I was/am in love with Orkut and never jumped onto the Facebook mania. But some time back, when Microsoft valued Facebook at $15 Billion, I became curious as to whats so special about Facebook. Then during my job interviews, people looked for ideas as to how to market their product on Facebook. Then it just struck me, that Facebook is not just a social networking website, its a phenomenon.

I googled for “Facebook Marketing” and landed up with a cool resource which was an eye opener as to the plethora of options available for marketing using Facebook. Facebook offers many ways to get the word out and bring the people in. Listed below are few means to get started:

I. Tools for Guerrilla Marketers

1. Profile Page
2. Groups
3. Pages
4. Events
5. Notes and Photos
6. Messages
7. Marketplace
8. Share / Posted Items
9. Networks
10. Mini Feed and News Feed

II. Tools for Advertisers

11. Social Ads
12. Integrated Opportunities
13. Beacon
14. Polls
15. Facebook Platform Ad Networks
16. Facebook Platform Application Sponsorships
17. Sponsored Facebook Groups

III. Tools for Application Developers

18. Profile Box
19. Mini Feed
20. News Feed
21. Invitations
22. Facebook Notifications
23. Email Notifications
24. Application Directory

To read more, check out this: The Facebook Marketing Bible

Orkut is also going the Facebook way by including things like status updates, adding applications, tagging etc. But has Facebook gained first mover advantage?

mOrON.