Social networking service

A social networking service is an online service, platform, or site that focuses on

building and reflecting of social networks or social relations among people, e.g., who
share interests and/or activities. A social network service essentially consists of a
representation of each user (often a profile), his/her social links, and a variety of
additional services. Most social network services are web based and provide means
for users to interact over the internet, such as e-mail and instant messaging. Online
community services are sometimes considered as a social network service, though
in a broader sense, social network service usually means an individual-centered
service whereas online community services are group-centered. Social networking
sites allow users to share ideas, activities, events, and interests within their
individual networks.

The main types of social networking services are those which contain category
places (such as former school year or classmates), means to connect with friends
(usually with self-description pages) and a recommendation system linked to trust.
Popular methods now combine many of these, with Facebook and Twitter widely
used worldwide, Nexopia (mostly in Canada); Bebo, VKontakte, Hi5, Hyves (mostly
in The Netherlands), Draugiem.lv (mostly in Latvia), StudiVZ (mostly in Germany),
iWiW (mostly in Hungary), Tuenti (mostly in Spain), Nasza-Klasa (mostly in Poland),
Decayenne, Tagged, XING, Badoo and Skyrock in parts of Europe; Orkut and Hi5 in
South America and Central America; and Friendster, Mixi, Multiply, Orkut, Wretch,
renren and Cyworld in Asia and the Pacific Islands and Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn
and Orkut in India.

There have been attempts to standardize these services to avoid the need to
duplicate entries of friends and interests (see the FOAF standard and the Open
Source Initiative).

Although some of the largest social networks were founded on the notion of
digitizing real world connections, many networks focus on categories from books
and music to non-profit business to motherhood as ways to provide both services
and community to individuals with shared interests.

History
The potential for computer networking to facilitate new forms of computer-mediated
social interaction was suggested early on. Efforts to support social networks via
computer-mediated communication were made in many early online services,
including Usenet, ARPANET, LISTSERV, and bulletin board services (BBS). Many
prototypical features of social networking sites were also present in online services
such as America Online, Prodigy, and CompuServe.
Early social networking on the World Wide Web began in the form of generalized
online communities such as Theglobe.com (1995), Geocities (1994) and Tripod.com
(1995). Many of these early communities focused on bringing people together to
interact with each other through chat rooms, and encouraged users to share
personal information and ideas via personal webpages by providing easy-to-use
publishing tools and free or inexpensive webspace. Some communities - such as
Classmates.com - took a different approach by simply having people link to each
other via email addresses. In the late 1990s, user profiles became a central feature
of social networking sites, allowing users to compile lists of "friends" and search for
other users with similar interests.
New social networking methods were developed by the end of the 1990s, and many
sites began to develop more advanced features for users to find and manage
friends. This newer generation of social networking sites began to flourish with the
emergence of Makeoutclub in 2000, followed by Friendster in 2002, and soon
became part of the Internet mainstream. Friendster was followed by MySpace and
LinkedIn a year later, and finally, Bebo. Attesting to the rapid increase in social
networking sites' popularity, by 2005, MySpace was reportedly getting more page
views than Google.
Facebook, launched in 2004, has since become the largest social networking site in
the world.
Today, it is estimated that there are now over 200 active sites using a wide variety
of social networking models.
Emerging trends in social networking

