Abstract:

The advent of internet and communication technologies enabled brands to have more ways to reach a larger audience, one of which is connecting with other brands. One of the most popular outlets that allows brands to connect with other brands online is Facebook. Through Facebook, brands can establish an official fan page where they can interact with their fans as well as connect with other brands through “liking” them. This paper uses the concepts of social networks to investigate the social network structure among brands on Facebook. The data for this study was obtained from 40 brands (20 local brands and 20 global brands that exist in The Middle East) using a Facebook application, Netvizz (https://apps.facebook.com/netvizz/). The data was then imported to a network analysis tool, Gephi, (http://gephi.github.io/) in order to graph and calculate the centrality measures. The results show that global brands are networking better in almost all centrality measures. Suggestions are offered to local brands about how to use the like function more effectively.