Related topics: social networking , twitter , myspace , social networking sites , google
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
Social networking changing the way we travel
Dec 22, 2009 |
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(AP) -- Isahrai Azaria is heading to Austin, Texas, in February, and thanks to Facebook, she already has 40 acquaintances, an invitation to go water tubing, and a line on the best vegetarian lunch place in ...
Facebook COO nominated to Disney board
Dec 23, 2009 |
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The Walt Disney Co. said Wednesday that Sheryl Sandberg, chief operating officer of Facebook, has been nominated to serve on the board of directors of the US media and entertainment giant.
Samsung Launches M5650 Music Phone
Electronics / Consumer & Gadgets
Dec 21, 2009 |
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Samsung Electronics today unveiled the Samsung M5650, a music-focused addition to its popular lineup of full touch screen handsets for young mobile users.
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Cell phone mania forces scramble for more airwaves
Dec 27, 2009 |
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(AP) -- Wireless devices such as Apple's iPhone are transforming the way we go online, making it possible to look up driving directions, find the nearest coffee shop and update Facebook on the go. All this ...
Glider robot a sleek ocean explorer
Space & Earth / Earth Sciences
Dec 27, 2009 |
4.6 / 5 (10) |
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The sea was heaving, the skies gray. The captain of the research ship was worried about the weather. About 120 miles off the coast of Spain, three Rutgers University scientists had a narrow window of opportunity to find and ...
Curtain falling on 'Digital Decade'
Dec 27, 2009 |
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While it got off to a rocky start with the overhyped Y2K bug and dotcom bubble, the era dubbed the "Digital Decade" by Microsoft's Bill Gates has turned out to be a dizzying period of innovation.
China issues new rules on Internet domain names
Dec 22, 2009 |
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China's Internet watchdog issued a new set of rules on domain name registration this week in a bid to curb pornography and illegal content.
'Invisible bracelet' for emergency health alerts?
Electronics / Consumer & Gadgets
Dec 21, 2009 |
4 / 5 (4) |
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(AP) -- Emergency health alerts for the Facebook generation? The nation's ambulance crews are pushing a virtual medical ID system to rapidly learn a patient's health history during a crisis - and which can immediately text-message ...
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