As the increase in popularity of social networking is on a constant rise, new uses for
the technology are constantly being observed.
At the forefront of emerging trends in social networking sites is the concept of "real-
time web" and "location based." Real time allows users to contribute content, which
is then broadcasted as it is being uploaded - the concept is analogous to live radio
and television broadcasts. Twitter set the trend for "real time" services, where users
can broadcast to the world what they are doing, or what is on their minds within a
140 character limit. Facebook followed suit with their "Live Feed" where users'
activities are streamed as soon as it happens.While Twitter focuses on words, Clixtr,
another real time service, focuses on group photo sharing where users can update
their photo streams with photos while at an event. Friends and nearby users can
contribute their own photos and comments to that event stream, thus contributing
to the "real time" aspect of broadcasting photos and comments as it is being
uploaded. In the location based social networking space, Foursquare gained
popularity as it allowed for users to "check-in" to places that they are frequenting at
that moment. Gowalla is another such service which functions in much the same
way that Foursquare does, leveraging the GPS in phones to create a location-based
user experience. Clixtr, though in the real time space, is also a location based social
networking site since events created by users are automatically geotagged, and
users can view events occurring nearby through the Clixtr iPhone app. Recently,
Yelp announced its entrance into the location based social networking space
through check-ins with their mobile app; whether or not this becomes detrimental to
Foursquare or Gowalla is yet to be seen as it is still considered a new space in the
internet technology industry.
One popular use for this new technology is social networking between businesses.
Companies have found that social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter
are great ways to build their brand image. According to Jody Nimetz, author of
Marketing Jive, there are five major uses for businesses and social media: to create
brand awareness, as an online reputation management tool, for recruiting, to learn
about new technologies and competitors, and as a lead gen tool to intercept
potential prospects. These companies are able to drive traffic to their own online
sites while encouraging their consumers and clients to have discussions on how to
improve or change products or services.
One other use that is being discussed is the use of Social Networks in the Science
communities. Julia Porter Liebeskind et al. have published a study on how New
Biotechnology Firms are using social networking sites to share exchanges in
scientific knowledge. They state in their study that by sharing information and
knowledge with one another, they are able to "increase both their learning and their
flexibility in ways that would not be possible within a self-contained hierarchical
organization." Social networking is allowing scientific groups to expand their
knowledge base and share ideas, and without these new means of communicating
their theories might become "isolated and irrelevant".
Social networks are also being used by teachers and students as a communication
tool. Because many students are already using a wide-range of social networking
sites, teachers have begun to familiarize themselves with this trend and are now
using it to their advantage. Teachers and professors are doing everything from
creating chat-room forums and groups to extend classroom discussion to posting
assignments, tests and quizzes, to assisting with homework outside of the
classroom setting. Social networks are also being used to foster teacher-parent
communication. These sites make it possible and more convenient for parents to
ask questions and voice concerns without having to meet face-to-face.
Social networks are being used by activists as a means of low-cost grassroots
organizing. Extensive use of an array of social networking sites enabled organizers
of the 2009 National Equality March to mobilize an estimated 200,000 participants
to march on Washington with a cost savings of up to 85% per participant over
previous methods.
The use of online social networks by libraries is also an increasingly prevalent and
growing tool that is being used to communicate with more potential library users, as
well as extending the services provided by individual libraries.
A final rise in social network use is being driven by college students using the
services to network with professionals for internship and job opportunities. Many
studies have been done on the effectiveness of networking online in a college
setting, and one notable one is by Phipps Arabie and Yoram Wind published in
Advances in Social Network Analysis.

Social network hosting service

A social network hosting service is a web hosting service that specifically hosts the
user creation of web-based social networking services, alongside related
applications. Such services are also known as vertical social networks due to the
creation of SNSes which cater to specific user interests and niches; like larger,
interest-agnostic SNSes, such niche networking services may also possess the
ability to create increasingly-niche groups of users.

Business model
Few social networks currently charge money for membership. In part, this may be
because social networking is a relatively new service, and the value of using them
has not been firmly established in customers' minds.[citation needed] Companies
such as MySpace and Facebook sell online advertising on their site. Their business
model is based upon large membership count, and charging for membership would
be counterproductive. Some believe that the deeper information that the sites have
on each user will allow much better targeted advertising than any other site can
currently provide.
Social networks operate under an autonomous business model, in which a social
network's members serve dual roles as both the suppliers and the consumers of
content. This is in contrast to a traditional business model, where the suppliers and
consumers are distinct agents. Revenue is typically gained in the autonomous
business model via advertisements, but subscription-based revenue is possible
when membership and content levels are sufficiently high.

Growth of Social Networking

Social Networking- the Revenue Generator

While doing some research on social networking domain, found some interesting
figures to share, which will surely drive the social networking development
companies.
Market at a glance-

The market for the internet and social networking communities is estimated at
about USD 1500M this year.

Social network/Community development and enhancement individually by 2006

stood at USD 700M and is estimated to touch USD 4000M by 2010.

