THE SECRETS OF SUCCESS OF FACEBOOK

THE SECRETS OF SUCCESS OF FACEBOOK

Aaron Charles L. Reyes

Facebook is one of the largest socializing networks nowadays. 14 years ago, Facebook was a coding project of Mark in his dormitory room and as of now, it has 2 billion monthly users. Now the question is, what is the secrets for the success of Facebook?

Justin Sullivan | Getty Images. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg

According to Mark Zuckerberg, you must follow your passion. His passion is to make the world more open and connected. Mark's purpose is to create a social utility that will allow people around the world to connect with each other.

All of the successful companies that he had seen focused first and foremost on building a great product and creating value for its users/customers. For his part, Zuckerberg was very deliberate in how he rolled out his product to his users across college campuses and then beyond. He ensured that their capacity was able to handle the new demand. He paced his growth on purpose. Once they’ve got a great product/service, it’s time to start marketing. He suggest starting with your most passionate users and partnering with them on word-of-mouth marketing. Marketing is definitely an essential tool of growing the awareness and your business. But putting the cart in front of the horse can be detrimental.

1. SPEED

Mark Zuckerberg built the first version of Facebook in his spare time in his Harvard dorm room. He didn't write a business plan. He didn't "research the market," apply for patents or trademarks, assemble focus groups, or do any of the other things that entrepreneurs are supposed to do. He just built a cool product quickly and launched it then Facebook was born.

2. FOCUS

"If you want to build something great, you should focus on what the change is that you want to make in the world," Zuckerberg said. "I see too many entrepreneurs who decide that they want to start a company before they actually know what it is that they want to build. To me, that seems backwards."

Mark Zuckerberg was famously uninterested in Facebook's business in the early days. Instead, he focused all of his energy on Facebook's product. As Facebook prepared to go public, Zuckerberg wrote a letter to shareholders in which he stated the company's intention to focus on its "social mission" first and its business second.

Meanwhile, some companies get so focused on "making the quarter" that they begin to warp their sales processes and pricing just to meet this random time hurdle. Customers soon learn that if they wait until the end of the quarter to sign their deal, they'll get a much better deal. And, soon, no one signs anything until the end of the quarter.

So the short-term quarterly game isn't just about wasting time managing investor expectations...it also hurts the business.

The best approach to this whole quarterly game is to minimize it as much as possible. No great companies are built by obsessing about quarters. Great companies are built by focusing on a vision that will create many years or even decades to create. In addition to Facebook, think Walmart, Google, Apple, and Amazon.

3. FIGURE OUT WHAT WILL KILL YOU AND MAKE SURE IT DOESN’T

Most people have long since forgotten, but Facebook was far from the first social network. There were several other college networks in existence before Facebook launched in 2004, including at Columbia and Stanford. (The latter, called Club Nexus, had been around since 2001. But, in violation of Facebook Success Secret No. 3, it was too complex. So it never really took off.)

Out in the real world, meanwhile, Friendster and MySpace were taking the world by storm. But then Friendster committed suicide.

How? By failing to restrict usage until it had the back-end infrastructure in place to support it. Demand for Friendster became so intense that the service slowed to a crawl. By the time the company finally fixed the back-end, a year later, most of Friendster's U.S. users had defected to other networks.

When Zuckerberg and his co-founders rolled out Facebook, they carefully controlled new registrations. They added one school at a time, waiting until they were certain that their infrastructure could handle it. Thus, Facebook always "worked."

In other words, Zuckerberg correctly identified one of the things that could kill Facebook--and he made certain not to fall prey to it.

4. SURROUND YOURSELF WITH OTHER HIGHLY SUCCESSFUL AND MOTIVATED PEOPLE

"No one does it alone," Zuckerberg said. "When you look at most big things that get done in the world, they're not done by one person, so you're going to need to build a team."

To build the strongest team possible, look for people who excel in the areas where you're weaker or less experienced. "You're going to need people that have complementary skills," he emphasized. "No matter how talented you are, there are just going to be things that you don't bring to the table."

Finally, the entrepreneurs who make it big are persistent. "Nothing ever goes the way you want it to," he said. "People talk about overnight success, and that's not the way it works.

5. GET REALLY GOOD AT HIRING AND REALLY REALLY GOOD AT FIRING

The strength of a company has nothing to do with its technology or current products. It has to do with its people.

(Why? Because technology and products change. Quickly.)

Even Steve Jobs was quick to admit that no one can do it alone.

So if you want to build a great company, you have to build a great team. And building a great team means two things:

· Hiring well, and

· Firing well.

It's easy to understand how to hire well: You have to find the best people for each position and then persuade them to join the company.

Firing well, meanwhile, is critical for two reasons: First, no matter how careful you are, you're going to make hiring mistakes, and you need to fix them quickly. Secondly, if your company is growing rapidly, it will eventually outgrow some of your early executives--and you'll need to replace them. In short, if you don't "fire well," your company will slip into mediocrity.

In Facebook's early days, the company made lots of hiring mistakes, but it addressed them quickly. Facebook was also good at replacing executives as the company outgrew them.

6. THE ONES WHO COME OUT ON TOP ARE THE ONES WHO REFUSE TO GIVEUP

Despite the inevitable trials and tribulations they face throughout the process, Zuckerberg concluded: "The biggest things that have gotten done in the world tend to be done by people who primarily believe in a mission and are not trying to build a company; by teams, not by individuals; and by people who just don't give up."