Facebook

Facebook is an online social networking service headquartered in Menlo Park, California. Its name comes
from a colloquialism for the directory given to students at some American universities.
[6]
Facebook was
founded on February 4, 2004, by Mark Zuckerbergwith his college roommates and fellow Harvard
University students Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes.
[7]
The founders
had initially limited the website's membership to Harvard students, but later expanded it to colleges in the
Boston area, the Ivy League, and Stanford University. It gradually added support for students at various other
universities and later to their high-school students. Facebook now allows anyone who claims to be at least 13
years old worldwide to become a registered user of the website, although proof is not required.
[8]

After registering to use the site, users may create a personal profile, add other users as friends, exchange
messages, post status updates and photos, and receive notifications when others update their profiles.
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 had over one billion active users as of September 2012,
[9]
of which approximately 9% were
fake.
[10]
By that point, Facebook was adding about half a petabyte of data every 24 hours, amounting to about
180 petabytes per year.
[11]
Due to the large volume of data collected about users, the service's privacy policies
have faced scrutiny, among othercriticisms. Facebook, Inc. held its initial public offering in February 2012 and
began selling stock to the public three months later, reaching a peak market capitalization of $104 billion.

Youtube
YouTube is a video-sharing website headquartered in San Bruno, California. The service was created by three
former PayPalemployees in February 2005 and has been owned by Google since late 2006.
[4]
The site allows
users to upload, view, and share videos, and it makes use of Adobe Flash Video and HTML5 technology to
display a wide variety of user-generated and corporate media video. Available content includes video clips, TV
clips, music videos, and amateur content such as video blogging, short original videos, and educational videos.
Most of the content on YouTube has been uploaded by individuals, but media corporations including CBS,
the BBC, Vevo, Hulu, and other organizations offer some of their material via YouTube, as part of the YouTube
partnership program.
[5]
Unregistered users can watch videos, and registered users can upload an unlimited
number of videos. Videos considered to contain potentially offensive content are available only to registered
users affirming themselves to be at least 18 years old. YouTube, LLC was bought by Google for US$1.65
billion in November 2006 and now operates as a Google subsidiary.
[6]

Instagram
Instagram is an online mobile photo-sharing, video-sharing and social networking service that enables its
users to take pictures and videos, apply digital filters to them, and share them on a variety of social networking
services, such as Facebook, Twitter, Tumblrand Flickr.
[7]
A distinctive feature is that it confines photos to a
square shape, similar to Kodak Instamatic and Polaroid images, in contrast to the 4:3 aspect ratio typically
used by mobile device cameras. Users are also able to record and share short videos lasting for up to 15
seconds.
[8]

Instagram was created by Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger and launched in October 2010. The service rapidly
gained popularity, with over 100 million active users as of April 2012.
[9][10]
Instagram is distributed through the
Apple App Store, Google Play, andWindows Phone Store.
[11]
Support was originally available for only
the iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch; in April 2012, support was added for Android camera phones. Third-party
Instagram apps are available for Blackberry 10 and Nokia-Symbian Devices.
[12][13]
On October 22, 2013, during
the Nokia World at Abu Dhabi, UAE, Kevin Systrom has confirmed that official Instagram app for Windows
Phone will be available in the coming weeks.
[14]
On November 21, 2013, the official Instagram Beta for
Windows Phone has been released to Windows Phone 8 to allow Windows Phone user to get faster access to
Instagram services although the app is still under development with lack of video recording and capture image
through app.
[15][16]
The service was acquired by Facebook in April 2012 for approximately US$1 billion in cash
and stock.
[17]
In 2013, Instagram grew by 23%, while Facebook, as the mother company, only grew by 3%.
[18]

Google
Google /u()l/ is an American multinational corporation specializing in Internet-related services and
products. These include online advertising technologies, search, cloud computing, and software.
[7]
Most of its
profits are derived fromAdWords.
[8][9]