The top 3 player in the market are Myspace, Facebook and Bebo with market shares
80.74%, 10.32%, 1.18% respectively.( data is based on custom category of 20 of
the leading social networking websites ranked by market share of visits, which is
the percentage of traffic to the site, based on Hitwise sample of 10 million US
Internet users. The percentages represent the market share of visits among the
websites within the custom category.)
Growth Path
Social networking sites are growing 47% year on year increasing from an audience
of 46.8 million to 68.8 million in April 2006.

Social networking sites are the reality of the Internet; the content is relatively
inexpensive for publishers to produce.

It will become more ingrained in mainstream sites, just as reality TV shows.

MySpace.com, the top Social Networking site of all in terms of number of registered
users, saw a staggering 367% increase. The graph is still increasing with many
more Social Networking players jumping in; the web scene seems set just right for
Social Networking.

The social networking sites that are seeing strong growth have developed a unique
online presence which is refreshed by user generated content. This promotes
ongoing consumers interest and visitor loyalty. The market share of Internet visits
to the top 20 social networking websites grew by 11.5 percent from January to
February 2007, to account for 6.5 percent of all Internet visits in February 2007.

Mobile Social networking- The next Destination

Social networking is going mobile and is poised for spectacular growth over the next
five years, mobile social communities will be attracting members in swarms, more
than tripling in size from 50 millions to 174 millions by 2011.
For the moment, MySpace and Facebook are hot. News Corp. paid 0 million last year
for MySpace as part of a .3 billion Internet acquisition spree. Facebook just received
an additional million in venture capital.

Both companies are planning to extend their reach beyond the computer screen to
cell phones.
Cingular Wireless, Sprint Nextel and Verizon Wireless are starting a service that will
allow users to post messages on Facebook’s home pages or search for other users’
phone numbers and email addresses from a cell phone.

MySpace has a pact with Helio, a wireless joint venture between SK Telecom and
Earthlink, which will allow users to send photos and update their blogs or profiles by
cell phone.

The Laws of Social Networking Sites

1. Legal Liability of Users

Social networking sites enable users to publish content. Users may not consider
themselves content publishers (especially when they write mundane/brief postings),
but they are. Publishing content can create a number of legal issues, such as
defamation (making harmful false statements about someone else) or copyright
infringement. In this respect, social networking sites don't create any "new" legal
issues; users who publish content can be liable for their publication choices just like
other content publishers, such as newspapers or magazines.
Users often believe that they have some degree of anonymity for their statements
and actions on social networking sites, and in some cases they try to hide their true
identity. However, users' identities often can be easily revealed through legal
processes. Sometimes, users suffer adverse consequences due to their social
networking site, such as school discipline, foregone job offers or employment
termination.

2. Legal Liability of Social Networking Site Vendors

Congress generally protects site vendors from legal liability for user-supplied
content. 17 USC 512(c) says that vendors generally aren't liable for user-supplied
copyright infringing content unless the copyright owner notifies the vendor and the
vendor fails to promptly remove the infringing content. 47 USC 230(c)(1) says that
vendors aren't liable under any circumstance for other types of legal claims based
on users' content (with minor exceptions).
Some legislators are concerned about the presence of sexual predators on social
networking sites, and they have proposed a variety of laws designed to restrict
predator access to the sites.
The Law of Social Networking Sites

Statutes

17 USC 512(c): a website isn't liable for hosting user copyright-infringing content
unless the website receives a notice from the copyright owner and fails to promptly
remove the content.

47 USC 230(c)(1): "No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be

treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another
information content provider."

