Facebook, the one global social network with over seven hundred million users, has been known to be playing its own game ever since it was conceived in Harvard corridors.
Despite constant nagging from the millions of users to allow certain customization options, Facebook has maintained a certain sense of uniformity in its lay-outs and formats.
Sure, the people behind the gigantic network have taken consumer feedback and have used the data to continually edit the way the website works from simple button changes to entire lay-outs in displaying information and privacy issues.
All that has come to a screeching halt as Facebook has finally taken a step into user-interaction on its own design.
Users can now embed a music player on their profile page and choose several background skins to customize their pages to their own liking.
This has been a request from many ever since Facebook first reached public access outside the universities it was initially launched on and this was mostly generated from the many MySpace users who were accustomed to customizing their profile page extensively from editing the way the buttons looked to having the entire lay-out changed with some basic CSS coding.
For many this step that Facebook has taken may seem like a very small choice and it is still a limiting option since all you can do is choose background skins instead of actually changing your profile's design and lay-out, but it still gives implications of two marketing concepts that are shaping how the consumers shape the business: consumer demands will sooner or later influence the actions of a strong corporation like Facebook no matter how tightly sealed they are and that the market is driven by consumer customization.
The first concept is the stronger take on Facebook's recent actions.
No matter how strong a corporation tries to keep its end tied to what it is used to, consumer demands will force a change.
Facebook is not the only guilty one at the market today since Nintendo also gave in to consumer demands and are releasing an add-on for their 3DS that will give the system a second analog stick.
These kinds of decisions prove how strong the user database is and with Google+ looming on the horizon this customization might be Facebook's first action in keeping their users.
The second implication is seen just about anywhere these days.
Facebook lets users change their background skins, the iPhone lets you download apps to customize everything from your background image to how your icons flash around when you flick the screen and even tablets allow the consumers to download widgets and application to completely customize their little gadgets.
This reflects how important it is to give the consumer their own personal touch in the things they buy.
Uniformity in products is slowly fading away and products that follow suit quickly lose the game.
This was evident in MySpace when it did not have options for company or group pages that were customizable for group information the same way Facebook did.
Facebook took one simple step but it is the small action that calls upon an avalanche.
With Google+ stepping up the plate of marketing a strong social network, each implication of Facebook's actions will determine which strategy and henceforth which website will prevail as both the king of globalization and the reflection of modern marketing.