Drawing on the knowledge of cultural differences you learned ...

[TVarnum]

Drawing on the knowledge of cultural differences you learned about in Chapter 1, write one or two paragraphs in which you explain why people who live in one country might prefer to start their own social networking sites rather than use those created by companies in other countries.

Question 2

When it was first started, many business experts were concerned that Facebook would never make a profit. In two or three paragraphs, describe how Facebook was able to generate revenue and outline at least one concern that an investor might have about its future profitability.

[Brummell1998]

Answer to Question 1

Two reasons are language and culture. The first step that a Web business usually takes to reach potential customers in other countries, and thus in other cultures, is to provide local language versions of its Web site. However, some languages require multiple translations for separate dialects. For example, the Spanish spoken in Spain is different from that spoken in Mexico, which is different from that spoken elsewhere in Latin America. People in parts of Argentina and Uruguay use yet a fourth dialect of Spanish. Many of these dialect differences are spoken inflections, which are not important for Web site designers (unless, of course, their sites include audio or video elements); however, a significant number of differences occur in word meanings and spellings.

Answer to Question 2

In 2006, Mark Zuckerberg expanded a virtual community site that he had developed with a few friends at Harvard by purchasing the domain name Facebook.com for 200,000 and signing a number of major advertising deals, including a three-year agreement with Microsoft. By 2008, Facebook had overtaken MySpace as the leading social networking site in the world and by 2014 was reporting more than a billion regular users and annual revenue of more than 6 billion.
The companys initial public offering in 2012 placed the market value of Facebook at 104 billion. Today, Facebook is the dominant general interest social networking site in North America, Europe, and parts of Africa. It is a significant presence in many other parts of the world as well.