Yahoo Finance UK. 2013. How does Facebook make money? - Yahoo Finance UK. [ONLINE] Available at: http://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/how-does-facebook-make-money.html. [Accessed 