I think not just the viral marketing but also the features and ability of promoting products and websites is helps to show that facebook is really great. As I think facebook is the leading social networking site in these days.
i think , thsi site very friendly to usser , and make the visitor enjoy and want to come again , and i have a dreams to make a social web , but i can realize this
it just came along at the right time. myspace got the people interested in social media etc and facebook was just the next step up. myspace was getting really sleasy and really spammy with bands etc. it just got kinda lucky. But I belive it was founded on a genuine good honest idea that just got massively huge.
Social medias are definitely a hype and what users want is simplicity and features. Facebook has it all. But still I think its just a phase until something yet better rocks the ground.
Now that's intelligent reply. I agree with you I have seen such trend too. Because most of the time corporate focus was linkedin but everyone start advertising "visit our facebook page". I have seen this trend on TV too instead of corporate telling people to visit their website they are telling people to visit their fanpage
One agree on you is facebook definitely took the advantage of hype around social networking created by myspace and took it to another level.
It's features are quite the same as others but it's more easy to use.....and its free..... Plus the affiliation it has on other applications such as games and fun has indeed attracted a lot of people.....
I haven't read all the replies, but I can honestly say that viral marketing was the only reason I heard of it, and I in turn referred quite a few people who had also net heard of it before. With a social networking site like Facebook, word of mouth is the most powerful and effective form of advertising.
yeah this is also one their main attraction. Allowing third parties to build applications and games also worked quite well. Farmville and mafia wars are best examples of that.