I come from a Social Media Family, my sister sends me news updates that even WAT sometimes fails to provide. I am thinking of suggesting Rajiv to hire her, but till then, we get on to the news.

Visa, that card business major that Sachin splendidly promotes in India, has launched a Facebook App targeting small business owners. It is not breaking news really, with a lot of mainstream media as well as the net ones talking about it since yesterday. However, what should interest you really is, especially if you own a small business, is a $100 credit to advertise on Facebook that you get if you are the first 20,000 members to use the app.

Effectively that means Visa is spending close to $2million in advertising to promote the application amongst its target audience.

Three things that Visa aims to provide with the app are:

• Enable small businesses to connect and network with other companies
• Manage their operations more effectively
• Target New Business

To me this is very interesting. Facebook has been regarded by many as a goldmine for promoting business and advertising. More importantly it has the possibility of giving a level playing field for smaller businesses. Essentially this community app is giving a forum to get small business users together to discuss strategies.

Something tells me that most of the discussion might surround more on promotional strategies and tips on FB itself. Though Visa in its statement suggested it intends to create a community at a generic board for growing small businesses to interact and exchange business ideas.

Either way, it is a very good news for social media enthusiasts. Though this isn’t the first time a company is providing a service on Facebook (Moneybookers had introduced exchanging money through FB profiles a while earlier), considering Visa’s brand offline and the amount of investment it is adding to an application on a social network site is sweet.

This is bound to garner media attention, Visa itself will promote this as an innovative step it has taken to its investors and customers. The result is that we see a much wider base of people being targeted and brought into the system.

This is also a very important case that a lot of corporates can study and learn from. Social media is not about advertising, it is about information. Visa by providing this service is providing a base for knowledge sharing and information. It is adding value to the users of the feature.

Having said that, the app seemed a little buggy for me and I couldn’t add my information properly, tried it twice or thrice but it still kept asking me to enter the details again. Something maybe they have to look into.

Anyway, despite not being able to use much of the system, I found some of the key features of the system (I have a feeling I made it sound like an escape from a war prison..anyway). These include a resource center, a find businesses section and messaging center. The resources section offers media and text articles about entrepreneurship and business and a lot of Google tools. The other two are pretty self explanatory.

The biggest reason it seems for Visa to launch such a system is perhaps to make the most of the 80,000 odd small business users on FB, and leverage it to propel a platform that they would have otherwise built on their own. Clearly, Visa has seen scope in social media as part of its growth plans. To me they have shown a remarkable sense of understanding social media and I am looking forward to more news coming out on these lines.

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