FACEBOOK
Facebook is a social networking website launched in February 2004 that is operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc.,[1] with more than 500 million[5] active users in July 2010.[6][N 1] Users can add people as friends and send them messages, and update their personal profiles to notify friends about themselves. Additionally, users can join networks organized by workplace, school, or college. The website's name stems from the colloquial name of books given to students at the start of the academic year by university administrations in the US with the intention of helping students to get to know each other better. Facebook allows anyone who declares themselves to be aged 13 or older to become a member of the website.
Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg with his college roommates and fellow computer science students Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes.[7] The website's membership was initially limited by the founders to Harvard students, but was expanded to other colleges in the Boston area, the Ivy League, and Stanford University. It gradually added support for students at various other universities before opening to high school students, and, finally, to anyone aged 13 and over. The original concept for Facebook was borrowed from a product produced by Zuckerberg's prep school Phillips Exeter Academy, which for decades published and distributed a printed manual of all students and faculty, unofficially called the "face book".
Facebook has met with some controversy. It has been blocked intermittently in several countries including Pakistan,[8] Syria,[9] China,[10] Vietnam,[11] and Iran.[12] It has also been banned at many places of work to discourage employees from wasting time using the service.[13] Privacyhas also been an issue, and it has been compromised several times. Facebook settled a lawsuit regarding claims over source code and intellectual property.[14] The site has also been involved in controversy over the sale of fans and friends.[15]
A January 2009 Compete.com study ranked Facebook as the most used social network by worldwide monthly active users, followed by MySpace.[16] Entertainment Weekly put it on its end-of-the-decade 'best-of' list, saying, "How on earth did we stalk our exes, remember our co-workers' birthdays, bug our friends, and play a rousing game of Scrabulous before Facebook?"[17]
History
Main articles: History of Facebook and Timeline of Facebook
Mark Zuckerberg created Facebook in his Harvard dorm room.
Mark Zuckerberg wrote Facemash, the predecessor to Facebook, on October 28, 2003, while attendingHarvard as a sophomore. The site represented a Harvard University version of Hot or Not, according to the Harvard Crimson.[18] According to The Harvard Crimson, Facemash "used photos compiled from the online facebooks of nine Houses, placing two next to each other at a time and asking users to choose the 'hotter' person". To accomplish this, Zuckerberg hacked into the protected areas of Harvard's computer network and copied the houses' private dormitory ID images. Harvard at that time did not have a student directory with photos, and basic information and the initial site generated 450 visitors and 22,000 photo-views in its first four hours online.[19] That the initial site mirrored people’s physical community—with their real identities—represented the key aspects of what later became Facebook.[20]
The site was quickly forwarded to several campus group list-servers but was shut down a few days later by the Harvard administration. Zuckerberg was charged by the administration with breach of security, violating copyrights, and violating individual privacy, and faced expulsion, but ultimately the charges were dropped.[21] Zuckerberg expanded on this initial project that semester by creating a social study tool ahead of an art history final by uploading 500 Augustan images to a website, with one image per page along with a comment section.[20] He opened the site up to his classmates and people started sharing their notes. The following semester, Zuckerberg began writing code for a new website in January 2004. He was inspired, he said, by an editorial in The Harvard Crimson about the Facemash incident.[22] On February 4, 2004, Zuckerberg launched "Thefacebook", originally located at thefacebook.com.[23]
Total active users[N 1] (in millions)
Date [/b]
Users [/b]
Days later [/b]
August 26, 2008
100[24]
1,665
April 8, 2009
200[25]
225
September 15, 2009
300[26]
160
February 5, 2010
400[27]
143
July 21, 2010
500[5]
166
—
600
20 (ongoing)
Membership was initially restricted to students of Harvard College, and within the first month, more than half the undergraduate population at Harvard was registered on the service.[28] Eduardo Saverin (business aspects), Dustin Moskovitz (programmer), Andrew McCollum