In times when Orkut has been gaining a strong foothold in the Indian Internet user base, Facebook, from a global perspective has been going BANG! BANG! Amazed!! Not me. Of course not. Recently, Facebook had two reasons to celebrate. The first and the biggest was, that its user base crossed 300 million mark thus, putting it leagues ahead of all other networking sites. The second reason was that from now on, in technical terms, Facebook is earning. Yes, its cash flow has become positive. Hence, it is a back-to-back good news for its creator Mark Zuckerberg.

But I wonder what can be the possible reason of Facebook being a such a massive hit with Internet masses. Then suddenly my eyes fell on a picture of its creator, Mark Zuckerberg. Mark, I am sure, many of you must be knowing, studied in the prestigious Harvard university. Quite impressive. Mark apparently conceived the idea of this popular networking website in his college days when he was studying there. He along with his room-mates, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes who were also studying Computer science with him in the same university, helped him in realising the idea.

Now if I believe making a website popular isn’t an easy task in the virtual world specially knowing that factors like bounce-rate and average time spend on the site do take a lot to get improved. Certainly, according to me Mark had one thing in favour, his university. We all know Harvard University attracts the best academic talents from across the world. Undoubtedly, some of the most exceptional brains study over there which directly indicates to the fact that whatever they do is an example for others to follow.

Facebook initially had a limited audience base. Yes, initially the website was exclusively meant for studying and alumni students of Harvard. Hence, an innate publicity base was already in place when Mark decided to launch his product.

Credit should be given to Mark for smartly planning his strategies. He managed to retain the uniqueness of his product despite being aware of the fact that how quickly virtual world changes. He not only used the Harvard University as testing ground but also managed to create a Harvard brand in the virtual world, a factor upon which he capitalised later on.

Now in order to be a perfect product (be it in any domain) you need to have a certain amount of publicity and as we all know ‘no publicity is good or bad unless we see it from that perspective.’ Mark and his allies’ product practically landed in soup when a lawsuit was filed against them.

Harvard’s very own students Tyler Winklevoss, Cameron Winklevoss and Divya Narendra who also happened to be the classmates of Zuckerberg, alleged of ‘infringement of intellectual property’. According to the allegations imposed by the other bunch of techies, the so-called ‘Facebook’ concept was meant for their website ‘ConnectU’.

After a long legal battle, Facebook finally agreed to settle the issue for $65 million. Meanwhile by then Facebook had got the leverage it needed to be there at the top.

Quite interestingly, right from the beginning, everything was falling at place for Mark and co. Soon when the concept got live, it was received by a thumping response. And from thereon, rest as they say is history. The internationally-acclaimed social networking website, Facebook is definitely an impressive product.

The one area where it outscores everybody else completely, is the applications area which according to me is its strength. Applications available with Facebook quite easily imparts the element of interactivity to the site. Speaking of security, Facebook without a doubt is the best player in the market then any other name.

What amazes me is the number of tricks Mark has up in his sleeve. Knowing that competition in virtual world has now reached a different level, he has come up with voice chat feature in Facebook which again guarantees to put them leagues ahead of the other players in the market.

Wishing Mark best of luck from our side!!