Google was founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin while they were Ph.D. students at Stanford University.
Together they own about 14 percent of its shares but control 56 of the stockholder voting power through
supervoting stock. They incorporated Google as a privately held company on September 4, 1998. An initial
public offering followed on August 19, 2004. Its mission statement from the outset was "to organize the world's
information and make it universally accessible and useful,"
[10]
and its unofficial slogan was "Don't be
evil."
[11][12]
In 2004, Google moved to headquarters in Mountain View, California, nicknamed the Googleplex.
[13]

Rapid growth since incorporation has triggered a chain of products, acquisitions and partnerships
beyond Google's core search engine. It offers online productivity software including email (Gmail), a cloud
storage service (Google Drive), an office suite (Google Docs) and a social networking
service (Google+). Desktop products include applications for web browsing, organizing and editing photos,
and instant messaging. The company leads the development of the Android mobile operating system and the
browser-only Chrome OS
[14]
for a netbook known as a Chromebook. Google has moved increasingly into
communications hardware: it partners with major electronics manufacturers in production of its high-
end Nexus devices and acquired Motorola Mobility in May 2012.
[15]
In 2012, a fiber-optic infrastructure was
installed in Kansas City to facilitate aGoogle Fiber broadband service.
[16]

The corporation has been estimated to run more than one million servers in data centers around the world (as
of 2007)
[17]
and to process over one billion search requests
[18]
and about 24 petabytes of user-generated data
each day (as of 2009).
[19][20][21][22]
In December 2013 Alexa listed google.com as the most visited website in the
world. Numerous Google sites in other languages figure in the top one hundred, as do several other Google-
owned sites such as YouTube andBlogger.
[23]
Its market dominance has led to prominent media coverage,
including criticism of the company over issues such as copyright, censorship, and privacy.
[24][25]

Twitter
Twitter is an online social networking and microblogging service that enables users to send and read short
140-character text messages, called "tweets".
Registered users can read and post tweets, but unregistered users can only read them. Users access Twitter
through the website interface, SMS, or mobile device app.
[10]
Twitter Inc. is based in San Francisco and has
offices in New York City, Boston, Austin andDetroit.
[11]

Twitter was created in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey, Evan Williams, Biz Stone and Noah Glass and by July
2006 the site was launched. The service rapidly gained worldwide popularity, with 500 million registered
users in 2012, who posted 340 million tweets per day. The service also handled 1.6 billion search queries per
day.
[12][13][14]
In 2013 Twitter was one of the ten most-visited websites, and has been described as "the SMS of
the Internet."
[7][15]

Samsung
Samsung Group (Hangul: ; hanja: ; Korean pronunciation: [sams up], stylized
as SMSUNG) is a South Korean multinational conglomerate company headquartered in Samsung
Town, Seoul. It comprises numerous subsidiaries and affiliated businesses, most of them united under
the Samsung brand, and is the largest South Korean chaebol (business conglomerate).
Samsung was founded by Lee Byung-chul in 1938 as a trading company. Over the next three decades the
group diversified into areas including food processing, textiles, insurance, securities and retail. Samsung
entered the electronics industry in the late 1960s and the construction and shipbuilding industries in the mid-
1970s; these areas would drive its subsequent growth. Following Lee's death in 1987, Samsung was
separated into four business groups Samsung Group, Shinsegae Group, CJ Group and Hansol Group. Since
the 1990s Samsung has increasingly globalized its activities, and electronics, particularly mobile phones and
semiconductors, have become its most important source of income.
Notable Samsung industrial subsidiaries include Samsung Electronics (the world's largest information
technology company measured by 2012 revenues, and 4th in market value),
[2]
Samsung Heavy Industries (the
world's 2nd-largest shipbuilder measured by 2010 revenues),
[3]
and Samsung Engineering and Samsung
C&T (respectively the world's 13th and 36th-largest construction companies).
[4]
Other notable subsidiaries
include Samsung Life Insurance (the world's 14th-largest life insurance company),
[5]
Samsung
Everland (operator of Everland Resort, the oldest theme park in South Korea),
[6]
Samsung Techwin (an
aerospace, surveillance and defense company) and Cheil Worldwide (the world's 15th-largest advertising
agency measured by 2012 revenues).
[7][8]

