Related topics: social networking , twitter , myspace , users , social networking sites
Facebook is a social networking website that is operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc. Users can join networks organized by city, workplace, school, and region. People can also add friends and send them messages, and update their personal profiles to notify friends about themselves. The website's name stems from the colloquial name of a book given to incoming students at Zuckerberg's high school alma mater, Phillips Exeter Academy. The book shows the faces and names of the school's students and faculty.
Mark Zuckerberg founded Facebook with fellow computer science major students and his roommates Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes while he was a student at Harvard University. Website membership was initially limited to Harvard students, but was expanded to other colleges in the Boston area, the Ivy League, and Stanford University. It later expanded further to include any university student, then high school students, and, finally, to anyone aged 13 and over. The website currently has more than 250 million active users worldwide.
Facebook has met with some controversy over the past few years. It has been blocked intermittently in several countries including Syria, China and Iran, although Iran later unblocked Facebook in 2009. It has also been banned at many places of work to discourage employees from wasting time using the service. Privacy has also been an issue, and it has been compromised several times. Facebook is also facing several lawsuits from a number of Zuckerberg's former classmates, who claim that Facebook had stolen their source code and other intellectual property.
A February 2009 Compete.com study has ranked Facebook as the most used social network by worldwide monthly active users, followed by MySpace.
For more information about Facebook, read the full article at
Wikipedia.
This text uses material from Wikipedia and is available under the GNU Free Documentation License.
News tagged with facebook
For stars, high-tech gaffes hard to hide
Nov 28, 2009 |
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(AP) -- So, you fail to take a deep breath and to count to 10 - and you post something you probably shouldn't on Twitter or Facebook, or somewhere else online.
GPS cell phone apps challenge standalone devices
Electronics / Consumer & Gadgets
Nov 28, 2009 |
3.6 / 5 (5) |
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(AP) -- The growth of cell phones with global-positioning technology is making life uncertain for the makers of personal navigational devices that help drivers figure out where they are and where to go.
Roku adds more 'channels' of video and other digital content
Nov 26, 2009 |
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Owners of Roku's digital video player will soon have a bunch more channels to choose from.
Facebook creates dual-class structure, but no IPO
Nov 24, 2009 |
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(AP) -- Facebook has created a dual-class stock structure designed to give founder Mark Zuckerberg and other existing shareholders control over the company.
Canadian woman loses benefits over Facebook photo
Nov 22, 2009 |
5 / 5 (7) |
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(AP) -- A Canadian woman on long-term sick leave for depression says she lost her benefits because her insurance agent found photos of her on Facebook in which she appeared to be having fun.
Microsoft Office 2010 beta ready to download
Nov 19, 2009 |
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If you want to try out Microsoft Office 2010, the beta is available for anyone to download, the company announced at the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference.
Webby Awards name top 10 Internet moments of the decade
Nov 19, 2009 |
3.5 / 5 (2) |
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The birth of Wikipedia, the death of Napster, the iPhone, Facebook, and Twitter were named by the Webby Awards on Wednesday as among the top 10 Internet moments of the decade.
Facebook users can help Chase find small charities
Nov 18, 2009 |
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(AP) -- JPMorgan Chase is letting Facebook users help decide how to give away $5 million.
Review: $100 Palm Pixi is stylish but sluggish
Electronics / Consumer & Gadgets
Nov 18, 2009 |
1 / 5 (1) |
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(AP) -- Palm Inc. is fighting harder than ever to snag a chunk of the smart phone market, and just six months after releasing the stylish Pre it's back with a lighter, more petite and affordable version called ...
Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 friend Facebook
Electronics / Consumer & Gadgets
Nov 18, 2009 |
2 / 5 (2) |
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(AP) -- Users of the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 video game consoles can now brag about their achievements on Facebook.
Vietnam Internet users fear Facebook blackout
Nov 17, 2009 |
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(AP) -- Vietnam's growing legions of Facebook users fear that the country's communist government might be blocking the popular social networking Web site, which has become difficult to access over the past few weeks.
Xbox Live boots pirate videogame players; will link to Twitter, Facebook, Last.fm
Electronics / Consumer & Gadgets
Nov 12, 2009 |
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Microsoft said Thursday that its Xbox 360 videogame console will be able to link online starting next week with Twitter and Facebook along with Internet radio star Last.fm.
Retailers use social media to advertise deals
Nov 12, 2009 |
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(AP) -- You may want to check Facebook and Twitter before heading to the mall the day after Thanksgiving.
Doctors embrace social networking
Nov 12, 2009 |
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In the waiting room, the patient's family members circled a Blackberry. About every 15 minutes, Dr. Carlos Wolf of Miami Plastic Surgery gave them a few keystrokes of information about how the patient was doing.
Poked: The difference between Facebook's News Feed and Live Feed
Nov 11, 2009 |
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First off, I'd like to thank Facebook for confusing its users yet again with a new feature that is hard to decipher and makes users grumpy. It really makes my job of picking a column topic so easy when they ...
