Facebook

URL facebook.com

Type of site Social networking service

Registration Required

Available language(s) Multilingual (70)

Users 1 billion[1] (active October 2012)

Written in C++ and PHP[2]

Owner Facebook, Inc.

Mark Zuckerberg
Created by
Eduardo Saverin
Andrew McCollum
Dustin Moskovitz
Chris Hughes
Launched February 4, 2004
Revenue  $ 3.71 billion (2011)[3]
Alexa rank  1 (September 2012)[4]
Current status Active
 Facebook is a social networking service launched in February 2004, owned and operated
by Facebook, Inc.[5] As of September 2012, Facebook has over one billion active users,[6] more than half of
them using Facebook on a mobile device.[7] Users must register before using the site, after which they may
create a personal profile, add other users as friends, and exchange messages, including automatic notifications
when they update their profile. Additionally, users may join common-interest user groups, organized by
workplace, school or college, or other characteristics, and categorize their friends into lists such as "People
From Work" or "Close Friends".

Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg with his college roommates and fellow Harvard
University students Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum,Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes.[8] 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 eventually to anyone aged 13 and over. However,
according to a May 2011 Consumer Reports survey, there are 7.5 million children under 13 with accounts and
5 million under 10, violating the site's terms of service.[9]

A January 2009 Compete.com study ranked Facebook as the most used social networking service by
worldwide monthly active users.[10]Entertainment Weekly included the site 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?"[11] Critics, such as Facebook Detox,[12] state that Facebook
has turned into a national obsession in the United States, resulting in vast amounts of time lost and
encouraging narcissism. Quantcast estimates Facebook has 138.9 million monthly unique U.S. visitors in May
2011.[13] According to Social Media Today, in April 2010 an estimated 41.6% of the U.S. population had a
Facebook account.[14] Nevertheless, Facebook's market growth started to stall in some regions, with the site
losing 7 million active users in the United States and Canada in May 2011.[15]

The name of the service stems from the colloquial name for the book given to students at the start of
the academic year by some university administrations in the United States to help students get to know each
other. Facebook allows any users who declare themselves to be at least 13 years old to become registered
users of the site.[16]
Contents

  [hide] 

1 History

2 Website

o 2.1 User profile

o 2.2 Privacy settings

o 2.3 Comparison with

Myspace

o 2.4 News Feed

o 2.5 Facebook Notes

o 2.6 Facebook Username

o 2.7 Facebook Messages

o 2.8 Voice Calls

o 2.9 Video Calling

o 2.10 Facebook

Subscribe

o 2.11 Privacy

 2.11.1 FTC

settlement

o 2.12 Technical aspects

o 2.13 Like button

3 Reception

4 Criticism

5 Impact

o 5.1 Media impact

o 5.2 Social impact

o 5.3 Political impact

6 In popular culture

7 See also

8 Notes

9 References

10 Further reading
 11 External links

History
Mark Zuckerberg wrote Facemash, the predecessor to Facebook, on October 28, 2003, while
attending Harvard as a sophomore. According to The Harvard Crimson, the site was comparable toHot or
Not, and "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"[17][18]

Mark Zuckerberg co-created Facebook in his Harvard dorm room.

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
"facebook" (a directory with photos and basic information), though individual houses had been issuing
their own paper facebooks since the mid-1980s. Facemash attracted 450 visitors and 22,000 photo-views
in its first four hours online.[17][19]

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. Ultimately, the charges
were dropped.[20]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.[19] 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 Crimsonabout the Facemash incident.[21] On
February 4, 2004, Zuckerberg launched "Thefacebook", originally located at thefacebook.com.[22]

Six days after the site launched, three Harvard seniors, Cameron Winklevoss, Tyler Winklevoss,
and Divya Narendra, accused Zuckerberg of intentionally misleading them into believing he would help
them build a social network called HarvardConnection.com, while he was instead using their ideas to
build a competing product.[23] The three complained to the Harvard Crimson, and the newspaper began an
investigation. The three later filed a lawsuit against Zuckerberg, subsequently settling.[24]

