-Social Networking “Redefined”

“Facebook is a social utility that connects

people with friends and others who work,
study and live around them.”
Index

Overview

History

Website

Criticism

Customisation i.e. Innovation

Working

Pros & Cons

Never-ending Journey

Facebook: Social Networking Redefined 2

FACEBOOK: AN OVERVIEW

F acebook is a social networking website launched in February 2004 that

is operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc., with more than 500
million] active users in July 2010. 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 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. 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".
The website currently has more than 500 million active users worldwide.

Facebook: Social Networking Redefined 3

HISTORY

M ark Zuckerberg wrote Facemash, the predecessor to Facebook, on

October 28, 2003, while attending Harvard as a sophomore. The site
represented a Harvard University version of Hot or Not, according to the
Harvard Crimson. 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. That the initial site mirrored people’s physical community—with their
real identities—represented the key aspects of what later became Facebook.

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. 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. 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. On February 4, 2004,
Zuckerberg launched "Thefacebook", originally located at thefacebook.com.

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. 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.] This expansion continued when it
opened to all Ivy League and Boston area schools, and gradually most

Facebook: Social Networking Redefined 4

universities in Canada and the United States. Facebook
incorporated in the summer of 2004 and the

entrepreneur Sean Parker, who had been informally advising Zuckerberg,

became the company's president. In June 2004, Facebook moved its base of
operations to Palo Alto, California. Facebook received its first investment later
that month from PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel. The company
dropped The from its name after purchasing the domain name facebook.com in
2005 for $200,000.
Facebook launched a high school version in September 2005, which Zuckerberg
called the next logical step. At that time, high school networks required an
invitation to join. Facebook later expanded membership eligibility to employees
of several companies, including Apple Inc.and Microsoft. Facebook was then
opened on September 26, 2006, to everyone of ages 13 and older with a valid e-
mail address. 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. Microsoft's purchase included rights to place
international ads on Facebook. In October 2008, Facebook announced that it
was to set up its international headquarters in Dublin, Ireland. In September
2009, Facebook claimed that it had turned cash flow positive for the first
time. In June 2010, an online marketplace for trading private company stock
reflected a valuation of $11.5 billion.

Traffic to Facebook has increased exponentially since 2009. More people

visited Facebook than Google for the week ending March 13, 2010. Facebook
has also become the top social network across eight of individual markets in the
region, Philippines, Australia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, New Zealand,
Hong Kong and Vietnam, while other brands commanded the top positions in
certain markets, including Google-owned Orkut in India, Mixi.jp in Japan,
CyWorld in South Korea and Yahoo!’s Wretch.cc in Taiwan.

Facebook: Social Networking Redefined 5

WEBSITE
Users can create profiles with photos, lists of personal interests, contact
information and other personal information. Communicating with friends and
other users can be done through private or public messages or a chat feature.
Users can also create and join interest groups and "like pages" (formerly called
"fan pages" until April 19, 2010), some of which are maintained by
organizations as a means of advertising. To allay concerns about privacy,
Facebook enables users to choose their own privacy settings and choose who
can see what parts of their profile.

The website is free to users and generates revenue from advertising, such
as banner ads. By default, the viewing of detailed profile data is restricted to
users from the same network and "reasonable community limitations".

The media often compares Facebook to MySpace, but one significant difference
between the two websites is the level of customization. MySpace allows users
to decorate their profiles using HTML and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), while
Facebook only allows plain text.

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; Pokes, which allows users to send a virtual "poke"
to each other (a notification then tells a user that they have been poked); Photos,
where users can upload albums and photos; and Status, which allows users to
inform their friends of their whereabouts and actions. 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.

Over time, Facebook has added features to its website. On 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. This has enabled spammers and other users to

Facebook: Social Networking Redefined 6

manipulate these features by creating illegitimate events or
posting fake birthdays to attract

attention to their profile or cause. Initially, the News Feed caused

dissatisfaction among Facebook users; some complained it was too cluttered
and full of undesired information, while others were concerned it made it too
easy for other people to track down individual activities (such as changes in
relationship status, events, and conversations with other users). In response to
this dissatisfaction, 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 friends from seeing updates about certain types of
activities, including profile changes, Wall posts, and newly added friends. On
February 23, 2010, Facebook was granted US patent 7669123 on certain aspects
of their News Feed. The patent covers News Feeds where links are provided so
that one user can participate in the same activity of another user. The patent
may encourage Facebook to pursue action against websites that violate the
patent, which may potentially include websites such as Twitter.

