Part A

Introduction
In 2003, a group of friends in Harvard aimed to create a social networking website. Mark
Zuckerberg who was a computer science student at Harvard, designed a website named
“Facemash”. Zuckerberg utilised his computational skills and hacked the database of Harvard, he
got access to students’ data and pictures. Those pictures were used by him to make comparisons
between students, the comparisons were based on the physical appearances of the Harvard
graduates. After a few days, Facemash was deactivated by the Harvard authorities, because the
website was violating the society standards and was unethical. Zuckerberg was eventually
suspended from Harvard and many charges were imposed on him. Then in 2004, Mark
Zuckerberg was financed and Facebook came into being. His continuous hard work and
motivation made Facebook the most popular social networking site in 2009. Facebook now has
over 400 million users globally. About 50% of the Facebook users are found online daily.
Facebook is considered as the most used Social networking site internationally. The current
revenue generated by Facebook is about $16.6 billion per year. As Facebook have a leading role
in the world of social networking, the application of knowledge management in Facebook is of
high significance. This assignment focuses on the Knowledge management strategy in Facebook.
Knowledge Management strategy of Facebook
Every organisation wants to become successful, in order to gain success knowledge management
has considered to be an essential element. Through Knowledge management an organisation can
develop value for a decade. It is based on the concept of utilising knowledge for the
enhancement of an organisation. KM relies on different models which are, combination,
socialisation, and externalisation. While considering the above mentioned models, KM is based
on four major processes that is the creation of knowledge, capturing and storing of knowledge,
sharing of the knowledge and application of the knowledge.
It is highly essential for Facebook to first understand the KM nature which is mainly based on
the social factors and not just only on the technology. The factors of the KM varies from
individual to a team. In other words, success of KM relies on different factors for an individual
and different factors for a team. Some of the definite factors considered are, leadership,
communication, satisfaction of the job, subjective norms, trust, culture of the organisation and
many more. Facebook has make itself a highly essential and popular social networking platform.
The remarkable success of Facebook has made it clear that it has numerous implications for the
implementation of Knowledge management.
Collaboration of Facebook with knowledge management
Technology plays an important role in the process of knowledge management. According to
Smith and Farquhar, the main objective of knowledge management is to enhance the overall
performance of an organisation by giving access to the individuals to capture, discuss and apply
the knowledge in order to make beneficial decisions for the company. As per the views of Payne,
knowledge management has been found moving beyond the technology enabling collaboration
and writing of the information, through creating valid content and trust, generating and
sustaining practices of the neighborhood, and coping with actions and culture of the individuals.
The implementation of cooperation and technology has significantly improved since the past 10
years. The innovation is divided into the following stages,
Data exchange via Email
Previously, the files containing important data were transferred by following the process of
cooperation. It involves transferring of data through floppy disks or through one-by-one email.
Alder stated, that using this approach consumes a lot of time and individuals faces difficulty in
collecting and receiving the data. The main problems assessed were that the information gathered
was sometimes incomplete, difficult to understand, and outdated.
Network drives
Besides the data transferring of the files, network drives was another major tool of cooperation.
Local drives means that all the information can be accessed through a common local network.
The major issues which encountered the local drive were limitation of personal connections,
storage and attention spans. Data retrieval was not much easy, individuals were depended on
other to retrieve data. Only a limited amount of data was stored and for a limited period of time.
Therefore, the management of the data was too weak and the individual attained negligible bonus
for maintaining the data and it was too time consuming.
Web based Software alternatives
The introduction and application of the web based software alternatives provided a quite
satisfaction. For instance, Microsoft SharePoint provided the people with contrasting features
including the easier moving of information like forms, notifications, surveys, profiles,
documents, extraction of information from data sources on Web, discussion boards and
categorisations. The web based software alternatives provided with the easier access of
information, protection of the information and arranging of the gathered information, but there
was major drawback which was the lack of user participation in the collaboration process.
Social networking
Induction of user participation is highly essential in the knowledge management process.
According to Shih, nowadays social media is the centre of attention, Facebook being the most
popular social networking site, it is considered that knowledge management has selected the
public media method in order to stimulate cooperation. Facebook is not only the platform of
connecting people from different regions of world, but it also provides easier access to exchange
of information. It also improves the experience of people more pleasurable and elevates their
satisfaction. As per the statement of Alavi and Leidner, an effective cooperation is based on two
core components, that it the proposal which includes the number of people operating the machine
daily, and adoption which includes the teams accessing the machine. Facebook, a social network
has completely transformed the knowledge management amongst different organisations.
Knowledge Management cycle of Facebook

