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
New model for social marketing campaigns details why some information 'goes viral'
Aug 06, 2009 |
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(PhysOrg.com) -- Marketers dream of finding ways to get something to "go viral" on the Internet. Indeed, viral marketing, whether it be through email, YouTube, Facebook or Twitter, has become the Holy Grail ...
Sex, videos, friends, games hot with kids online: Norton
Aug 12, 2009 |
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Children are searching online for videos, social networks, games and, yes, porn as they grow up in an Internet Age, according to computer security firm Symantec.
Facebook (and Systems Biologists) Take Note: Network Analysis Reveals True Connections
Technology / Computer Sciences
Dec 07, 2009 |
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(PhysOrg.com) -- Facebook figures out that you know Holly, although you haven't seen her in 10 years, because you have four mutual friends -- a good predictor of direct friendship. But sometimes Facebook gets ...
Canadian woman loses benefits over Facebook photo
Nov 22, 2009 |
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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.
As Internet turns 40, barriers threaten its growth
Aug 30, 2009 |
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(AP) -- Goofy videos weren't on the minds of Len Kleinrock and his team at UCLA when they began tests 40 years ago on what would become the Internet. Neither was social networking, for that matter, nor were ...
Hacker attack shuts down Twitter, Facebook also slows down (Update 2)
Aug 06, 2009 |
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(AP) -- Hackers on Thursday shut down the fast-growing messaging service Twitter for hours, while Facebook experienced intermittent access problems.
Congratulations, criticism on Web over Obama Nobel
Oct 09, 2009 |
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The surprise awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to US President Barack Obama triggered a deluge of congratulations and criticism on Twitter and across the Web on Friday.
Facebook knows too much, ACLU says in warning of quizzes
Aug 27, 2009 |
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Privacy advocates have long warned that users of Facebook and other social networks who seek amusement from quizzes like "What Simpsons Character Are You?" might be mortified by the way creators of such applications can access ...
Cyber-criminals targeting social networks: experts
Jul 30, 2009 |
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Facebook, MySpace and other social networking sites are inceasingly being targeted by cyber-criminals drawn to the wealth of personal information supplied by users, experts warn.
Six net neutrality principles proposed
Oct 26, 2009 |
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The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in the U.S. voted last week to start a process to formulate rules that could force Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to uphold six principles that would preserve ...
Google CEO: Vast Web changes coming within 5 years
Oct 21, 2009 |
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(AP) -- A Web where Chinese is the dominant language, and connections are so fast that distinctions between audio, video and text are blurred is perhaps just five years away, the head of Google said Wednesday.
Bill Gates quits Facebook over 'too many friends'
Jul 26, 2009 |
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Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates said he was forced to give up on the social networking phenomenon Facebook after too many people wanted to be his friend.
Intel boosts Facebook users power for research
Aug 04, 2009 |
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Intel unveiled a software program that lets Facebook users devote spare computer processing power to researching diseases or climate change.
Facebook profiles capture true personality, according to new psychology research
Medicine & Health / Psychology & Psychiatry
Dec 01, 2009 |
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Online social networks such as Facebook are being used to express and communicate real personality, instead of an idealized virtual identity, according to new research from psychologist Sam Gosling at The University of Texas ...
Google develops algorithm to stem talent loss
May 19, 2009 |
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Google, concerned by the recent departures of several top executives, has developed an algorithm to try to identify which employees are likely to quit, The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday.