One of the most popular applications on Facebook is the Photos application,

where users can upload albums and photos. 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. 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.

Facebook: Social Networking Redefined 7

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. During the
week of April 7, 2008, Facebook released a Comet-based instant
messaging application called "Chat" to several networks, 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. On May 14, 2007, Facebook launched Marketplace, which lets users post
free classified ads.[90] Marketplace has been compared to Craigslist by CNET,
which points out that the major difference between the two is that listings
posted by a user on Marketplace are only seen by users that are in the same
network as that user, whereas listings posted on Craigslist can be seen by
anyone.

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. After initially giving users a choice to switch,
Facebook began migrating all users to the new version beginning in September
2008.

On December 11, 2008, it was announced that Facebook was testing a simpler
signup process. On June 13, 2009, Facebook introduced a "Usernames" feature,
whereby pages can be linked with simpler URLs such
as http://www.facebook.com/facebook as opposed to
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=20531316728.

Facebook: Social Networking Redefined 8

Many new smartphones offer access to the Facebook services
either through their web-browsers or applications. An official
Facebook application is available for both the iPhone OS and the Android
OS. Nokia and Research in Motion both provide Facebook applications for their
own mobile devices.

CRITISISM
Facebook's growth as an Internet social networking site has met criticism on a
range of issues, especially the privacy of their users, child safety, the use of
advertising scripts, data mining, and the inability to terminate accounts without
first manually deleting all the content. Many companies removed their adverts
from the site in 2008 because they were being displayed on the pages of
controversial individuals and groups. The actual content of user's pages, groups
and forums has been criticised for promoting controversial topics such as pro-
anorexia and holocaust denial. There have been several issues with censorship,
both on and off the site. The changes made by Facebook have been criticised, in
particular the new format launched in 2008 and the changes in Facebook's
Terms of Use which removed the clause detailing automatic expiry of deleted
content. Facebook has also been successfully sued several times for violation
ofintellectual property rights.

News Feed and Mini-Feed

On September 5, 2006, Facebook introduced two new features called "News
Feed" and "Mini-Feed". The first of the new features, News Feed, appears on
every Facebook member's home page, displaying recent Facebook activities of
the member's friends. The second feature, Mini-Feed, keeps a log of similar
events on each member's profile page.[9] Members can manually delete items
from their Mini-Feeds if they wish to do so, and through privacy settings can
control what is actually published in their respective Mini-Feeds.
Some Facebook members still feel that the ability to opt out of the entire News
Feed and Mini-Feed system is necessary, as evidenced by a statement from
the Students Against Facebook News Feed group, which peaked at over 740,000
members. However, according to recent news articles, members have widely
regarded the additional privacy options as an acceptable compromise.

Facebook: Social Networking Redefined 9

In September 2008, the news feed and "Wall" were
retroactively combined, reigniting privacy concerns over the
"news feed" feature by publicly posting previously hidden actions.
In December 2009, Facebook removed the privacy controls for the News Feed
and Mini Feed. This change made it impossible for users to control what
activities are published on their walls (and consequently the public news
feed). Since users can post anything they want, this allowed people to post
things that could target certain groups of people or abuse other users through
other means.

