Ever won­dered how one of the world's fa­mous ad­dic­tive so­cial net­work­ing sites - FACE­BOOK makes rev­enue/mon­ey. Mind bog­gling huh? Face­book was orig­i­nat­ed in Feb­ru­ary 2004. This 'phe­nom­e­non' was found­ed by an in­di­vid­ual known as Mark Zucker­berg who is cur­rent­ly a bil­lion­aire. "How is he a bil­lion­aire?" you might ask. Have you ever no­ticed the ad­ver­tise­ments or Face­book ads sit­u­at­ed at the side of the page? Sure you do. Why? - Be­cause they grasp our at­ten­tion. Teenage girls see­ing an ad for the lat­est in stilet­to shoes or boys find­ing and easy and sim­ple way to down­load their favourite mu­sic quick­ly and with­out any thought, your eyes are drawn to plea­sure.

Com­pa­nies all over the world pay Face­book an enor­mous fee to pub­lish their ads which are placed on your Face­book page based on the in­ter­ests that you list in your pro­file. For ex­am­ple, if you list Nic­ki Mi­naj as one of your fa­vorite artists then you may see an ad­ver­tise­ment to pur­chase Nic­ki Mi­naj tick­ets. Face­book ads have present­ly made 250 to 300 mil­lion dol­lars. Quite clever huh? But this is not the lim­it to their mon­ey mak­ing prac­tices. Face­book gifts in 2009 have made $30 - $50 mil­lion dol­lars; to some peo­ple wish­ing their friends and loved ones Hap­py Birth­day or a Mer­ry Christ­mas is just not enough, writ­ing does not suf­fice. In this in­stance in­di­vid­u­als, abuse the, "send a gift tab", send­ing vir­tu­al gifts which are paid for on­line.

Most of the mon­ey is at­tained by Face­book, but if a gift were to be cre­at­ed by an out­sider, lit­tle mon­ey is award­ed to the in­di­vid­ual and the ma­jor­i­ty goes to the so­cial net­work­ing site. Games equal fun. Far­mville, Fam­i­ly Feud and The Price is Right are just a few of the most pop­u­lar games played on Face­book. In­di­vid­u­als be­come ad­dict­ed to these games, there­fore they pay to get more and more episodes of the game of their in­ter­est. The com­pa­ny there­fore rakes in a lot of cash by this, up to ap­prox­i­mate­ly one to three mil­lion dol­lars a year. Whether it is Face­book ads, vir­tu­al gifts or games, Face­book is cur­rent­ly es­ti­mat­ed to gen­er­ate $1.1 bil­lion this year. Mark Zucker­berg is the youngest bil­lion­aire in the world. What is the les­son to be learnt? If at first you don't suc­ceed just re­mem­ber you can do it and fol­low your dreams.

Sarah Ma­haraj

Diego Mar­tin Cen­tral Sec­ondary