Virginia HB 2749/SB 1071 (enacted April 10, 2007): sexual offenders must
register their email addresses and IM screen names, and the police may set up a
mechanism for online businesses to check these registries.
Selected Cases

A.B. v. State, 863 N.E. 2d 1212 (Ind. Ct. App. April 9, 2007) (student posting
obscenity-laden comments to a fake MySpace page isn't guilty of criminal
harassment because comments were protected political speech).
Doe v. MySpace, Inc., 474 F. Supp. 2d 843 (W.D. Texas Feb. 13, 2007) (due to 47
USC 230, MySpace isn't liable for sexual assaults committed by users against other
users).
The Football Association Premier League Ltd v. YouTube, Inc., 1:07-cv-03582-UA
(S.D.N.Y. complaint filed May 4, 2007) (can copyright owners bypass the 512(c)
notification scheme?)
J.S. v. Blue Mountain School District, 2007 WL 954245 (M.D. Pa. March 29, 2007)
(school principal can suspend eighth grader who posted obscenity-laden fake
MySpace page in the principal's name).
Layshock ex rel. Layshock v. Hermitage School District, 412 F. Supp. 2d 502 (W.D.
Pa. January 31, 2006) (school can punish student for creating a fake MySpace page
in the principal's name).
Viacom International, Inc. v. YouTube, Inc. (S.D.N.Y. complaint filed March 13, 2007)
(does YouTube qualify for 512(c) safe harbor for user-posted copyright infringing
material).

Proposed Federal Statutes

Deleting Online Predators Act of 2007 (H.R. 1120/S. 49) (requiring

schools/libraries receiving federal funds to block minors' unrestricted access to
social networking sites and chatrooms).

KIDS Act of 2007 (H.R. 719/S. 431) (requiring sexual predators to register their
email addresses and other screen names and enabling social networking sites to
access those electronic identifiers so that the sexual predators can be blocked from
registering with the social networking sites).

H. Res. 224 (resolution requesting that social networking sites proactively remove
"enemy propaganda from their sites," such as videos made by terrorists).

Understanding the Legal Issues for Social Networking Sites and Their
Users

It seems that everyone is a member of a social network these days. Whether it's
your kids on MySpace and Facebook, or your colleagues on LinkedIn, people are
taking advantage of these new online meeting spaces to make friends,
communicate and expand business opportunities.
But what are the legal obligations that arise out of the use of social networks, both
for the user and the sites themselves? The law in this area is still relatively
unsettled, but some recent developments have created intriguing precedent, and
legislation in motion promises to keep things interesting for the foreseeable future.

Laws Pertaining to Social Networking Sites

The two most important statutes to consider when discussing the legal liabilities
and obligations of the social networking sites are Section 512(c) of the Digital
Millenium Copyright Act and Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.
Section 512
Section 512(c) removes liability for copyright infringement from websites that allow
users to post content, as long as the site has a mechanism in place whereby the
copyright owner can request the removal of infringing content. The site must also
not receive a financial benefit directly attributable to the infringing activity.
This creates an interesting problem for most sites that allow users to post music,
photos or video. For instance, several content owners have sued YouTube, the video
sharing site, for copyright infringement, and YouTube has claimed a 512(c) defense.
Since YouTube is a subsidiary of Google, its future business plan most likely involves
serving advertisements according to the kind of video that users view or search for.
If the site does this, however, it could amount to a financial benefit directly
attributable to the sharing of copyrighted materials.
Those cases are currently before federal district courts, and their resolution will
greatly impact the services that social networks offer, as well as their business
models.

