It seems as if Facebook is everywhere and everyone has a profile to keep in touch with friends and family, both near and far.
Facebook has become the world's largest social network and is also a large marketing tool for many companies and business people.
Besides the arbitrary account for a person's pet, there are many thousands of stores who have signed up for Facebook accounts in order to keep their customers up-to-date with the happenings of their business.
The marketing aspect of Facebook is a natural way to get the word out about events and sales because once an individual 'likes' something it will add to their wall and this gives all their friends a link to that business, making marketing an easy task.
When a store or company wants to reach more customers and consumers that are searching for there products and services, they also join the Facebook nation with a profile.
Many shops have thousands of friends and being a friend of a store has its privileges.
Some shopping centers will send out special announcements, coupons and discounts only to those in their friends listings and they do this through the Facebook invites friends function.
This procedure is simple and will send an invitation to certain people, like only store credit card holders, or to everyone in the friends section so that they can enjoy the benefits of signing up to be a stores Facebook friend.
The person in charge of the Facebook account from the store, usually someone in the marketing department or if it is a small shop, the owner, will send out the invites to a special event.
A special event could be a weekend or one day only sale or it could be a coupon for those online customers only.
Anything that would reward the people who took the time to signup to be a Facebook friend would be appreciated and used by the receiver of the invite.
All one has to do is look to the left of the screen, under the photo and there is a button marked "Suggest to Friends".
When this button is deployed, a popup window will appear and all the friends of the stores will be listed with their photos or avatars.
The employee clicks on each one or clicks the invite all, which is more likely for a business and Facebook will send them the message about the special.
Once in a while, there may be extra people who are on Facebook but are not friends of the stores or part of this listing in the popup window.
The employee could use the search utility window to find these people, perhaps they are from a traditional mailer from a while back, and then they could be invited to the special event as well.
A business will no doubt have a master list, either in print or in a computer file of all their customers and this would be helpful when using Facebook invites Friends for the first couple of times to make sure everyone who shops at the store will be included in the special offers.
Facebook brings friends of friends to a business when customers become fans, friends or hit the like button on a company's home page or checkout page.
This shows everyone on their list of friends that they shop at a certain store and perhaps their friends should consider the store as well.
It's a win-win situation for the store and the Facebook user typically gets coupons or other specials out of the deal as well.
No matter what type of sale a company is running, they could market it through the social network that millions and millions of people log onto everyday and the word will spread like wild fire.
With a business, the person sending out the Facebook invites Friends might want to check with the accounts receivable department or collections department to cross reference those names of people who are behind on their store charges.
There could be other reasons why a store may not want to extend shopping privileges to someone and this way the person doing the inviting will know which people to leave off the list.