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.[25] Eduardo
Saverin (business aspects), Dustin Moskovitz (programmer), Andrew McCollum (graphic artist), and Chris
Hughes soon joined Zuckerberg to help promote the website. In March 2004, Facebook expanded to
Stanford, Columbia, and Yale.[26] It soon opened to the other Ivy League schools, Boston University, New
York University, MIT, and gradually most universities in Canada and the United States.[27][28]

Facebook was incorporated in mid-2004, and the entrepreneur Sean Parker, who had been
informally advising Zuckerberg, became the company's president.[29] In June 2004, Facebook moved its
base of operations to Palo Alto, California.[26] It received its first investment later that month
from PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel.[30] The company dropped The from its name after purchasing
thedomain name facebook.com in 2005 for $200,000.[31]

Total active users

Users
Date Days later Monthly growth[N 2]
(in millions)

August 26, 2008 100[32] 1,665 178.38%

April 8, 2009 200[33] 225 13.33%

September 15, 2009 300[34] 160 9.38%

February 5, 2010 400[35] 143 6.99%

July 21, 2010 500[36] 166 4.52%

January 5, 2011 600[37][N 3] 168 3.57%

May 30, 2011 700[38] 145 3.45%

 Total active users

Users
Date Days later Monthly growth[N 2]
(in millions)

September 22, 2011 800[39] 115 3.73%

April 24, 2012 900[40] 215 1.74%

October 4, 2012 1,000[41] 163 2.04%

Facebook launched a high-school version in September 2005, which Zuckerberg called the next
logical step.[42] At that time, high-school networks required an invitation to join.[43] Facebook later
expanded membership eligibility to employees of several companies, including Apple Inc. and Microsoft.
[44]
 Facebook was then opened on September 26, 2006, to everyone of age 13 and older with a
valid email address.[45][46]

On October 24, 2007, Microsoft announced that it had purchased a 1.6% share of Facebook for
$240 million, giving Facebook a total implied value of around $15 billion.[47] Microsoft's purchase included
rights to place international ads on Facebook. [48] In October 2008, Facebook announced that it would set
up its international headquarters in Dublin, Ireland.[49]In September 2009, Facebook said that it had turned
cash-flow positive for the first time.[50] In November 2010, based onSecondMarket Inc., an exchange for
shares of privately held companies, Facebook's value was $41 billion (slightly surpassing eBay's) and it
became the third largest U.S. Web company after Google and Amazon.[51]

Traffic to Facebook increased steadily after 2009. More people visited Facebook than Google for
the week ending March 13, 2010.[52]

In March 2011 it was reported that Facebook removes approximately 20,000 profiles from the site
every day for various infractions, including spam, inappropriate content and underage use, as part of its
efforts to boost cyber security.[53]

In early 2011, Facebook announced plans to move to its new headquarters, the former Sun
Microsystems campus in Menlo Park, California.[54][55]
 Release of statistics by DoubleClick showed that Facebook reached one trillion pageviews in the
month of June 2011, making it the most visited website in the world.[56] It should, however, be noted that
Google and some of its selected websites are not counted in the DoubleClick rankings.

According to the Nielsen Media Research study, released in December 2011, Facebook is the
second most accessed website in the US.[57]

In March 2012, Facebook announced App Center, an online mobile store which sells applications
that connect to Facebook. The store will be available to iPhone, Android and mobile web users.[58]

Facebook, Inc. held an initial public offering on May 17, 2012, negotiating a share price of $38
apiece, valuing the company at $104 billion, the largest valuation to date for a newly listed public
company.[59]

On July 2012, Facebook added a gay marriage icon to its timeline feature.[60]

On August 23rd, 2012 Facebook released the much anticipated update to its iOS app, version
5.0. The app, which did not receive positive sentiments from its users, was rebuilt from the ground up; the
app no longer uses page views which made it slow in the past but now utilizes code that uses native
elements of iOS.[61]

