However, Facebook is one of the successful applications to maintain its popularity from past few years constantly. Now, when you  talk about Facebook you must have to admit that, in this broadband era the one who uses internet and  does not no about Facebook.

History for Facebook:

Facebook is a Social network site that started back in 2004  (by Mark Zuckerberg) out strictly for college students and was available by invitation only.

The company bought a domain name Facebook.com in 2005 in $2000000 US $. After that, they started  adding  features in their application rapidly  and today Facebook  is a cultural phenomenon across the globe. Today, there are 400 million active users not just from Universities or schools but from all other areas as well.

Facebook is one of the most simple light weight model for social networking web service. The growth and success story it self a self explanatory that, Facebook is an easy and simple application for users to use. Here is the video for how to register and use face book.

Here is the video that shows Facebook growth vs Twitter.

Financial aspect for Facebook:

• Facebook received its first investment of  USD 500,000 in June 2004 from Paypal.
• September 2006, serious talks between Facebook and Yahoo took place concerning acquisition of Facebook, with prices reaching as high as $1 billion. By then a board member of Facebook, indicated that Facebook’s internal valuation was around $8 billion based on their projected revenues of $1 billion by 2015.
• n August 2008, Business-week reported that private sales by employees, as well as purchases by venture capital firms, had and were being done at share prices that put the company’s total valuation at between $3.75 billion and $5 billion.
• Revenue for the Facebook is Staggering 300 million US$ (2008 est.).

Facebook is also generating money from the advertisements displaying on slide bar. Soon Facebook is going to lunch light weight application for mobile users calles m.facebook.com.

Slides how you can use facebook for your business going on this link (http://www.slideshare.net/mikeging/facebook-for-business-101-cost-effective-marketing-using-facebook).

Finally, here is the video that gives you all important facts and figure for Facebook.

References:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook

http://social-networking-websites-review.toptenreviews.com/facebook-review.html

http://www.allfacebook.com/2010/02/facebook-launches-facebook-zero-–-a-light-weight-mobile-site/

http://www.youtube.com/

http://www.slideshare.net/mikeging/facebook-for-business-101-cost-effective-marketing-using-facebook

Many companies now following this concept to increase their profit such as Amazon, netfix, eBay and many more however, the music library or say a media library using the concept of long tail successfully is iTunes. In a small amount of time it became very popular with use of four million people for iTunes all over the world. Apple’s smart moves have pushed iTunes where no music retail service has gone before. For the time being, the number of songs sold through iTunes has changed. Obviously, that number is changing every second but question is how many?? well its staggering   5 billion songs. The number is getting bigger and bigger not every day but almost every minute or every second. and its not just a myth as apple has announced that iTunes Store’s customers purchased and downloaded more than 5 billion songs, while the iTunes Store also has the largest music catalog online, with over 8 million tracks. Even more, the iTunes Store is now renting over 50,000 movies daily, turning it into the most popular movie store, too, with a catalog of over 20,000 TV episodes, over 2,000 films, of which over 350 are available in HD quality. which is very good example of Long tail concept to demonstrate.

However, Every coin has its two sides Concept of long tail is also gain some criticism.Recently, Anita Elberse, Harvard Business School professor, published a critique of Chris Anderson’s long tail theory in the Harvard Business Review. Based on her research of two markets, she says Anderson is wrong and there is more money to be made in a few blockbusters or hits, than in niche offerings(By Anita Campbell).

All n all for me the way of thinking about the concept might be different however, I recommend it as a good technique to enhance business in global market.

Video worth to watch.

References:

http://bindapple.com/itunes-statistics/

http://smallbiztrends.com/2008/07/long-tail-criticism.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Tail

http://www.thelongtail.com/

“Google apps” is one of the examples of perpetual Beta. Standard is much better then the all other non-beta software. More than 1.75 ,million companies around the world run their business on the Google Apps, including Google it self. As in today’s fast demanding world beta products are not satisfied user needs. So, all the applicatio in Google apps are using perpetual methodology.

“Google Apps” includes applications such as Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs and Google Talk they all have  both enterprise and consumer versions. They  are still innovative and improving upon their applications has some other features which are appealing to large enterprises such as mail delegation, mail retention and ongoing enhancements to Apps reliability.Google considering perpetual beta as a writing a book. one can not make changes ones book is published until the next version of that book is published.

here is the video witch shows demo about how to use Google apps at home or at business..

Criticism: Critics of Google consider “perpetual beta” strategy as an internal excuse for poor craftsmanship and even poorer execution. Google disagrees, trying to spin its beta story for Computer World as a positive thing and some how different from traditional software:(Matt Asay, CNET Blog Network author). However, I ll again consider it as a good point as mistake is also a part if learning process.

References:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perpetual_beta

http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/business/index.html

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10054293-16.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJT3pagjd8s

Now moving to the history for the idea, it was said by Dave Stutz ( Microsoft’s leading internal open source advocates) that, to enhance profit margin in business the good way to produce software which can run on multiple platform, however, there is long time for it. Using internet we can access the information esily

One good example of such application is iTunes, which is mentioned in article by Tim O’Reilly.iTunes highlights the potential of a new application model beyond the web browser. As i-Tunes application is not just limited to the managing music but it also manages whole digital word. People can have access to the digital contains where they want.Google latitude is another popular application which runs on different smart phones.

I’m also having one video to share with you guys.which i’m attaching link for that is http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/pranav_mistry_the_thrilling_potential_of_sixthsense_technology.html.

Another good example is LiveMesh that runs above the level of single device.It runs symmetrically on all your computing devices, in the part of the cloud that’s associated with your devices, and in other parts of the cloud where services you transact with are running.

This approach of ” Software above the level of single device” ll bring revolution to the computing and business word.

References:

http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2007/11/software-above-the-level-of-a.html

http://blog.jonudell.net/2008/05/30/livemesh-and-feedsync-software-above-the-level-of-a-single-device

www.slideshare.net/satyajeet_02/web-20-5316 – United States

Now to talking about Rich User Experience, which can be achieve by providing user easy, user friendly and attractive interface as well as they should easily navigate to one interaction to another.

For Example “eBay”, It is a very good example of “Rich User experience”. eBay was launched in 1995, eBay started as a place to trade collectables and hard-to-find items. However, Today eBay is a global marketplace where businesses and individuals can buy and sell practically anything.

Not just that eBay is also an application  where each country/region has their own independent  ebay sites, contents and products. In eBay employ ‘IP sniffing’  to predict the content according to the user’s geographic location.

It has varieties of products and its using  the products attributes, features and its facts according to user’s requirement. ebay is providing vast categories for their users from which they can choose the category and product in which they are interested. Payment part in eBay is also very easy by using credit card you can buy the product you want.

Therefore, the success of eBay goes to its Rich User Experience. To get success in web market any application needs to provide Rich User Interface.

Referances :

http://pages.ebay.com.au/ebayexplained/what_is_ebay.html

http://www.slideshare.net/jyesko/rich-user-experience-documentation-1402310

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rich_Internet_application

Its functionality is very similar as a facebook and myspace. On this application user can add videos, photos, community, groups and all sorts of things that we can do on facebook. You can restrict others to watch your profile by choosing different options. The new features in Orkut is Themes. Users can change their interface from a wide range of colorful theme library.  Unlike facebook , in orkut  users can visit anyone’s profile they want. Moreover recently, Addition and very useful feature is also added which is video chatting.

Orkut is Using wide variates of API Technologies to interact with people. Also offering many game applications with it.Some draw backs of Orkut are fack profiles, any1 can easily copy the photograph of the other orkut users if they are not restricted. There were also some security issues were rosed in the year 2007 for orkut. Therefore, User has to be very careful while using Orkut for social web sites.

Due to its added features and functionality it expected that it ll be more popular in future as a social networking site as they are keep adding and innovating things for their site.Moreover, Google stated that the new Orkut is faster, simpler and more customizable. More particular features includes video chat, promotions and easy navigation. which ll also help to grow faster.

References : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orkut#Design

http://www.google.com/support/orkut/bin/answer.py?answer=16198

For Example, Facebook is retrieving enough information that they can tie what you do on external sites back to your Facebook profile and it’s deleting the data it gathers after the person sign out from facebook. However,  before this  there was proble on facebook . when people buy something they used to post that information to all friends of the user. But now because of proper interaction of data facebook came out with that problem.

How data can help to develope good web 2.0 application.

Advantages :

1>  Enhance the customer experience and value by innovating the way you interact with your customers.

2> Boost the quality and speed of the Information.

3> Accelerate new business design(s) that is contextual and action-oriented.

References :

 http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2007/12/facebooks-is-al/#ixzz0i7zdv0So

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel

http://radar.oreilly.com/

Harnessing collective intelligence has broader meaning then just collecting data or user content. Some examples are “predictwallstreet.com” which is very good example of collective intelligence, Wikipedia is also a good example as it is not just user generated content but the collective intelligence. Even on social sites like Facebook, myspace, twitter, Orkut and so on they are keep working to improve their site and keep testing new and real features on real customers. One of the most very good examples of web 2.0 is E-bay where buyer has good choices to buy good things and seller has good opportunities to get good bids for their things and again to be in the market you have to understand users needs for that you need to harness collective intelligence.  

Therefore it is very important for any Web 2.0 application that, it satisfied user’s expectation fully with that application as well as it also gives user to participate with that application both implicitly and explicitly. The more application is flexible the more user satisfaction.

 Lastly, from examples giving good architecture to collective intelligences results in a good web 2.0 applications.