What does the average Facebook activity entail? Apart from hitting the ‘like’ button on numerous posts, creating an endless thread of comments, posting on walls, sharing links and battling with the chat option, what has been added to the long string of activities is to explore pages of local businesses. A host of new and upcoming designers, bakers, photographers, event managers and decorators and their respective enterprises, have paved the way for starting small businesses on Facebook.

So what provokes people to form their own businesses? I recently read an article in the New York Times, which explained why people in the west (oh, how I loathe the term) have turned to Plan C, which is to start up their own small businesses. Due to the economic crackdown in America, a lot of people have lost their jobs and have opened up their own businesses. However the turn to creating a private enterprise is a trend that is amassing popularity in this part of the world especially amongst college going students.

Saleema had always been passionate about clothes, and her sense of style was appreciated in her social circle. This summer, before graduating from law school, Saleema decided to design kurtas with a friend. They advertised their business ‘Essenzee’ heavily on Facebook, promoting it widely amongst family and friends and inviting them to its exhibition. On the day of the exhibition, Saleema noticed that designing was way more fun than dealing with customers. ‘But it was a great learning experience on the whole, showed me where my strengths lie and I got a taste of how it is to run a business of one’s own’, she said.

Even though Saleema and her friend started Essenzee just to test waters in the world of online business, some budding entrepreneurs are planning to inflate their private commerce. Basmah Sakrani from Dubai is currently a literature major at LUMS. A year before graduating; she also started her own small business Just.B, where she designs tops. Even though she has her concerns over whether the business would sustain itself, she wants to continue expanding her, as of now, baby business. She dreams of opening outlets in Karachi and Dubai.

Businesses like Essenzee and Just.B have both benefited from Facebook to attain a wide clientele. Basmah puts it beautifully, saying ‘we are living in a world of social media where platforms such a Facebook and Twitter can ignite revolutions’. Henceforth, social spaces as an effective tool of marketing mechanism have helped small enterprises to achieve a positive feedback and have encouraged them to advertise and popularise their retails.

The Facebook pages themselves are well equipped as they provide a complete picture of the viewership and feedback statistics. These pages are a cheap mechanism of advertising as each ‘like’ on a Facebook page costs twelve cents. Furthermore, they aid in building a one on one relationship with the clientele, to the extent that your customers become your friends.

Case in point, Amal, an art student runs her famous bakery The Anti-Cupcake Society from Facebook. To quote Amal ‘Facebook IS my business. I don’t have a website yet, so the page took birth here and has been thriving ever since. Its fun, I get to know my clients, chat with them a little and put on the whole mysterious Oz facade’.

The demand for food items never extinguishes. Hence, a business like the Anti-Cupcake Society will always have its loyal customers. Once a client develops a taste for the treats being offered, it will be hard to not keep one from ordering. In addition to this, it is an easy to manage venture that one can always keep as a side job.

Entrepreneurship though is a risky endeavor; it is one which is the most satisfying. For someone who is creative and innovative would find an online business much more rewarding than a repetitive nine to five job. It is a trend that is leveling up its popularity amongst undergrad students. In this day and age of the revolutionary social media, economic crack downs and climate change (pun intended), one can safely say that whether belonging from the world of fashion to the world of food, entrepreneurships truly are the new ‘red’.

Zehra Hussain is a student at LUMS and a former intern at Dawn.com

The views expressed by this blogger and in the following reader comments do not necessarily reflect the views and policies of the Dawn Media Group.