Section 230
Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act immunizes website from any
liability resulting from the publication of information provided by another. This
usually arises in the context of defamation, but several courts have expanded it to
cover other sorts of claims as well.
Thus, if a user posts defamatory or otherwise illegal content, Section 230 shields
the social network provider from any liability arising out of the publication. Websites
that, in whole or in part, create or develop contested information, on the other
hand, are deemed "content providers" that do not benefit from the protections of
Section 230.
A recent 9th Circuit opinion has called the section's broad coverage into question,
and created uncertainty for social networking sites that have relied on Section 230
to protect them from claims relating to the content that their users create.
That case, Fair Housing Council of San Fernando Valley v. Roommates.com, LLC,
began when two fair housing groups sued the website Roommates.com, alleging
that Roommates.com's roommate networking service violated the Fair Housing Act.
The district court found that the website qualified for Section 230 immunity and
entered judgment for the website without reaching the question of whether the site
did indeed violate the FHA. On appeal, the Ninth Circuit reversed and remanded for
a trial on the merits.
A divided Ninth Circuit panel found that the website created or developed
information on the site in two ways: First, by creating the questions that users
answered when creating their profiles. Second, by channeling or filtering the profiles
according to the answers to those questions.
The court's second justification is fairly controversial, and goes against the widely
established precedent granting a broad, robust privilege to interactive service
providers. In essence, the panel's ruling holds that, by channeling information to
users and providing search capabilities, Roommates.com has added an additional
layer of information, "meta-information" you could say, that it is at least partly
responsible for creating or developing.
The effects of this new "channeling" test could be devastating for social networking
sites, many of which operate in similar ways to Roommates.com. Sites could now
find themselves open to liability for information posted by third-parties, and this
could result in a reduction of the number of speech-related services available online
- exactly the opposite of what Congress intended when passing Section 230 in the
first place.
For example, MySpace.com attempts to restrict the ability to view underage profiles
by preventing older users from accessing them. In effect, the web site filters the
content based on answers provided during registration to ensure that only minors of
certain ages can view other profiles from that age group. This would almost
certainly qualify as meta-information under the Roommates.com decision, and
would bump MySpace out from under the protection of Section 230.
If a sexual predator give a false age on MySpace.com and then lured a victim from
the site, would MySpace then be open to claims of negligence in the publication of
the information? A federal district court in Texas recently answered that question in
the negative, but under this new decision, which carries more jurisprudential
weight, courts could swing in the opposite direction and find the web site liable.
Given that the Roommates.com decision goes against the body of established
precedent for Section 230 cases, however, it is likely that Roommates.com will ask
for an en banc review, and it is quite possible that they will prevail during that
review. Until then, however, watch for a possible deluge of plaintiffs rushing to court
in the Ninth Circuit's jurisdictions in order to sue social networking sites.
State Laws
In addition to these federal statutes, several states have enacted or proposed laws
that would create requirements for social networking sites, particularly in regards to
monitoring the presence and activities of sexual predators using the sites.
Virginia, for example, has enacted a law requiring sexual offenders to register their
email addresses and IM screen names, and allows police officer to create
mechanisms for web sites to check user information against the resulting database.
The North Carolina state senate recently passed a bill requiring that parents and
guardians register with a social networking site and verify their ages before their
children can sign up for an account. This is to counter the difficulty in verifying the
ages of minors, who usually lack credit cards or other sources of information
concerning their ages. That bill still requires approval from the North Carolina House
of Representatives.
Connecticut legislators have also proposed a bill that would require social
networking sites to verify the ages of their users and obtain parental permission for
users under 18. Under the proposed law, sites that failed to comply would be
subject to fines of $5,000 per day.
Legal Considerations for Social Networking Users
Social networking users don't enjoy any of the immunities granted to social
networking sites under the law, so they should be careful to always act
appropriately when posting messages or files to the sites.
The main areas where users can get themselves into trouble are through the
posting of defamatory content or content that infringes on intellectual property
rights.
Since no statutory immunities exist to shield users, the standard laws pertaining to
defamation and infringement apply. If a user is found to have posted defamatory
content, the user will be liable, even if the site can escape liability under Section
230. Similarly, if a user posts material that infringes on another's copyright, the user
will face liability for the infringement, despite the site's potential safe harbor under
Section 512.
The First Amendment and state constitutional free-speech provisions often come
into play in these types of defamation suits. Several of the most prominent cases
regarding user liability for material posted on social networking sites have dealt
with students suffering criminal charges or adverse consequences at their schools
as a result of allegedly defamatory, threatening or indecent messages posted on
social networking sites.
The most important of these recent student cases is a case recently decided by the
Indiana Court of Appeals, A.B. v. State. In that case, A.B., a minor, posted expletive-
filled comments on a fake MySpace page purporting to belong to A.B.'s former
middle school principal. The principal reported the site to the authorities, and A.B.
was declared a "juvenile delinquent" by a juvenile court after the judge found that
the comments constituted criminal harassment.
The Court of Appeals reversed, finding that the free-speech component of the
Indiana State Constitution protected the comments that A.B. posted. Since A.B. had
challenged the school's anti-piercing policy in her post, the court held, the comment
was political speech aimed at the principal's policies, and protected under the
Indiana Constitution.
In two other cases, Layshock v. Hermitage School District and J.S. v. Blue Mountain
School District, the students were not so lucky. In both cases, the school's
punishments against students for creating fake MySpace pages in the names of
their respective principals were upheld by federal district courts. After the Supreme
Court's decision in Frederick v. Morse - the infamous "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" case, the
decisions are unlikely to be overturned on appeal.
Also keep in mind that many states are passing laws that create obligations to
verify a user's age. Any fraud or circumvention of these requirements could have
repercussions for social networking users in addition to the usual charges of
defamation and infringement.

