An Evaluation Scheme for Performance Measurement of Facebook Use: an Example of Social Organizations in Vienna

Online social networks, and Facebook in particular, have evolved from a niche to a mass phenomenon. Organizations have recognized the impor- tance of using Facebook to achieve their organizational goals. Still, literature lacks a systematic evaluation scheme for measuring the performance of an organization’s Facebook use. When investigating how organizations use Face- book, research tends to focus on for-profit organizations, overlooking the way social organizations use Facebook. This article introduces an evaluation scheme that includes nine categories of performance measurement. Applying the scheme to Facebook’s use by social organisations in Vienna, we demonstrate the scheme’s applicability. Plus, by using various indicators and benchmarks, we evaluate the level of sophistication of each organization’s use of Facebook. We investigated all 517 social organizations based in Vienna, including those in all fields of practice, based on publicly available Facebook data from January to June 2012. The analysis reveals that the majority of social organizations are beginners at utilizing Facebook’s potential.