The announcement that Goldman Sachs invested $500 million in Facebook, giving it a market valuation of $50 billion sent ripples across the media. With this deal including Goldman helping Facebook to raise an additional $1.5 billion, and noting that Facebook has raised $800 million over five rounds of funding, it is official that social networking is big business that is only getting bigger.
What this means to any user is that their services are only going to get more addictive beneficial. What this means to any business owner is that you now have a place where increasing numbers of individuals and groups of people potentially interested in your products and services are actively engaging.
This isn't news to everyone, but this benchmark clearly states the markets confidence in the future profitability of Facebook, and therefore in social media marketing. This announcement had additional gravity that reflects the shift from old media to new media's prominence in that it came on the heels of the New York Times losing it's slot on the S&P 500 to Netflix.
If you have a business that does any marketing then this is great news for you. The bigger Facebook gets, the larger their user base is growing and the larger opportunities grow for brands. The two main channels you can utilize on Facebook that are uniquely Facebooks are the fan page and Facebook advertising.
Through Facebook fan pages, which are now even more of a must than having a website for your company, you can build loyalty, announce product launches like Ford did, and gain from Facebook's #2 ranking in the search engine indexes among other benefits.
Through Facebook advertising you can extend your reach through targeted advertising that reaches people who have raised their hands as being interested in topics related to your products. This is especially good for local businesses. You can also reach their friends while receiving detailed reports to reveal your campaign cost and conversion analytics. Try getting those numbers on a magazine ad, television spot or a billboard campaign. ...there's a reason why Facebook will make over $2 billion in revenue, and served over 1 trillion display ads, in 2010.
The cash infusion from this latest round of funding signals even more development of features that make Facebook the social networking 500 pound gorilla it is. Facebook page views and average times spent on site continue to rise with each new innovation.
As our Facebook usage habits grow along with these other growth factors there will be fewer competing platforms that can effectively get the marketing results that Facebook delivers. Whether you love or hate Goldman Sachs and whether you love or hate Facebook, if you're in business, recognize that marketing through Facebook has become as necessary as having a phone number, a website, and a product people want to buy.