Complaint from CIPPIC

The Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic (CIPPIC), per Director
Phillipa Lawson, filed a 35-page complaint with the Office of the Privacy
Commissioner against Facebook on May 31, 2008, based on 22 breaches of the
Canadian Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act
(Pipeda). University of Ottawa law students Lisa Feinberg, Harley Finkelstein,
and Jordan Plener, initiated the "minefield of privacy invasion" suit.
Facebook's Chris Kelly contradicted the claims, saying that: "We've reviewed
the complaint and found it has serious factual errors — most notably its neglect
of the fact that almost all Facebook data is willingly shared by users. Assistant
Privacy Commissioner Elizabeth Denham released a report of her findings on
July 16, 2009. In it, she found that several of CIPPIC's complaints were well-
founded. Facebook agreed to comply with some, but not all, of her
recommendations. Specifically, the Assistant Commissioner found that
Facebook did not do enough to ensure users granted meaningful consent for the
disclosure of personal information to third parties and did not place adequate
safeguards to ensure unauthorized access by third party developers to personal
information.[15]

Data mining
There have been some concerns expressed regarding the use of Facebook as a
means of surveillance and data mining. According to the policy, "We may use
information about you that we collect from other sources, including but not
limited to newspapers and Internet sources such as blogs, instant messaging
services and other users of Facebook, to supplement your profile. However,
some features—such as AIM away-message harvesting and campus newspaper

Facebook: Social Networking Redefined 10

monitoring—have been dropped, even though the clause still
remains in the policy as of November 26, 2008. The possibility
of data mining by private individuals unaffiliated with Facebook remains open,
as evidenced by the fact that two MIT students were able to download, using an
automated script, over 70,000 Facebook profiles from four schools (MIT, NYU,
the University of Oklahoma, and Harvard) as part of a research project on
Facebook privacy published on December 14, 2005.

A second clause that warranted criticism from some users reserved the right to
sell users' data to private companies, stating "We may share your information
with third parties, including responsible companies with which we have a
relationship." This concern was addressed by spokesman Chris Hughes who
said "Simply put, we have never provided our users' information to third party
companies, nor do we intend to." Facebook eventually removed this clause from
their privacy policy when it was updated on November 26, 2008.”
Third party applications have access to almost all user information and
"Facebook does not screen or approve Platform Developers and cannot control
how such Platform Developers use any personal information.
In the United Kingdom, the Trades Union Congress (TUC) has encouraged
employers to allow their staff to access Facebook and other social networking
sites from work, provided they proceed with caution.
In September 2007, Facebook drew a fresh round of criticism after it began
allowing non-members to search for users, with the intent of opening limited
"public profiles" up to search engines such as Google in the following
months. Facebook's privacy settings, however, allow users to block their
profiles from search engines.
Concerns were also raised on the BBC's Watchdog programme in October 2007
when Facebook was shown to be an easy way in which to collect an individual's
personal information in order to facilitate identity theft. However, there is
barely any personal information presented to non-friends - if users leave the
privacy controls on their default settings, the only personal information visible

Facebook: Social Networking Redefined 11

to a non-friend is a name, profile picture, list of networks, and
a list of friends.
In addition, a New York Times article in February 2008 pointed out that
Facebook does not actually provide a mechanism for users to close their
accounts, and thus raises the concern that private user data will remain
indefinitely on Facebook's servers.

Inability to voluntarily terminate accounts

Facebook has historically allowed users to deactivate their accounts but not
actually remove account content from its servers. A Facebook representative
explained to a student from the University of British Columbia that users had to
clear their own accounts by manually deleting all of the content including wall
posts, friends, and groups. A New York Times article noted the issue, and also
raised a concern that emails and other private user data remain indefinitely on
Facebook's servers. Facebook subsequently began permanently deleting
accounts on special request.

Memorials
A notable ancillary effect of social networking websites, particularly Facebook,
is the ability for participants to mourn publicly for a deceased individual. On
Facebook, students often leave messages of sadness, grief, or hope on the
individual's page, transforming it into a sort of public book of condolences. This
particular phenomenon has been documented at a number of
schools. Previously, Facebook had stated that its official policy on the matter
was to remove the profile of the deceased one month after he or she has died,
preventing the profile from being used for communal mourning, citing privacy
concerns. Due to user response, Facebook amended its policy. Its new policy is
to place deceased members' profiles in a "memorialization state".