Website
Main articles:  Facebook features and  Facebook Platform

Profile shown on Thefacebook in 2005

User profile
Users can create profiles with photos, lists of personal interests, contact information, and other
personal information. Users can communicate with friends and other users through private or public
messages and a chat feature. They can also create and join interest groups and "like pages" (called "fan
pages" until April 19, 2010), some of which are maintained by organizations as a means of advertising.
[62]
 Facebook has been prompted to add a "third gender", "other", or "intersex" tab in the gender option
which contains only male and female.[63] Facebook refused and said that individuals can "opt out of
showing their sex on their profile".[64] A 2012 Pew Internet and American Life study identified that between
20–30% of Facebook users are "power users" who frequently link, poke, post and tag themselves and
others.[65]

Privacy settings
To allay concerns about privacy, Facebook enables users to choose their own privacy settings
and choose who can see specific parts of their profile. [66] The website is free to users, and generates
revenue from advertising, such as banner ads.[67] Facebook requires a user's name and profile picture (if
applicable) to be accessible by everyone. Users can control who sees other information they have
shared, as well as who can find them in searches, through their privacy settings.[68]

Comparison with Myspace

The media often compares Facebook to MySpace, but one significant difference between the two
Web sites is the level of customization.[69] Another difference is Facebook's requirement that users give
their true identity, a demand that MySpace does not make. [70] MySpace allows users to decorate their
profiles using HTML and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), while Facebook allows only plain text.
[71]
 Facebook has a number of features with which users may interact. They include the Wall, a space on
every user's profile page that allows friends to post messages for the user to see; [72] Pokes, which allows
users to send a virtual "poke" to each other (a notification then tells a user that they have been poked);
[73]
 Photos, where users can upload albums and photos;[74]and Status, which allows users to inform their
friends of their whereabouts and actions.[75] Depending on privacy settings, anyone who can see a user's
profile can also view that user's Wall. In July 2007, Facebook began allowing users to post attachments to
the Wall, whereas the Wall was previously limited to textual content only.[72]

News Feed
n September 6, 2006, a News Feed was announced, which appears on every user's homepage
and highlights information including profile changes, upcoming events, and birthdays of the user's friends.
[76]
 This enabled spammers and other users to manipulate these features by creating illegitimate events or
posting fake birthdays to attract attention to their profile or cause. [77] Initially, the News Feed caused
dissatisfaction among Facebook users; some complained it was too cluttered and full of undesired
information, others were concerned that it made it too easy for others to track individual activities (such as
relationship status changes, events, and conversations with other users).[78]

In response, Zuckerberg issued an apology for the site's failure to include appropriate
customizable privacy features. Since then, users have been able to control what types of information are
shared automatically with friends. Users are now able to prevent user-set categories of friends from
seeing updates about certain types of activities, including profile changes, Wall posts, and newly added
friends.[79]

On February 23, 2010, Facebook was granted a patent[80] on certain aspects of its News Feed.
The patent covers News Feeds in which links are provided so that one user can participate in the same
activity of another user.[81] The patent may encourage Facebook to pursue action against websites that
violate its patent, which may potentially include websites such as Twitter.[82]
 One of the most popular applications on Facebook is the Photos application, where users can
upload albums and photos.[83] Facebook allows users to upload an unlimited number of photos, compared
with other image hosting services such as Photobucket and Flickr, which apply limits to the number of
photos that a user is allowed to upload. During the first years, Facebook users were limited to 60 photos
per album. As of May 2009, this limit has been increased to 200 photos per album.[84][85][86][87]

Privacy settings can be set for individual albums, limiting the groups of users that can see an
album. For example, the privacy of an album can be set so that only the user's friends can see the album,
while the privacy of another album can be set so that all Facebook users can see it. Another feature of the
Photos application is the ability to "tag", or label, users in a photo. For instance, if a photo contains a
user's friend, then the user can tag the friend in the photo. This sends a notification to the friend that they
have been tagged, and provides them a link to see the photo.[88] On 7 June 2012, Facebook launched its
App Center to its users. It will help the users in finding games and other applications with ease. [89] Since
the launch of the App Center, Facebook has seen 150M monthly users with 2.4 times the installation of
apps. [90]

Facebook Notes
Facebook Notes was introduced on August 22, 2006, a blogging feature that allowed tags and
embeddable images. Users were later able to import blogs from Xanga, LiveJournal, Blogger, and other
blogging services.[45] During the week of April 7, 2008, Facebook released a Comet-based[91] instant
messaging application called "Chat" to several networks,[92] which allows users to communicate with
friends and is similar in functionality to desktop-based instant messengers.