Figure 1; KM cycle for Facebook

In the above illustrated figure, it is clearly depicted that the Facebook KM cycle includes some
external environment factors and some internal environment factors. The external environment is
basically focused on the knowledge tactics which includes the recruitment procedures,
partnerships. The internal environment factors are the explication of knowledge, organisation
learning through experiences, knowledge repository. These internal factors leads to culture
experimentation which results in innovation and sustainability.
Recent advancement in Facebook through KM
Facebook has been continuously progressing and improving its features for the ease of their
users. According to Gawer, Facebook has enhanced its connections and programs for the
consumers and has also improved the strategy in creating knowledge, and the potent risks were
also addressed. Facebook has also improved the page management addressing the personal and
privacy concerns. Although these changes generated a mixed impact, that is both positive and
negative. But along the passage of time, continuous improvement was observed. Some of the
major improvements in the past few years includes, expanding of networks to workplace and
educational institutes, development of new privacy settings, launching of the “Facebook
application”, improvements in the profile page and replacement of “Profile” with “Timeline”,
alteration of the user interface, the “Edit notification button” was modified to “Edit options”,
provision of one click site access, removal of unnecessary tabs, introduction of “Photostrip” and
many more.
Universality in creation of knowledge
Facebook competes with its competitors like MySpace in terms of friendliness with the
application coders of the third party. To avail cultural networking, Facebook has developed an
“Application programming user interface (API)” based on credit card. User communal graphs
can be used for designing applications that can improve the relationship of users. The
universality in creation of knowledge in Facebook is because of the “news supply”. The news
supply has been copyrighted to Zuckerberg. According to Treadaway and Smith, once a status
has been uploaded, or some information is posted, or a credit card is installed, a notification pops
on the screen of the user’s friends. Facebook has made several amendments in changing the
positioning of the images, text and videos displayed on a user’s timeline. A “Headlines” feed is
created on which users can access information or important announcements from the non-
connected users. The feature of “Groups” provided the users belonging to different political and
social programs to connect and discuss their views. Another creative feature of “Notes” provided
the user to create creative content. The comment section allows the user to raise their views and
opinions. Hearn added that a number of features like commenting, reacting, sharing, liking,
ability to generate and ask questions, ability of answering the questions, keeping the password
secure.
Aspects assisting KM while working with Facebook
A lot of concerns with privacy has arose as the API of Facebook has made easy access to posting
of knowledge and creation of knowledge. Although the community standards of Facebook
restricts the hacking activities, but still sometimes hacking is observed which violates the
community standards. Information of users is sometimes accessed without their consent. These
types of issues shows an increased urge of enhancing the privacy controls. Some tech experts
predicted that about 10 million Facebook users were affected by these problems.
The impact of KMS on Facebook
Knowledge work
The users are aided to discuss knowledge with other organisations or with other users. Facebook
makes sure that the shared knowledge or information would remain in the same community and
would not be shared to any other community. It is solely in the control of user to decide which
information to share. Shared information predicts the personality, likes and dislikes of the users
and on the basis of the extracted information, the newsfeed of a user is illustrated. The users are
provided with the full control of annotating, sharing and grouping of the information, but there is
improvement required in management of privacy.