Facebook: Social Networking Redefined 12

Additional usage of Facebook as a tool of remembrance is
expressed in group memberships on the site. Now that groups
are community-wide and available among all networks, many users create
Facebook groups not only to remember a deceased friend or individual but also
as a source of support in response to an occurrence such as the September 11,
2001 attacks or theVirginia Tech massacre in April 2007.
Such memorial groups have also raised legal issues. Notably, on January 1,
2008, one such memorial group posted the identity of
murdered Toronto teenager Stefanie Rengel, whose family had not yet given
the Toronto Police Service their consent to release her name to the media, and
the identities of her accused killers, in defiance of Canada's Youth Criminal
Justice Actwhich prohibits publishing the names of under-age criminals. 

Cencorship Controversy
Search function
Facebook's search function has been accused of preventing users from searching
for certain terms. Michael Arrington of TechCrunch has written about
Facebook's possible censorship of "Ron Paul" as a search term. MoveOn.org's
Facebook group for organizing protests against privacy violations could for a
time not be found by searching. The very word privacy was also
restricted. Facebook claimed that the problem was a bug.

Disabling of sexual orientation search

As of spring 2009, it is no longer possible to search a network based on sexual
orientation. As a result, searchers are no longer able to find gays, lesbians,
bisexuals, asexuals or heterosexuals on Facebook, even within their own
network.

Breastfeeding photos
Facebook has been criticized for removing photos uploaded by mothers of
themselves breastfeeding their babies and also canceling their Facebook
accounts. Although photos that show an exposed breast violate Facebook's
decency code, even when the baby covered the nipple, Facebook took several

Facebook: Social Networking Redefined 13

days to respond to calls to deactivate a paid advertisement for a
dating service that used a photo of a topless model.
The breastfeeding photos controversy continued following public protests and
the growth in the online membership in the Facebook group titled "Hey,
Facebook, breastfeeding is not obscene! (Official petition to Facebook)."

Facebook: Social Networking Redefined 14

Student related Issues
Student privacy concerns
Students who post illegal or otherwise inappropriate material have faced
disciplinary action from their universities, including expulsion. While others
posting libelous content relating to faculty have also faced disciplinary action.

Integration of high school users

Following the February 27, 2006, integration of the high school and college
levels, some college users began creating groups critical of the decision. Users
from the two branches could fully interact only if they were friends and some
separation did remain. The site also released the Limited Profile privacy settings
and advised students on how to hide pictures and other features from others.
However, some college users felt that the site's former exclusivity had been key
to their experience. Some expressed concerns about the ability of unknown
persons to create accounts on the high school version (since university
addresses are not required) and use them to access the college version; by
default, strangers can message and view users' friends through a simple global
search. Some made predictions that the site would soon face issues
with spammers, stalkers, or worse, and worried this would result in
controversies similar to the bad publicity seen by MySpace.

Adding to the controversy around opening Facebook to younger students, four

high school students at Birchmount Park Collegiate Institute in Toronto, Ontario
were arrested in a Facebook-related protest on March 23, 2007. Earlier that
week, five students had been suspended for posting criticisms about a vice-
principal of their school. About a dozen friends of the suspendees had decided
to protest in front of the school, but that handful soon grew to over 100 students
protesting for free speech. Local law enforcement authorities were called, and a
scuffle ensued, resulting in the arrest of four students. Users under eighteen
years old have been banned from Facebook for not being in a high school
group. This discourages homeschoolers from using Facebook. Facebook does
not actively enforce the age limit, resulting in children under the age of 13 using
it. This has raised concerns in regard to the safety of children.

Facebook: Social Networking Redefined 15

Effect on higher education
On January 23, 2006, The Chronicle of Higher Education continued an ongoing
national debate on social networks with an opinion piece written by Michael
Bugeja, director of the Journalism School at Iowa State University, entitled
"Facing the Facebook". Bugeja, author of the Oxford University
Press text Interpersonal Divide (2005), quoted representatives of the American
Association of University Professors and colleagues in higher education to
document the distraction of students using Facebook and other social networks
during class and at other venues in the wireless campus. Bugeja followed up on
January 26, 2007 in The Chronicle with an article titled "Distractions in the
Wireless Classroom, quoting several educators across the country who were
banning laptops in the classroom. Similarly, organisations such as the National
Association for Campus Activities, the Association for Education in Journalism
and Mass Communication, and others have hosted seminars and presentations to
discuss ramifications of students' use of Facebook and other social networking
systems.

The EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative has also released a brief pamphlet entitled

"7 Things You Should Know About Facebook" aimed at higher education
professionals that "describes what [Facebook] is, where it is going, and why it
matters to teaching and learning".

The most recent research on Facebook in higher education shows that there are
educational benefits to student Facebook use, including improving engagement
which is related to student retention. Furthermore, using technologies such as
Facebook to connect with others can help college students be less depressed and
cope with feelings of loneliness and homesickness. According to a case study,
students surveyed had on average lower grades if they used Facebook than
students who did not use Facebook.

Facebook: Social Networking Redefined 16

CUSTOMIZATION AND SECURITY
Facebook is often compared to MySpace but one significant difference between
the two sites is the level of customization. MySpace allows users to decorate
their profiles using HTML andCSS while Facebook allows only plain text.
However, a number of users have tweaked their profiles by using "hacks." On
February 24, 2006, a pair of users exploited a cross-site scripting(XSS) hole on
the profile page and created a fast-spreading worm, loading a custom CSS file
on infected profiles that made them look like MySpace profiles.

On April 19, 2006, a user was able to embed an iframe into his profile and load
a custom off-site page featuring a streaming video and a flash
game from Drawball. He has since been banned from Facebook.

On March 26, 2006, a user was able to embed JavaScript in the "Hometown"

field of his profile which imported his custom CSS.

In each case, Facebook quickly patched the holes, typically within hours of their
discovery. However, in July 2007, Adrienne Felt, an undergraduate student at
the University of Virginia, discovered a cross-site scripting (XSS) hole in the
Facebook Platform that could inject JavaScript into profiles. She used the hole
to import custom CSS and demonstrate how the platform could be used to
violate privacy rules or create a worm. This hole took Facebook two and a half
weeks to fix.

Facebook: Social Networking Redefined 17

NEW FACEBOOK

September 2008 upgrade

In September 2008, Facebook permanently moved its users to what they termed
the "New Facebook" or Facebook 3.0. This version contained several different
features and a complete layout redesign. Between July and September, users
had been given the option to use the new Facebook in place of the original
design, or to return to the old design.
Facebook's decision to migrate their users was met with some controversy in
their community. Several groups were started opposing the decision, some with
over a million users.

October 2009
In October 2009, Facebook redesigned the news feed so that the user could view
all types of things that their friends were involved with. In a statement, they
said,
Stories your applications generate can show up in both views. The best way for
your stories to appear in the News Feed filter is to create stories that are highly
engaging, as high quality, interesting stories are most likely to garner likes and
comments by the user's friends.

This redesign was explained as:

News Feed will focus on popular content, determined by an algorithm based on
interest in that story, including the number of times an item is liked or
commented on. Live Feed will display all recent stories from a large number of
a user's friends.
Immediately, the redesign was met with criticism with users, many who did not
like the amount of information that was coming at them. This was also
compounded by the fact that people couldn't select what they saw. Immediately,
groups formed, one getting over 1,600,000 within the first two weeks of the
update. The change was also mentioned on an episode of Hungry Beast that
aired that month.