Facebook launched Gifts on February 8, 2007, which allows users to send virtual gifts to their
friends that appear on the recipient's profile. Gifts cost $1.00 each to purchase, and a personalized
message can be attached to each gift.[93][94] On May 14, 2007, Facebook launched Marketplace, which lets
users post free classified ads.[95] Marketplace has been compared to Craigslist byCNET, which points out
that the major difference between the two is that listings posted by a user on Marketplace are seen only
by users in the same network as that user, whereas listings posted on Craigslist can be seen by anyone.
[96]

On July 20, 2008, Facebook introduced "Facebook Beta", a significant redesign of its user
interface on selected networks. The Mini-Feed and Wall were consolidated, profiles were separated into
tabbed sections, and an effort was made to create a "cleaner" look.[97] After initially giving users a choice
to switch, Facebook began migrating all users to the new version starting in September 2008. [98] On
December 11, 2008, it was announced that Facebook was testing a simpler signup process.[99]

Facebook Username
On June 13, 2009, Facebook introduced a "Usernames" feature, whereby pages can be linked
with simpler URLs such as http://www.facebook.com/facebook instead
ofhttp://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=20531316728.[100] Many new smartphones offer
access to Facebook services through either their Web browsers or applications. An official Facebook
application is available for the operating systems Android, iOS, and webOS. Nokia and Research In
Motion both provide Facebook applications for their own mobile devices. More than 425 million active
users access Facebook through mobile devices across 200 mobile operators in 60 countries.[101]
Facebook Messages
On November 15, 2010, Facebook announced a new "Facebook Messages" service. In a media
event that day, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said, "It's true that people will be able to have an @facebook.com
email addresses, but it's not email". The launch of such a feature had been anticipated for some time
before the announcement, with some calling it a "Gmail killer". The system, to be available to all of the
website's users, combines text messaging, instant messaging, emails, and regular messages, and will
include privacy settings similar to those of other Facebook services. Codenamed "Project Titan",
Facebook Messages took 15 months to develop.[102][103]

In February 2011, Facebook began to use the hCalendar microformat to mark up events, and
the hCard microformat for the events' venues, enabling the extraction of details to users' own calendar or
mapping applications.[104]

Voice Calls
Since April 2011 Facebook users have had the ability to make live voice calls via Facebook Chat,
allowing users to chat with others from all over the world. This feature, which is provided free through T-
Mobile's new Bobsled service, lets the user add voice to the current Facebook Chat as well as leave
voice messages on Facebook.[105]

Video Calling
On July 6, 2011, Facebook launched its video calling services using Skype as its technology
partner. It allows one to one calling using a Skype Rest API.

Facebook Subscribe
On September 14, 2011, Facebook launched a Subscribe button. The feature allows for users to
follow public updates, and these are the people most often broadcasting their ideas. [106] There were major
modifications that the site released on September 22, 2011.[107]

As reported by TechCrunch on February 15, 2012, Facebook is introducing ‘Verified Account’

concept like that of Twitter & Google+. Though as of March 3, 2012, verified accounts don’t get any
badges or denotations, but such accounts will get more priority in ‘Subscription Suggestions’ of Facebook.
[108]

On March 6, 2012, Facebook officially launched Messenger for Windows, which gives users
of Windows 7 access to some Facebook services without using a web browser.[109]

