how did facebook picked up popularity? how did they have promoted it? did they ever promote at all? i just looked at the site, plain and simple and it seems that you will be able to use the site only after you have registered?
It started off being popular because it was good because it only let people with university emails join. Recently it's turned to trash since they've opened the doors to all the myspace and bebo riffraff.
The initial reason was the university bit. Now, i'll say its the simplicity and the uniqueness of Facebook compared to the competition.
It was definitely the fact that it catered to college students. It became the college MySpace so to speak. The reason it was so attractive to college students was because it used to require an email address from a college. Not to mention that it had a clutter-free approach to the way the profile pages were set up. Unlike MySpace which the average profile has about 3 music videos and 100 pictures strewn about. Now there is becoming more clutter as Facebook becomes more greedy and tries to add new features.
The pages on both facebook and myspace take forever to load all cluterd thats why i dont go there or use it for advertiseing.. i probally would if i really thought it would help..
Yeah...facebook always looked more professional and a lot less cluttered to me..that is until they started letting people make their own (do they call them widgets? gadgets?) and all of a sudden its starting to look more and more like myspace...next thing they'll be doing is adding chat rooms...
Facebook has become so popular because of the university emails, yes. However, with their addition of custom programs and widgets, it allows each user a uniquely customizable feel to it, brushing aside an actual profile "page" that would get to look much too candy-ish like myspace has.
I think Facebook's applications (or the ability for third parties to make applications for Facebook) is on of the things that make it so popular. Some people make serious money with Facebook apps.
I sent Facebook an email saying how incredibly ridiculous it was that I couldn't join my college group, because I don't have my college email from over 10 years ago.