Facebook for Business

Last evening I attended a lecture by Ciarán Quilty of Facebook who gave us an interesting talk on "Facebook for Business". This was part of NCI's 60th Anniversary Lecture Series. A large crowd attended and I was also glad to see quite a lot of students in the crowd. Clearly there was a lot of interest in anything to do with Facebook, and how it can be used for business.

Image link to woosamedia. 

Facebook is essentially being used in the main for advertising and marketing. At least this is what Facebook themselves are saying. Other companies are using Facebook and building Apps for it so that e-Business can take place. Ciarán gave us some impressive figures - 800,000,000 Facebook users worldwide, 0 users in China. We also had examples of how some companies are using Facebook to drive business - a good example was a flower shop that promoted its business through "Likes" and networking. The marketing map has certainly changed with the arrival of Facebook in this space. Nearly every Dublin Bus that I see carrying advertising has the Facebook (and Twitter) logo displayed prominently.

Fabric Cards by Vivienne.

I nice touch at the event, hosted by my colleague Desmond Gibney, was the introduction of a start-up Irish company after the lecture who told us about their experience with Facebook. Cards by Vivienne was set up by a former lecturer in NCI Vivienne Maher. It's a good example of how a start-up can piggyback on the free services of Facebook. It's a slow start and takes a long time to build up. 

Why not drop by Cards By Vivienne and give her a "Like" - she is just 6 "Likes" away from her first 100!