Privacy
According to comScore, an internet marketing research company, Facebook collects as much
data from its visitors as Google and Microsoft, but considerably less than Yahoo!.[110] In 2010, the security
team began expanding its efforts to reduce the risks to users' privacy,[111] but privacy concerns remain. On
November 6, 2007, Facebook launched Facebook Beacon, which was an ultimately failed attempt to
advertise to friends of users using the knowledge of what purchases friends made. As of March 2012,
Facebook's usage of its user data is under close scrutiny.[112]

FTC settlement
On November 29, 2011, Facebook agreed to settle US Federal Trade Commission charges that it
deceived consumers by failing to keep privacy promises.[113]
Technical aspects
Facebook is built in PHP which is compiled with HipHop for PHP, a source code transformer built
by Facebook engineers that turns PHP into C++. The deployment of HipHop reportedly reduced average
CPU consumption on Facebook servers by 50%.[114]

Facebook is developed as one monolithic application. According to an interview in 2012 with

Chuck Rossi, a build engineer at Facebook, Facebook compiles into a 1.5 GB binary blob which is then
distributed to the servers using a custom BitTorrent-based release system. Rossi stated that it takes
approximately 15 minutes to build and 15 minutes to release to the servers. The build and release
process is zero downtime and new changes to Facebook are rolled out daily.[114]

Facebook used a combination platform based on Hbase to stores data across distributed
machines. Useing a tailing architecture, new events are stored in log files, and the logs are tailed. The
system rolls these events up and writes them into storage. The User Interface then pulls the data out and
displays it to users. Facebook handles requests as AJAX behavior. These requests are written to a log file
using Scribe (developed by Facebook).[115]

Data is read from these log files using Ptail, an internally built tool to aggregate data from multiple
Scribe stores. It tails the log files and pulls data out (thus the name). Ptail data is separated out into three
streams so they can eventually be sent to their own clusters in different data centers (Plugin impression,
News feed impressions, Actions (plugin + news feed)). Puma is used to manage periods of high data flow
(Input/Output or IO). Data is processed in batches to lessen the amount of times needed to read and write
under high demand periods (A hot article will generate a lot of impressions and news feed impressions
which will cause huge data skews ). Batches are taken every 1.5 seconds, limited by memory used when
creating a hashtable.[115]

After this, data is output in PHP format (compiled with HipHop for PHP). The backend is written
in Java and Thrift is used as the messaging format so PHP programs can query Java services. Caching
solutions are used to make the web pages display more quickly. The more and longer data is cached the
less realtime it is. The data is then sent to MapReduce servers so it can be queried via Hive. This also
serves as a backup plan as the data can be recovered from Hive. Raw logs are removed after a period of
time.[115]

Like button
Further information: Like button

The Like button is one of Facebook's social plug-ins. It was launched on April 21, 2010.[116][117]
Reception

Facebook popularity. Active users of Facebook increased from just a million in

2004 to over 750 million in 2011.[118]

Registered Facebook users by age as of 2010.

According to comScore, Facebook is the leading social networking site based on monthly unique
visitors, having overtaken main competitor MySpace in April 2008.[119] ComScore reports that Facebook
attracted 130 million unique visitors in May 2010, an increase of 8.6 million people.[120] According to Alexa,
the website's ranking among all websites increased from 60th to 7th in worldwide traffic, from September
2006 to September 2007, and is currently 1st.[121] Quantcast ranks the website 2nd in the U.S. in traffic,
[122]
 andCompete.com ranks it 2nd in the U.S.[123] The website is the most popular for uploading photos,
with 50 billion uploaded cumulatively.[124]In 2010, Sophos's "Security Threat Report 2010" polled over 500
firms, 60% of which responded that they believed that Facebook was the social network that posed the
biggest threat to security, well ahead of MySpace, Twitter, and LinkedIn.[111]

Facebook is the most popular social networking site in several English-speaking countries,

including Canada,[125] the United Kingdom,[126] and the United States.[127][128][129][130] In regional Internet
markets, Facebook penetration is highest in North America (69 percent), followed by Middle East-Africa
(67 percent), Latin America (58 percent), Europe (57 percent), and Asia-Pacific (17 percent). [131]Some of
the top competitors were listed in 2007 by Mashable.[132]