Communication and collaboration

Digital systems relying on mass cooperation has generated a huge impact on the modern culture
because of knowledge. The Facebook users are provided with the facility to give useful
suggestions, addressing the problems and resolving them through fruitful solutions. Facebook
lacks the feature of personal communication, so if the user has any issue or problem, anyone
from the Facebook community would answer, and recommend solution to it. However, features
for private communication are in progress.
Management
Numerous implications regarding management has been produced and implemented by
Facebook. Often using some other application for example, playing a game in Facebook would
access some of the user’s information. In other words, the unnecessary engagement with the
“Public networking sites” can often lead to loss of output. The Economists contained several
reports reporting that there was a generation of about 1.4 billion pounds annually because of
increased usage of Facebook in the working hours. On the other hand, there were articles
highlighting the benefits that might be attained like increased productivity, if Facebook would be
banned. A number of improvements are made on the recruitment processes, as Facebook has
made its guidelines for the community pretty clear. It was reported that about 47% of the UK
executives browsed Facebook pages and searched for information and on the basis of that
information, useful decisions for the recruitment processes were made.
Trust
According to Schwartz, trust is foremost the biggest concern with Facebook in relation to
knowledge management. In a report, Van Grove stated that many of the professionals and
experts in the field of privacy have observed that Facebook shares the user data with the third
parties through the feature of keeping cookies. Facebook claims that it has de-anonymised the
entire social networking process, and when a significant issue arises Facebook conducts the
necessary actions.
Facebook future
As per the views of Schwartz, Facebook’s future regarding the knowledge management strategy
is quite safe and smart but some necessary amendments are required to overcome the privacy
concerns, otherwise the organisation would get out of the business’s competition league. As
Facebook can make a remarkable contribution in creating knowledge, it is also observed that it
causes low productivity and privacy concerns. Different types of knowledge are integrated such
as the daily creation of content and incorporation of application through Facebook. Proper
management of Facebook can lead to provision of knowledge management assistance for non-
professional and professional business corporations.
Conclusion
As per the views of Nonaka and Takeuchi, it is considered that in order to create value, use of
knowledge along with the incorporation and development are highly significant. This condition
is necessary for the entire economy and not just for a particular organisation. It is essential for an
organisation to develop and implement a KM system. The KM system depends on the external
and internal environment factors, so in order to evaluate the success of the KM system,
evaluation of how the company integrates the internal and external environment factors is
necessary. The growth and success of Facebook purely relies on the pace of its learning.

Part B
Introduction
Every organisation have its own strengths, weaknesses, threats and opportunities. In order to
analyse and evaluate the strengths, weaknesses, threats and opportunities of Facebook in the
international advertising market, a SWOT analysis is required. The SWOT analysis comprises of
the internal strategic factors and the external strategic factors. The internal strategic factors
includes the weaknesses and strengths of a business. Whereas, the external strategic factors
include the threats and opportunities of an organisation. Through the SWOT analysis of
Facebook, strengths of the organisation in the global market are highlighted. But Facebook must
keep working on improvements and innovation, in order to provide tough competition to the
competitors, retaining its position in market and hence overcoming the threats. The major
competitors of Facebook are mainly the Snapchat, Twitter and Google. This assignment would
highlight the external and internal strategic factors of Facebook, the most popular social
networking platform. Further it would be explained that how Facebook can improve its strategies
to overcome the threats and utilise the opportunities, to what measures should be taken to
overcome the weaknesses and making the future of Facebook more secure.
Internal Strategic factors of Facebook
The internal strategic factors comprises of the strengths and weaknesses of Facebook. The
strengths and weaknesses are discussed below,
Strengths of Facebook
The strengths of Facebook leads to retain its valuable position in the global social market. Up till
now Facebook is considered to be the most popular social networking platform and online
advertising market globally. The strengths are the internal factors which are responsible for
making the business successful and market competitive. The strength helps in analysing the
organisation’s positivity towards work and measures taken by the company to make it successful
in achievement of the objectives. The strengths of Facebook are mentioned below,
Resilient brand image
Facebook has maintained a tough and resilient brand image, which counts in as the strength of
the organisation. The strong image of the brand is considered as the strength according to the
SWOT analysis. The organisation has managed its networking and since a long time is able to
successfully provide smooth and reliable social media service.
High revenue generation
The generation of high revenue is considered as the highly significant internal factor. This
significant internal factor is the strength of Facebook according to the SWOT analysis. The high
revenues supports the company financially and promotes the research and development for new
ventures and novel products.
Huge consumer base
The huge consumer base is considered as the strength of Facebook. As the number of users are
more the more are the chances of attracting new users, and the more competition is provided to
the competitors or other social media companies. Hence, a large consumer base is considered as
the strength of Facebook, according to the SWOT analysis.
Advanced workforce
The advanced workforce is also the strength of Facebook. The company is highly motivated to
recruit new employees who are superior on the basis of creativity and talent. Facebook hires
creative workforce so the products then produced are highly competitive and have high degree of
innovation and creativity. These innovations makes Facebook more attractive in the advertising
market.
Weaknesses of Facebook
Facebook, a socially connecting site and an advertising company have many competitors. As this
is an era of technology, daily a number of social media sites and platforms are being created. The
presence of multiple social media platforms brings competition and hence, considered as the
weaknesses of Facebook. The SWOT analysis has described some of the weaknesses of
Facebook. Following are the major weaknesses of Facebook;
Undesirable effect of online advertising
The online advertising leads to generate a negative impact on the user’s experience. The negative
and undesirable impact is considered as the weakness of Facebook. Continuous exposure to
unnecessary advertisements is often annoying. When Facebook takes this concern in
consideration and tries to improve the user experience by limiting the number of advertisement
pop-ups, the company fails to generate revenue through advertisements. This may lead to
immense market risk exposure.
Imitable services and products
Facebook has developed various features to facilitate their users. The social networking site, the
mobile app (available for both iOS and android), and other services provided by Facebook are
completely imitable. In other words, such features can be easily copied by other social
networking organisations. The imitation of the products and services is considered as the
weakness of Facebook and leads to high market competition.

