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
New model for social marketing campaigns details why some information 'goes viral'
Aug 06, 2009 |
4.2 / 5 (16) |
2
(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 ...
Six net neutrality principles proposed
Oct 26, 2009 |
4.8 / 5 (5) |
8
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 ...
Facebook Lite On its Way
Sep 15, 2009 |
3.8 / 5 (4) |
1
(PhysOrg.com) -- The social networking site Facebook has begun testing a simpler, no-frills alternative to its regular interface. The cleaner, uncluttered interface is particularly aimed at entry-level users ...
Hacker attack shuts down Twitter, Facebook also slows down (Update 2)
Aug 06, 2009 |
4.8 / 5 (6) |
5
(AP) -- Hackers on Thursday shut down the fast-growing messaging service Twitter for hours, while Facebook experienced intermittent access problems.
Microsoft unveils motion control for Xbox 360
Electronics / Consumer & Gadgets
Jun 01, 2009 |
3.5 / 5 (4) |
3
(AP) -- Gamers, get ready for your close-up.
Social networking sites 'keep deleted photos' - research
May 21, 2009 |
4.3 / 5 (3) |
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User photographs can still be found on many social networking sites including Facebook after people have deleted them, British researchers said Thursday.
GPS cell phone apps challenge standalone devices
Electronics / Consumer & Gadgets
Nov 28, 2009 |
3.6 / 5 (5) |
2
(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.
Facebook creates dual-class structure, but no IPO
Nov 24, 2009 |
1 / 5 (1) |
0
(AP) -- Facebook has created a dual-class stock structure designed to give founder Mark Zuckerberg and other existing shareholders control over the company.
Review: $100 Palm Pixi is stylish but sluggish
Electronics / Consumer & Gadgets
Nov 18, 2009 |
1 / 5 (1) |
0
(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) |
0
(AP) -- Users of the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 video game consoles can now brag about their achievements on Facebook.
Xbox Live boots pirate videogame players; will link to Twitter, Facebook, Last.fm
Electronics / Consumer & Gadgets
Nov 12, 2009 |
not rated yet |
0
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.
Study: Internet use leads to more diverse networks
Other Sciences / Social Sciences
Nov 04, 2009 |
not rated yet |
0
(AP) -- A new study confirms what your 130 Facebook friends and scores of Twitter followers may have already told you: The Internet and mobile phones are not linked to social isolation.
Experts meet to hash out web privacy rules
Nov 04, 2009 |
5 / 5 (3) |
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Hundreds of privacy experts from around the world met in Madrid on Wednesday for a three-day conference which aims to arrive at a global standard for the protection of personal data.
Microsoft redesigns MSN, adds Twitter, Facebook
Nov 04, 2009 |
2.3 / 5 (3) |
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(AP) -- Microsoft Corp. is giving its MSN Web portal a long-overdue makeover and says it hopes the new site will funnel more people to Bing, the software maker's search engine.
Engineers use song-annotating algorithms to study music playlists (w/ Video)
Technology / Computer Sciences
Oct 27, 2009 |
3.3 / 5 (3) |
0
Electrical engineers recently pitted Genius - the music recommendation system in Apple's iTunes - against two experimental music recommender systems. Genius appears to capture acoustic similarities among songs ...