The website has won awards such as placement into the "Top 100 Classic Websites" by PC
Magazine in 2007,[133] and winning the "People's Voice Award" from the Webby Awards in 2008.[134] In a
2006 study conducted by Student Monitor, a New Jersey-based company specializing in research
concerning the college student market, Facebook was named the second most popular thing among
undergraduates, tied with beer and only ranked lower than the iPod.[135]

On March 2010, Judge Richard Seeborg issued an order approving the class settlement in Lane
v. Facebook, Inc., the class action lawsuit arising out of Facebook's Beacon program.

In 2010, Facebook won the Crunchie "Best Overall Startup Or Product" for the third year in a row[136] and
was recognized as one of the "Hottest Silicon Valley Companies" by Lead411.[137] However, in a July 2010
survey performed by the American Customer Satisfaction Index, Facebook received a score of 64 out of
100, placing it in the bottom 5% of all private-sector companies in terms of customer satisfaction,
alongside industries such as the IRS e-file system, airlines, and cable companies. The reasons why
Facebook scored so poorly include privacy problems, frequent changes to the website's interface, the
results returned by the News Feed, and spam.[138]

In December 2008, the Supreme Court of the Australian Capital Territory ruled that Facebook is a
valid protocol to serve court notices to defendants. It is believed to be the world's first legal judgement
that defines a summons posted on Facebook as legally binding.[139] In March 2009, the New Zealand High
Court associate justice David Gendall allowed for the serving of legal papers on Craig Axe by the
company Axe Market Garden via Facebook.[140][141] Employers (such as Virgin Atlantic Airways) have also
used Facebook as a means to keep tabs on their employees and have even been known to fire them over
posts they have made.[142]

By 2005, the use of Facebook had already become so ubiquitous that the generic verb
"facebooking" had come into use to describe the process of browsing others' profiles or updating one's
own.[143] In 2008, Collins English Dictionary declared "Facebook" as its new Word of the Year. [144] In
December 2009, the New Oxford American Dictionary declared its word of the year to be the verb
"unfriend", defined as "To remove someone as a 'friend' on a social networking site such as Facebook. As
in, 'I decided to unfriend my roommate on Facebook after we had a fight.'"[145]

In early 2010, Openbook was established, an avowed parody (and privacy advocacy) website[146] that

enables text-based searches of those Wall posts that are available to "Everyone", i.e. to everyone on the
Internet.
 Writers for The Wall Street Journal found in 2010 that Facebook apps were transmitting
identifying information to "dozens of advertising and Internet tracking companies". The apps used
an HTTP referrer which exposed the user's identity and sometimes their friends'. Facebook said, "We
have taken immediate action to disable all applications that violate our terms".[147]

In October 2012, the countries with the most Facebook users were:[148]

 United States with 166.1 million members

 Brazil with 58.4 million members
 India with 55.3 million members
 Indonesia with 47.5 million members
 Mexico with 38.3 million members
All of the above total 309 million members or about 38.6 percent of Facebook's 1 billion worldwide
members.[149]

Criticism
Main article:  Criticism of Facebook

Facebook has met with controversies. It has been blocked intermittently in several countries
including the People's Republic of China,[150] Iran,[151] Uzbekistan,[152] Pakistan,[153] Syria(unblocked in
Syria [154] ),[155] and Bangladesh on different bases. For example, it was banned in many countries of the
world on the basis of allowed content judged as anti-Islamic and containing religious discrimination. It has
also been banned at many workplaces to prevent employees from using it during work hours.
[156]
 The privacy of Facebook users has also been an issue, and the safety of user accounts has been
compromised several times. Facebook has settled a lawsuit regarding claims over source code and
intellectual property.[157] In May 2011 emails were sent to journalists and bloggers making critical
allegations about Google's privacy policies; however it was later discovered that the anti-Google
campaign, conducted by PR giant Burson-Marsteller, was paid for by Facebook in what CNN referred to
as "a new level skullduggery" and which Daily Beast called a "clumsy smear".[158]