Minimal diversification
The minimised diversification is inversely related to the market risk exposure. In other words,
the low is the diversification the high is the market risk exposure. Minimal diversification is
considered as the weakness of Facebook, according to the SWOT analysis. The low
diversification leads to revenue generation only through the online networking sites and the
mobile apps. In order to decrease the market risks, Facebook must overcome this weakness.
External Strategic factors
The external strategic factors includes the threats and the opportunities of Facebook which are
discussed below,
Opportunities for Facebook
The opportunities provided to Facebook can be utilised effectively by an organisation in order to
grow and attain success globally. The opportunities highlighted in the SWOT analysis for
Facebook are considered as the external strategic factors. Following are the opportunities for
Facebook:
Development of market and its penetration
Facebook can utilise its “Intensive growth strategy and generic competitive strategy” along with
the market development and penetration in order to raise revenues and elevate the membership.
The SWOT analysis has made clear illustrations that how market development and penetration
could be used an opportunity by Facebook.
Innovative products
Facebook can introduce innovative features in its online websites and mobile apps for continuous
variation. The variation elevates competition amongst other social media organisations.
Innovation is also considered as a significant opportunity for Facebook.
Diversification in business
Facebook keep focusing on the diversification of the business. Recently, Facebook collaborated
with a company and introduced “Oculus VR”. The Oculus VR is based on virtual reality
technology that benefits the services of social networking. Effective utilisation of this
opportunity depicted by the SWOT analysis would aid in success of Facebook.
Threats to Facebook
The threats are the risks that an organisation may face. Facebook being a social media-providing
platform encounters various threats. The threats are considered as the external strategic factors
for Facebook. The multinational business of Facebook may face the following threats:
Market saturation
According to the PESTLE analysis of Facebook, the market is extensively saturated. This
elevated saturation may lower or stop the growth of the business by formation of the business
growth plateau. This major threat makes it difficult for Facebook to develop and introduce
innovative products and services.
Cybercrime
Facebook, the most popular social networking site often encounters various cybercrimes.
Cybercrime is not just a threat to Facebook but also to the users. The SWOT analysis has
highlighted cybercrime as the external strategic factor threatening Facebook.
Imitation
Imitation is defined as the act of copying. The imitation of Facebook’s social networking site or
mobile app by other social networking service providers is quite easy. Therefore, it is highly
essential for Facebook to overcome this threat in order to increase the market share of the
company.
Recommendations based on SWOT analysis
The SWOT analysis has explained the internal and external strategic factors, which includes the
strengths, weaknesses, threats and opportunities for Facebook. However, following are some of
the recommendations that must be considered by Facebook in order to increase revenues and
elevate growth:
 Strategic management initiatives must be implemented to provide effective
communication and for the maintenance of the brand value of Facebook.
 Facebook must exploit additional revenue generation sources for continuous growth of
the organisation.
 Exceptional measures should be taken to lower the market risk exposure.
 Facebook must emphasise on the Research and Development department to reduce the
threats of cybercrimes.
 Efforts should be made in negotiating with government to expand the market size.
Conclusion
Facebook is the most popular social networking site. Facebook is recognised globally, and
amongst all age groups. From youngsters to adults, and from adults to elders, Facebook is known
by everyone. Whether a person use Facebook or not, but he might be using other programs
incorporated with Facebook, such as the Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger. Though,
Facebook has attained success internationally but still requires continuous improvements and
diversification to retain its strong position. Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook must
consider the threats encountered by Facebook keenly, and work on overcoming them. Effective
utilisation of the opportunities would aid in future success.