Facebook overview



The student social network website, facebook.com, was founded by Mark Zuckerberg & Dustin Moskovitz in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Earning more than 50 Million in 2006 alone, with nearly 200 employees, the website was originally created to join people within the school communities they facebook sitebelong to. With nearly 25 million members all over the world, Facebook is number on with photos from the United States on the web and the 18th most visited website overall in the world (7th in the U.S.). The name face book originated from the facebooks that various prep school and colleges give to incoming students & staff.

While free to use, the site generates money through banner ads and other sponsored groups.

Many believe that the site has generated nearly 1.5 million a week since April 2006. The site is easy to use with creations of profiles that include personal interests and photos displayed. Users can send both public and private messages to other users and join various groups of individuals amongst the facebook community. One can only view information from a confirmed friend on the site, this helps protect the users of the site more than say Myspace. This only occurs on Myspace if one chooses to make their profile private, however on Facebook users have no choice.

It has been estimated that about 85% of all students have a Facebook profile, with nearly 60% logging in on a daily basis. According to Chris Hughes, spokesman for Facebook, "People spend an average of 19 minutes a day on Facebook." Wikipedia reports that in a 2006 study conducted by Student Monitor, a New Jersey-based limited liability company specializing in research concerning the college student market, Facebook was named as the second most "in" thing among undergraduates, tied with beer and sex and losing only to the iPod.

Facebook Origins

Starting in the Winter of 2004, a Harvard student (Mark Zuckerberg) along with two of his friends founded the website. Within a few weeks, nearly 50% of Harvard students had joined already. He expanded his site to include site promotion and added Boston College, Boston University and MIT in the mix. He later added the rest of the Ivy League and continued to add nearly every school imaginable in the nation (big or small). A lawsuit resulted in the beginning of the project with Divya Narendra, Cameron Winklevoss, and Tyler Winklevoss, the owners of the social networking website ConnectU alleging that Mark had used a source code that they had asked him to build for them when creating Facebook. This occurred right when Facebook had nearly one million viewers. The case was dismissed due to lack of diversity amongst the parties of the lawsuit. The lawsuit was refiled in 2007 and remains in the negotiation period.

In 2005, nearly a year after its start, the site was changed to make profiles more user-friendly for Facebook users. In addition, at the end of 2005, the high school edition of Facebook was launched. The site continued to expand to include schools worldwide including University of Puerto Rico and other universities in both New Zealand and Australia. Investors continued to add money into the project.

In 2006, Facebook threatened website Quizsender.com for copying their image. The site quickly backed down knowing the money backing that Facebook already had. Various other features including Facebook Notes was added where people could blog from various blogging services on the web i.e. Livejournal, Blogger or Xanga. In May 2007, Facebook announced that it would be allowing free, classified ads to be added to the site to compete with Craigslist.


The site has been rumored to be attempted to be bought out by Myspace/Viacom. However, no common ground has been decided upon. The site's value is nearly $8 Billion. The website has been used for various investigations. Ultimately, the site states that " Facebook staff have the authority to view profiles in the event that the person is suspected of violating the site's terms of service." Local police and colleges/universities have used the information on the website i.e. In underage drinking cases, etc. in order to catch students in illegal activities. For example, some students may advertise for parties on the site and the cops show up and arrest party goers. These incidents are not uncommon. Employers also have been known to view the information on the site to determine whether they will hire an individual.

Many schools have begun to block access to the website while on school grounds. They believe it's a dating website more than anything much like that of Myspace. The University of New Mexico was the first to block Facebook from its network. The school said: "This site is temporarily unavailable while UNM and the site owners work out procedural issues. The site is in violation of UNM's Acceptable Computer Use Policy for abusing computing resources (e.g., spamming, trademark infringement, etc.). The site forces use of UNM credentials (e.g., NetID or email address) for non-UNM business." However, the school unblocked the site the following year. Facebook has also been used in means of memorials for students who have passed. This is one of the main reasons that school continue to allow access to the site.

With nearly 20 million users and 30 billion page views in a month, Facebook remains one of the top website on the web. The largest network on the site is Toronto Ontario with more than 600,000 users alone. 1.7 billion photos are housed on Facebook alone.

Disclaimer:This site is not authorized, sponsored by, or affiliated with Facebook, Inc. FACEBOOK and THEFACEBOOK are registered trademarks of Facebook, Inc.