In July 2011, German authorities began to discuss the prohibition of events organized on
Facebook. The decision is based on several cases of overcrowding by people not originally invited.[159]
[160]
In one instance, 1,600 "guests" attended the 16th birthday party for a Hamburg girl who accidentally
posted the invitation for the event as public. After reports of overcrowding, more than a hundred police
were deployed for crowd control. A policeman was injured and eleven participants were arrested for
assault, property damage and resistance to authorities.[161] In another unexpectedly overcrowded event,
41 young people were arrested and at least 16 injured.[162]

In 2007, it was reported that 43% of British office workers were blocked from accessing Facebook
at work, due to concerns including reduced productivity and the potential for industrial espionage.[163]

A 2011 study in the online journal First Monday, "Why Parents Help Their Children Lie to
Facebook About Age: Unintended Consequences of the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act,"
examines how parents consistently enable children as young as 10 years old to sign up for accounts,
directly violating Facebook's policy banning young visitors. This policy technically allows Facebook to
avoid conflicts with the 1998 Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), requiring that minors
aged 13 or younger gain explicit parental consent to access commercial websites. Of the more than 1,000
households surveyed for the study, more than three-quarters (76%) of parents reported that their child
joined Facebook when she was younger than 13, the minimum age in the site's terms of service. The
study notes that, in response to widespread reports of underage users, a Facebook executive has said
that "Facebook removes 20,000 people a day, people who are underage." The study's authors also note,
"Indeed, Facebook takes various measures both to restrict access to children and delete their accounts if
they join." The findings of the study raise questions primarily about the shortcomings of federal law, but
also implicitly continue to raise questions about whether or not Facebook does enough to publicize its
terms of service with respect to minors. Only 53% of parents said they were aware that Facebook has a
minimum signup age; 35% of these parents believe that the minimum age is a site recommendation (not a
condition of site use), or thought the signup age was 16 or 18, and not 13.[164]

In November 2011, several Facebook users reported that their accounts were hacked and their
profile pictures were replaced with pornographic images. For more than a week, users' news feeds were
spammed with pornographic, violent and sexual contents. It has been reported that more than 200,000
accounts in Bangalore, India were hacked. Facebook has denied the claims, citing that "safety of the
users was on the top of their priority list".[165][166]

There has been much user discontent over Facebook's mandatory changeover to the
new Timeline profile. Some Facebook users reported discontent with having many Facebook status
updates and photos from the past easily visible.[167][168]

According to a leading counter terrorism expert, terrorists are using Facebook for hiring loners
from western nations like Australia.[169]

In November 2012 several tech writers and bloggers reacted negatively to Facebook's new
couples page feature, which automatically created new joint profile pages for people with a relationship
listed on the site.[170]

Impact
Media impact
In April 2011, Facebook launched a new portal for marketers and creative agencies to help them
develop brand promotions on Facebook.[171] The company began its push by inviting a select group of
British advertising leaders to meet Facebook's top executives at an "influencers' summit" in February
2010. Facebook has now been involved in campaigns for True Blood, American Idol, and Top Gear.
[172]
 News and media outlets such as the Washington Post,[173] Financial Times[174] and ABC News[175] have
used aggregated Facebook fan data to create various infographics and charts to accompany their articles.

Social impact
Main articles:  Social networking service#Social impact  and Social impact of the Internet#Social
networking and entertainment

Facebook has affected the social life and activity of people in various ways. With its availability on
many mobile devices, Facebook allows users to continuously stay in touch with friends, relatives and
other acquaintances wherever they are in the world, as long as there is access to the Internet. It can also
unite people with common interests and/or beliefs through groups and other pages, and has been known
to reunite lost family members and friends because of the widespread reach of its network. One such
reunion was between John Watson and the daughter he had been seeking for 20 years. They met after
Watson found her Facebook profile.[176] Another father-daughter reunion was between Tony Macnauton
and Frances Simpson, who had not seen each other for nearly 48 years.[177]

Some argue that Facebook is beneficial to one's social life because they can continuously stay in
contact with their friends and relatives, while others say that it can cause increased antisocial tendencies
because people are not directly communicating with each other. Some studies have named Facebook as
a source of problems in relationships. Several news stories have suggested that using Facebook can lead
to higher instances of divorce and infidelity, but the claims have been questioned by other commentators.
[178][179]

Political impact

The stage at the Facebook – Saint Anselm College debates in 2008.