Samsung has a powerful influence on South Korea's economic development, politics, media and culture, and
has been a major driving force behind the "Miracle on the Han River".
[9][10]
Its affiliate companies produce
around a fifth of South Korea's total exports.
[11]
Samsung's revenue was equal to 17% of South Korea's $1,082
billion GDP.
[12]

In 2013, Samsung began construction on building the world's largest mobile phone factory in the Thai Nguyen
province ofVietnam.
[13]

Sony
Sony Corporation ( Son Kabushiki Gaisha
?
), commonly referred to as Sony, is a
Japanese multinationalconglomerate corporation headquartered in Knan Minato, Tokyo, Japan.
[3]
Its
diversified business is primarily focused on the electronics, game, entertainment and financial services
sectors.
[2]
The company is one of the leading manufacturers ofelectronic products for the consumer and
professional markets.
[4]
Sony is ranked 87th on the 2012 list of Fortune Global 500.
[5]

Sony Corporation is the electronics business unit and the parent company of the Sony Group, which is
engaged in business through its four operating segments Electronics (including video games, network
services and medical business), Motion pictures, Music and Financial Services.
[6][7][8]
These make Sony one of
the most comprehensive entertainment companies in the world. Sony's principal business operations include
Sony Corporation (Sony Electronics in the U.S.), Sony Pictures Entertainment, Sony Computer
Entertainment, Sony Music Entertainment, Sony Mobile Communications (formerly Sony Ericsson), and Sony
Financial. Sony is among the Worldwide Top 20 Semiconductor Sales Leaders and third-largest television
manufacturer in the world, after Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics.
The Sony Group ( Son Gurpu
?
) is a Japan-based corporate group primarily focused on the
Electronics (such as AV/IT products and components), Game (such as PlayStation), Entertainment (such as
motion pictures and music), and Financial Services (such as insurance and banking) sectors. The group
consists of Sony Corporation (holding and electronics), Sony Computer Entertainment (games), Sony Pictures
Entertainment (motion pictures), Sony Music Entertainment (music), Sony/ATV Music Publishing (music
publishing), Sony Financial Holdings (financial services) andothers.
Its founders Akio Morita and Masaru Ibuka derived the name from sonus, the Latin word for sound, and also
from the English slang word "sonny", since they considered themselves to be "sonny boys", a loan word into
Japanese which in the early 1950s connoted smart and presentable young men.
[4]
The company's current
slogan is BE MOVED. Their former slogans were make.believe (20092014) and like.no.other (20052014).
Nokia
Nokia Oyj
[3]
(Finnish: Nokia Oyj, Swedish: Nokia Abp; Finnish pronunciation: [noki], English /nki/) is
a Finnish communications and information technology multinational corporation that is headquartered
in Espoo, Uusimaa.
[1]
The company provides Internet services, including applications, games,
music, media and messaging services, including free-of-charge digital map information andnavigation services
delivered through its wholly owned subsidiary HERE.
[4]
Its Nokia Networks subsidiary
providestelecommunications network equipment and services.
[5]

As of 2013, Nokia employed 90,000 people across 120 countries, conducts sales in more than 150 countries
and reported annual revenues of around 12.7 billion.
[2]
Nokia is a public limited-liability company listed on
the Helsinki Stock Exchange and New York Stock Exchange.
[6]
It is the world's 274th-largest company
measured by 2013 revenues according to the Fortune Global 500.
[7]

