+43%

7,732 $m

Technology

Facebook is the biggest riser in this year’s Best Global Brands report. In spite of the optimism following its 2012 IPO, the brand experienced a tumultuous year with falling stock prices and critics scrutinizing its business model. However, after a 53 percent revenue bump in Q2 2013 far exceeded expectations, its stock price rallied more than 30 percent. While fear of decreased engagement and questions over its ad model concerned analysts, they are now shifting their view in light of its recent success in mobile, with users increasing 51 percent in Q2 2013 and mobile ad revenue rising. CEO Mark Zuckerberg used the Q2 earnings call to discuss an ambitious long-term plan. With more than one billion users, following steady growth of 45-50 million new users every quarter since Q3 2011, it plans to connect an additional five billion users worldwide. Facebook also named its first CMO, hiring Gary Briggs from Google. The acquisition of Instagram, the incorporation of hashtags, and the launch of Graph Search demonstrate its commitment to dominating social media. High expectations present their own challenges, however, with poor adoption of its Home app and the disappointing launch of its first smartphone, HTC First. A backlash in December 2012 against Instagram’s terms of service shows the fine line the brand walks with respect to privacy. Ultimately, the success of Facebook depends on balancing users’ expectations of privacy and utility with the ad-driven lure of exploiting user data.

Facebook, Inc.

Screenshot of Facebook main page on August 1 2013
Type	Public
Traded as	NASDAQ: FB
Foundation date	Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S.(February 4, 2004)
Headquarters	Menlo Park, California, U.S.
Area served	United States (2004–05) Worldwide (2005–present)
Founder(s)	Mark Zuckerberg Eduardo Saverin Andrew McCollum Dustin Moskovitz Chris Hughes
Key people	Mark Zuckerberg (Chairman and CEO) Sheryl Sandberg (COO)
Industry	Internet
Revenue	$5.1 billion (2012)[1]
Operating income	US$ 538 million (2012)[2]
Net income	US$ 53 million (2012)[2]
Total assets	US$ 15.10 billion (2012)[2]
Total equity	US$ 11.75 billion (2012)[2]
Employees	5,299 (June,2013)[3]
Subsidiaries	Instagram
Website	facebook.com
Written in	C++ and PHP[4]
Alexa rank	2 (October 2013)[5]
Type of site	Social networking service
Registration	Required
Users	1.15 billion (active March 2013)[6]
Available in	Multilingual (70)
Launched	February 4, 2004
Current status	Active

Facebook is an online social networking service. Its name stems from the colloquial name for the book given to students at the start of the academic year by some American university administrations to help students get to know one another.^[7] Facebook was founded in February 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with his college roommates and fellow Harvard University students Eduardo Saverin,Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes.^[8] The founders had initially limited the website’s membership to students of the University of Harvard, but later expanded it to colleges in the Boston area, the Ivy League, and Stanford University. It gradually added support for students at various other universities before it opened to high school students, and eventually to anyone ages 13 and over. Facebook now allows anyone who claims to be at least 13 years old to become a registered user of the website.^[9]

Users must register before using the site, after which they may create a personal profile, add other users as friends, exchange messages, and receive automatic notifications when they update their profile. Additionally, users may join common-interest user groups, organized by workplace, school or college, or other characteristics, and categorize their friends into lists such as “People From Work” or “Close Friends”. As of September 2012, Facebook has over one billion active users,^[10] of which 8.7% are fake.^[11]According to a May 2011 Consumer Reports survey, there are 7.5 million children under 13 with accounts and 5 million under 10, violating the site’s terms of service.^[12] Facebook (as of 2012) has about 180 petabytes of data a year and grows by over half a petabyte every 24 hours.^[13]

In May 2005, Accel partners invested $12.7 million in Facebook, and Jim Breyer^[14] added $1 million of his own money to the pot. A January 2009 Compete.com study ranked Facebook as the most used social networking service by worldwide monthly active users.^[15] Entertainment Weekly included the site on its end-of-the-decade “best-of” list, saying, “How on earth did we stalk our exes, remember our co-workers’ birthdays, bug our friends, and play a rousing game of Scrabulous before Facebook?”^[16] Facebook eventually filed for an initial public offering on February 1, 2012, and was headquartered in Menlo Park, California.^[2] Facebook Inc. began selling stock to the public and trading on the NASDAQ on May 18, 2012.^[17] Based on its 2012 income of USD 5.1 Billion, Facebook joined the Fortune 500 list for the first time, being placed at position of 462 on the list published in May 2013.^[18]