Facebook's role in the American political process was demonstrated in January 2008, shortly
before the New Hampshire primary, when Facebook teamed up with ABC and Saint Anselm College to
allow users to give live feedback about the "back to back" January 5 Republican and Democratic debates.
[180][181][182]
 Charles Gibson moderated both debates, held at the Dana Center for the Humanities at Saint
Anselm College. Facebook users took part in debate groups organized around specific topics, register to
vote, and message questions.[183]

ABCNews.com reported in 2012 that the Facebook fanbases of political candidates have relevance
for the election campaign, including:

 Allows politicians and campaign organizers to understand the interests and demographics of their
Facebook fanbases, as with Wisdom for Facebook, to better target their voters.
 Provides a means for voters to keep up-to-date on candidates' activities, such as connecting to
the candidates' Facebook Fan Pages.

Unless you get out of Facebook and into someone’s face, you really have not acted.

“
”
Thomas L. Friedman, 2012[184]

Over a million people installed the Facebook application "US Politics on Facebook" in order to
take part, and the application measured users' responses to specific comments made by the debating
candidates.[185] This debate showed the broader community what many young students had already
experienced: Facebook as a popular and powerful new way to interact and voice opinions. An article by
Michelle Sullivan of Uwire.com illustrates how the "Facebook effect" has affected youth voting rates,
support by youth of political candidates, and general involvement by the youth population in the 2008
election.[186]

In February 2008, a Facebook group called "One Million Voices Against FARC" organized an
event in which hundreds of thousands of Colombians marched in protest against the Revolutionary Armed
Forces of Colombia, better known as the FARC (from the group's Spanish name).[187] In August 2010, one
of North Korea's official government websites and the official news agency of the country, Uriminzokkiri,
joined Facebook.[188]

In 2011 there was a controversial ruling by French government to uphold a 1992 decree which
stipulates that commercial enterprises should not be promoted on news programs. President Nicolas
Sarkozy's colleagues have agreed that it will enforce a law so that the word "Facebook" will not be
allowed to be spoken on the television or on the radio.[189]

In 2011, Facebook filed paperwork with the Federal Election Commission to form a political action
committee under the name FB PAC.[190] In an email to The Hill, a spokesman for Facebook said "FB PAC
will give our employees a way to make their voice heard in the political process by supporting candidates
who share our goals of promoting the value of innovation to our economy while giving people the power to
share and make the world more open and connected."[191]

In popular culture

 American author Ben Mezrich published a book in July 2009 about Mark Zuckerberg and the
founding of Facebook, titled The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook, A Tale of Sex,
Money, Genius, and Betrayal.[192]
 The Social Network, a drama film directed by David Fincher about the founding of Facebook, was
released October 1, 2010.[193] Mark Zuckerberg has said that The Social Network is inaccurate.[194]
 In response to the Everybody Draw Mohammed Day controversy and the ban of the website in
Pakistan, an Islamic version of the website was created, called MillatFacebook.[195]
 "You Have 0 Friends", an April 2010 episode of the American animated comedy series, South
Park, explicitly parodied Facebook.[196]
 At age 102, Ivy Bean of Bradford, England joined Facebook in 2008, making her one of the oldest
people ever on Facebook.[197][198] At the time of her death in July 2010, she had 4,962 friends on
Facebook and more than 56,000 followers on Twitter.[199]
 On May 16, 2011, an Israeli couple named their daughter after the Facebook "like" feature.[200][201]
 On November 7, 2012, US President Barack Obama photo of him hugging his wife after winning
the 2012 election had most ever "likes" with over 3.2 million likes.[202]