What it is good for:
Facebook launched to the Harvard student body, gaining acceptance and users slowly at first and then gaining viral status.
Facebook Case Study: Offline behavior drives online usage
Why profiled on Startup Review
Facebook was
launched in February 2004 by Harvard undergrad students as an
alternative to the traditional student directory. Its popularity
quickly spread to other colleges in the US by word of mouth, and the
site now registers close to 15M monthly UVs and over 6B page views per
month. Facebook has completed two rounds of venture financing at very
high valuations, the first at a valuation of ~$100M and the second at
~$550M (valuations are unconfirmed). These valuations were driven by
the multiple acquisition offers that Facebook has reportedly turned
down (the latest was a rumored $750M offer). Facebook is already
generating significant revenue, so despite all the valuation and web
traffic metric hype, it has also established a very real business.
Interviews conducted: Noah Kagan, early product manager for
Facebook. Noah will soon release an e-book on Facebook, with good
insight on the social networking space. You will be able to download
the book at Noah’s blog, okdork.com.
I have had plenty of informal conversations with people close to
Facebook over the last two years, while not formal interviews, I would
regard these as quality sources – employees, investors, and competitors.
I would also like to thank Nick Macey, a student at the University
of Utah for helping in the research and writing of this case study, and
providing the ever valuable user perspective as a current college
student. Nick will be helping with some of the writing on Startup
Review in the future.
Key success factors
Provide pre-existing offline community with a complementary online service
Author & Source:
Nisan Gabbay, Startup Review
