Free Essay Dedicated to Facebook's PR Crises

Facebook's General Background

It was on February 4th, 2004 when Mark Zuckerberg launched thefacebook.com while a sophomore at Harvard College. Thefacebook.com made $382,000 in revenue the year it was launched. During this year its main target was college and university students and their alumni. Its popularity grew rapidly the following year since it was hosting both American and international school networks. In 2006, facebook.com expanded and began venturing out of school networks to capture workplace networks. It's in this same year that it launched Newsfeed and its first application that was available to mobile phone users as well as developing the share feature. These developments generated $48 million for facebook.com.

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In May 2007, facebook.com launched its 85 applications on Facebook,com platform including Beacon which Zuckerberg which allowed users to share information across sites. It also acquired Parakey which is an offline applications company and launched its self-service advertisement platform and Facebook pages. This advancement generated $148million in revenue for facebook.com. The following year in 2008, facebook.comintroduced its instant chat messenger feature and expanded to cover twenty-three global languages. Facebook.com acquired FriendFeed which is a social networking aggregator bringing its users to 100million.

In 2010 facebook.com acquired Octazen which is a contact importer company previously owned by a Malaysian, it also acquired Divvyshot a photo management company. Facebook also acquired Hot Potato, ShareGrove, Nextstop and Chai Labs amongst other companies that handle private conversation forums, travel recommenders, internet applications and check-in status updates. Facebook.com also introduced Facebook Groups meant for people with common interests. Recorded revenues for his year were a staggering $1.974 billion with over 5million users.

Facebook's Previous PR Crisis

Ever since it was launched it has been involved in numerous brawls with several private companies and government institutions. Facebook.com faced its very first tussle with the law when it was merely a week old after its launch. It was accused in court by Harvardconnections.com claimed Zuckerberg had stolen the brilliant idea from them (Heft, 2011). The legal tussle was finally put to rest by an out of court settlement after a lengthy and ugly court fight that got many Facebook users wondering if indeed Zuckerberg had hacked into the systems of the accusing company. Zuckerberg's company has been battling with critics and lawsuits over privacy infringement ever since. In 2008, Facebook had to do away with Beacon application after it emerged to the public that it was violating user privacy settings. Chicago Tribune recorded how Zuckerberg was forced to give a public apology for this mistake which damaged Facebook's reputation (Nakashima, 2018). The following year in 2009, Facebook was accused by the Federal Trade Commission for deceptive practices. Facebook had tried to override users' online private data by giving the impression that it had created tools that gave users more control over their private information but in the real sense the tools were pushing users to make their private data public (Sengupta, 2011).

In 2010, the Guardian revealed how Facebook user Identity Numbers was leaked to advertising companies. They also reported how personal phone information remained on facebook.com after a user has uploaded a photo (Arthur, 2010). In 2015, Facebook.com was accused of failing to alert affected users whose personal information was misappropriated by Facebook's applications permissions which meant that senior facebook.com management breached this fiduciary duty as well as a 2011 consent decree. This particular incident has landed facebook.com in a Californian court. The Federal Trade Commission has consequently launched investigations to ascertain if facebook.com sold private user information to third parties without user permission. The negative effect of these events has resulted in a loss of $50billion market share capitalization (Nakashima, 2018).

References

Arthur, C. (2010). Facebook apps 'leaking details to advertisers'. The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2010/oct/18/facebook-apps-data-privacy

Heft, M. (2011). Facebook to Settle With ConnectU. New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/12/technology/12facebook.html

Nakashima, R. (2018, Mar. 30), Facebook has history of privacy issues, Retrieved 2018, from https://www.timesunion.com/business/article/Facebook-has-history-of-privacy-issues-12795029.php

Nakashima, R. (2018). Promises, promises: Facebook's history with privacy. The Chicago Tribune. Retrieved from http://www.chicagotribune.com/sns-bc-us--facebook-privacy-scandal-legacy-of-missteps-20180330-story.html

Sengupta, S. (2011). F.T.C settles privacy issue at Facebook. The New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/30/technology/facebook-agrees-to-ftc-settlement-on-privacy.html