You might think of Facebook as just a virtual place where you post pictures online and make fun of Good Guy Greg, because he’s nice enough not to ban you from his page, but for world economies is a whole different story. COO Sheryl Sandberg made this point very clear, when speaking at the Digital Life Design (DLD) Conference in Munich this week. Sandberg brought along some figures of course, mentioning that Facebook helped Europe by adding 15.3 B Euros to its economy.
“The UK economy might be down in the dumps, but there is a ray of sunshine from an unlikely source: Mark Zuckerberg‘s Facebook has supposedly helped to contribute £2.2bn to the country’s GDP in 2011.”
Of course, Facebook is creating some economic activity with the number of jobs it has added to the market. For example, thousand of people are employed just to design Facebook apps and a lot of tablets and smartphones end up in the hands of Facebook lovers, who want to be in contact with their peers 24-7. There are voices already that say that Facebook could soon become an online bank.
But isn’t it possible that in a world without Facebook, people would concentrate their energies towards a different direction that would benefit other companies. So, Facebook might be also hurting the base market in Europe. Sandberg did not mention these little teaks.
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