In September 2013, Nokia sold what was once the world's largest vendor of mobile phones to Microsoft as part
of an overall deal totaling 5.44 billion (US$7.17 billion). Stephen Elop, Nokia's former CEO, and several other
executives joined the new Microsoft Mobile subsidiary of Microsoft as part of the deal, which closed on 25 April
2014.
[8][9]

Apple
Apple Inc. is an American multinational corporation headquartered in Cupertino, California, that designs,
develops, and sellsconsumer electronics, computer software, online services, and personal computers. Its
best-known hardware products are theMac line of computers, the iPod media player, the iPhone smartphone,
and the iPad tablet computer. Its online services include iCloud, iTunes Store, and App Store. Its consumer
software includes the OS X and iOS operating systems, the iTunesmedia browser, the Safari web browser,
and the iLife and iWork creativity and productivity suites.
Apple was founded by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne on April 1, 1976, to develop and
sell personal computers. It was incorporated as Apple Computer, Inc. on January 3, 1977, and was renamed
as Apple Inc. on January 9, 2007, to reflect its shifted focus towards consumer electronics.
Apple is the world's second-largest information technology company by revenue after Samsung Electronics,
and the world's third-largest mobile phone maker after Samsung and Nokia.
[5]
Fortune magazine named Apple
the most admired company in the United States in 2008, and in the world from 2008 to 2012.
[6][7][8][9][10]
On
September 30, 2013, Apple surpassed Coca-Cola to become the world's most valuable brand in the Omnicom
Group's "Best Global Brands" report.
[11]
However, the company has received criticism for its contractors' labor
practices, as well as for its own environmental and business practices.
As of June 2014, Apple maintains 425 retail stores in fourteen countries,
[12][13]
as well as the online Apple
Store and iTunes Store,
[14]
the latter of which is the world's largest music retailer.
[15]
Apple is the largest publicly
traded corporation in the world by market capitalization, with an estimated market capitalization of $446 billion
by January, 2014.
[16]
As of September 29, 2012, the company had 72,800 permanent full-time employees and
3,300 temporary full-time employees worldwide. Its worldwide annual revenue in 2013 totalled $170
billion.
[17]
As of Q1 2014, Apple's five-year growth average is 39% for top line growth and 45% for bottom
line growth. In May 2013, Apple entered the top ten of the Fortune 500 list of companies for the first time, rising
11 places above its 2012 ranking to take the sixth position.
[18]

Lenovo
Lenovo Group Ltd. (stylized as lenovo) is a Chinese multinational computer technology company with
headquarters inBeijing, China, and Morrisville, North Carolina, United States.
[1]
It designs, develops,
manufactures and sells personal computers, tablet computers, smartphones, workstations, servers, electronic
storage devices, IT management software andsmart televisions. In 2013 Lenovo was the world's largest
personal computer vendor by unit sales.
[4]
It markets the ThinkPadline of notebook computers and
the ThinkCentre line of desktops.
[5]

Lenovo has operations in more than 60 countries and sells its products in around 160 countries. Lenovo's
principal facilities are in Beijing, Morrisville and Singapore, with research centers in those locations, as well as
Shanghai, Shenzhen, Xiamen, and Chengdu in China, and Yamato in Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan. It
operates a joint venture with EMC, LenovoEMC, which sells network-attached storage solutions. It also has a
joint venture with NEC, Lenovo NEC Holdings, which produces personal computers for the Japanese market.
Lenovo was founded in Beijing in 1984 as Legend and was incorporated in Hong Kong in 1988. Lenovo
acquired IBM's personal computer business in 2005 and agreed to acquire its Intel-based server business in
2014. Lenovo entered the smartphone market in 2012 and as of 2014 is the largest vendor of smartphones in
Mainland China. In January 2014, Lenovo agreed to acquire the mobile phone handset maker Motorola
Mobility from Google.
[6]

Lenovo is listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the Hang Seng China-Affiliated
Corporations Index, often referred by those in the business as the "Red Chips".