Corporate Social Responsibility Case Study

Case Title:

Facebook (A): The Start-up's "Social" Success

Abstract:
The Facebook case series follows the success and strategic dilemmas of Facebook, the world's second largest social networking site. Case (A) is about how it evolved from a US college-goer's portal into a full-fledged social networking site, in less than 3 years. With 52 million unique visitors in 2007, Facebook has seen a 270% increase in its site's traffic than previous year's. This case assesses social networking site's potential to become multi-billion-dollar profit machines and questions students if other players like MySpace and YouTube erred by selling themselves off. This case is an example of a start-up, with a clear value proposition and focused differentiation, which commanded premium pricing. It also analyses Facebook's differentiating factors in a competitive environment and ends discussing its intent to become the 'new Google'.

Pedagogical Objectives:

• To understand the concept of social networking and its emergence as a profitable industry
• To understand the behaviour of social networkers
• To discuss the business model of Facebook and differentiate its key success factors from its competitors
• To analyse the threat posed by Facebook to other companies like Google and debate whether they can in fact become the 'new Google'.

Keywords : Corporate Social Responsibility Case Study Myanmar, Unocal, Totalfina, State Law and Order Restoration Council, SLORC, Yadana project, Human rights violations, Corporate social responsibility, Forced labour, Unocal trial, Alien Tort Claims Act, Earthrights International, Myanmar Oil and Gas Enterprise, Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Natural gas