Facebook: Social Networking Redefined 18

November/December 2009
In November 2009, Facebook issued a proposed new privacy policy, and
adopted it unaltered in December 2009. They combined this with a rollout of
new privacy settings. This new policy declared certain information, including
"lists of friends", to be "publicly available", with no privacy settings; it was
previously possible to keep access to this information restricted. Due to this
change, the users who had set their "list of friends" as private were forced to
make it public without even being informed, and the option to make it private
again was removed. This was protested by many people and privacy
organizations such as the EFF.
The change was described by Gawker as Facebook's Great Betrayal, forcing
user profile photos and friends lists to be visible in users' public listing, even for
users who had explicitly chosen to hide this information previously, and making
photos and personal information public unless users were proactive about
limiting access. For example, a user whose "Family and Relationships"
information was set to be viewable by "Friends Only" would default to being
viewable by "Everyone" (publicly viewable). That is, information such as the
gender of partner you are interested in, relationship status, and family relations
became viewable to those even without a facebook account. Facebook was
heavily criticized for both reducing its users' privacy and pushing users to
remove privacy protections. Groups criticizing the changes include
the Electronic Frontier Foundation and American Civil Liberties Union. Mark
Zuckerberg, CEO, had hundreds of personal photos and his events calendar
exposed in the transition. Facebook has since re-included an option to hide
friends lists from being viewable; however, this preference is no longer listed
with other privacy settings, and the former ability to hide the friends list from
selected people among one's own friends is no longer possible. Journalist Dan
Gillmor deleted his Facebook account over the changes, stating he "can’t
entirely trust Facebook" and Heidi Moore at Slate's Big Money temporarily
deactivated her account as a "conscientious objection". Other journalists have
been similarly disappointed and outraged by the changes. Defending the
changes, founder Mark Zuckerberg said "we decided that these would be the
social norms now and we just went for it". The Office of the Privacy

Facebook: Social Networking Redefined 19

Commissioner of Canada launched another investigation into
Facebook's privacy policies after complaints following the
change.

May 2010
In May 2010 Facebook quietly implemented several changes, including a
feature available before December 2009 to allow users to limit the visibility of
friends lists. The changes included an option not available before to make the
friends list visible to the user only ("Only me" as a "Custom" setting, although
before December 2009 it had been possible to achieve the same aim by
customising the settings to exclude all individual friends from seeing the list). In
practice, the functionality restored, combined with the "lists" feature, can force
friends to view only the "mutual friends" of the list in which a particular friend
is included. As of May 5, 2010 the Privacy Policy still indicated that the last
revision was implemented on April 22, 2010.

In late May 2010, the Norwegian Consumer Council filed a complaint to the
Data Inspectorate on Facebook and Zynga's breaches of the Data Protection
Act [3]. The Consumer Council is previously known for initiating the case
against Apple's iTunes which eventually led to the dismantling of Apple's DRM
practices.

Facebook: Social Networking Redefined 20

WORKING OF FACEBOOK
In Facebook, you are able to create a homepage of your own and network with
millions of users all round the world. Once you become a member, you are
permitted to send an invitation to friends and relatives to join your network.
Once they have accepted your invitation, you can suggest the names of people
in your network to your newly added friends. Whenever you visit your
homepage, you can change and update your current status and share whatever
you are doing with your friends. The best part is your friends would be able to
see whatever you feel and write the next time they log in. Moreover, they can
write a comment and send a private message on what they feel about whatever
you write. Besides these, you can share website links and videos, and take a
look at the links, videos and photos which your friend have posted. These can
be seen only by your selected group of friends. Group creation is also possible
and if you want to know how, you should read the article on how to create a
group on Facebook.

Signing Up for Facebook

The first step to do while you are thinking of how does Facebook work, is to
open the website; it's free and anyone can join. You just need to sign in your
details like your name, birthday, gender, besides your email address. The email
address is not published and is only used to forward any messages which other
people may have sent you. Once you have filled all the information, click on the
sign-up icon. A security code appears (used to prevent spamming softwares)
and you have to enter that code. You'd get a confirmation of your account in the
email address you have provided.

How to Start Connecting With People

A confirmation link would be sent to your email address. You need to click on
that link and once you do that, you'll be directed to the 'Getting Started' page of
Facebook. If anyone has been on the lookout for you, their names would appear,
and you can opt to add them in your friends list. 

Facebook: Social Networking Redefined 21

Search for Your Friends

Facebook has been programmed to ask you whether you want it to search your
email list. If you opt to go ahead and allow Facebook to search for people, it
would search for those people who are on your email list and check if they are
on Facebook. If there is anyone in Facebook who is also there in your email list,
the website would suggest you those names. You can opt to add them in the list
your friends list and you don't need to include anyone whom you don't want to
include.

Start Networking

If you know friends from your school or your colleagues who are already on
Facebook, you can add them by first searching for them and then sending an
invitation. They need to accept your invite and once accepted you can start
networking with them by sending messages, pictures, videos, etc. Moreover,
Facebook gives you the option to add or ignore a person from being your friend.
Once these steps are done, it means you have successfully created a Facebook
profile and these are some of the initial steps for figuring out 'how does
Facebook work'.

Keep Updating

Once you have created a profile, you can choose to keep it updated so that
people know what you have been up to and whatever you have been thinking.
You can add photos and share information which you want. You can also set
preferences to as much or as little information you want to share with people
who are not in your list of friends.

So with Facebook, you can connect with your friends and acquaintances and it
depends on you whom to choose or ignore. Once you know how does Facebook
work, you can enjoy and have a lot of fun with it. You can also play a few
games, so go ahead and try it.

Facebook: Social Networking Redefined 22

PROS & CONS
Downtime
Facebook has had a number of outages and downtime large enough to draw
some media attention. A 2007 outage resulted in a security hole that enabled
some users to read other users' personal mail. In 2008, the site was inaccessible
for about a day, from many locations in many countries. In spite of these
occurrences, a report issued by Pingdom found that Facebook had less
downtime in 2008 than most social networking websites. On September 16,
2009, Facebook started having major problems with loading when people
signed in. On September 18, 2009, Facebook went down for the second time in
2009, the first time being when a group of hackers were deliberately trying to
drown out a political speaker who had social networking problems from
continuously speaking against the Iranian election results. In October 2009, an
unspecified number of Facebook users were unable to access their accounts for
over three weeks.

Pros

 Keep Track Of Friends: Facebook tells you when your friends are

updating their profiles, adding to their blogs or have some other news on
their website.
 Photo Album: Add photos and photo albums to your Facebook profile.
 Blog Merge: Use the blog feature to create your own simple blog or you
can merge your existing blog right into Facebook's blog.
 Excellent Search and Browse: Search and browse for people on
Facebook using just about any search features.
Cons

 Profile Privacy: Even if profile privacy is restricted, it is still very easy

for other people to access profiles. There is always the chance that a
predator will find information and use it to cause harm
 Tagging: Friends may tag you in pictures or videos that you'd rather not
have others see

Facebook: Social Networking Redefined 23

 NEVER ENDING JOURNEY OF FACEBOOK
 Mr Zuckerberg was just 24 when he created Facebook
 Born in 1984, Mark Zuckerberg is an entrepreneur who, along with two
of his fellow students, founded Facebook while still studying at Harvard.
 Took 2 weeks to create the website and community called Facebook

 Launched in 2004 as a college project from Harvard dorm room

 Within 24 hours, 1,200 Harvard students had signed up in 2004

 At the end of 2005, Facebook hit the UK and today the site is translated
across 35 languages with another 60 in development.

 150 million users worldwide compared to 130 million users of MySpace

 As a matter fact, Facebook was having 175 Million users just over a year
ago. 

 Everyday more than 15 million users update their status

 More than 70% of users are outside the United States

 The average user has 120 friends on the site

 completed 500 Million mark of Active users by Feb 10

  If things will go smoothly, Facebook will reach 600 Million mark by end
of this year.

 Expected to cross 1 billion mark for revenue by end of this year

Facebook: Social Networking Redefined 24

 Recent data shows that users are spending two times
more time on Facebook  than the new micro blogging platform i.e. Twitter.

 As per the data collected from Google Ad Planner, Average visit per
visitor on Facebook is 34 which means each visitor is visiting the site 34 times
in a month. Single visitor is spending 23:20 minutes on Facebook exploring
different options over there. At the same time, on Twitter every visitor is giving
9 visits on average and spend average time of 11:50 minutes

 Google Ad Planner for Facebook

Google Ad Planner for Twitter

Facebook: Social Networking Redefined 25

 No. 1 ranking in Social Networking Scenario-

Facebook: Social Networking Redefined 26

So This was a small yet huge Journey of Facebook into competitive world.

Facebook: Social Networking Redefined 27

Facebook: Social Networking Redefined 28