Comparisons and statistics of some of the Social Networking

Sites

The following chart represents the growth of various social networking sites in India
during the past year. The dark bar represents the total number of unique visitors for
a site in Nov '09 while the lighter bar represents the same number for Nov '10.

As is obvious from the chart, Facebook experienced enormous growth in India,

rising to the top spot, while previous market-leader Orkut has more or less
stagnated in this period. LinkedIn and Twitter have also managed to nearly double
their audience in a year.
While most old-time Orkut users may have migrated to Facebook, Orkut numbers
have not declined because the site is still hugely popular in Tier-II and Tier-III towns
of India.
These numbers are based on comScore data and were originally published in the
latest issue of Business Today.
The Major Players in the Social Networking Sites Market

Facebook

• Facebook keeps it’s stats page updated, and boasts over 350mm users.
Facebook, ongoing
• Facebook has announced 400mm users, Feb 5, 2010.
• Infographic on Auguts 2009 Facebook stats, including usage, size, adoption
rates by Mashable, on Feb 12.
• Facebook demonstrates growth in total number of visitors (now over Yahoo,
for second place) and a high degree of attention (time on site) “Facebook has
surged past Yahoo as the number two most popular site in the U.S., drawing nearly
134 Million Unique Visitors in January, 2010. It’s been two full years since we’ve
seen a shakeup at the top – In February, 2008, Google overtook Yahoo as number
one, and never looked back.” Compete, Feb 18, 2010
• Usage of casual gaming (Farmville, mafia wars) is suggested to be by moms.
A PopCap survey reports that “The PopCap study showed that 55 percent of all
social gamers in the U.S. are women, as are almost 60 percent of those in the UK.
The average age in the U.S. is 48, which is substantially older than the 38-year-old
average in the UK, and 46 percent of American social gamers are 50 or older,
compared with just 23 percent in the UK. Only 6 percent of all social gamers are age
21 or younger.” Via GigaOm, Feb 18
• Facebook visitors to other sites are apparently more sticky at least by a few
margin points: “To offer one example, 81% of visits to CNN.com in the week to
March 6, 2010 were returning visitors while 84% of visitors to CNN.com that came
from Facebook.com were returning visitors and 72% from Google News were
returning visitors.” One could argue that these Facebook users are more engaged,
or content that is recommended to them by friends is more relevant. Hitwise, March
18
• Facebook has cross the 500mm user mark, see blog post from CEO and
founder Mark Zuckerberg, July 21, 2010
• Top countries adopting Facebook: United States, UK, Indonesia, see stats
from Royal Pingdom,
August, 2010

Myspace

• Myspace has some great benefits. The ability of being able to make your
Myspace the way you want it is awesome. Even beginning computer and
Internet users can get in and create a Myspace that matches their
personality.

• Myspace has a welcoming and easy to use interface. You can easily put all
kinds of different things on your site for family and friends to view.

• You can add video, music, and plenty of pictures to your Myspace page.

• Sometimes if there is too much information, graphics, etc on a page, it can be

slow at loading. There are even times that the pages will have errors or not
open at all.
 • Myspace has been around long enough that there are many layouts, graphics
and generators that you can use in order to get the most from the look of
your page.

• Myspace has several different ways that you can meet new people to date,
have as friends etc. This is based towards all different age groups.

• You can create slide shows and much more to bring out your family and
friends the new pictures of the kids and your life.

LinkedIn

• Now has 60mm users, “Over the past year, network has seen a significant
amount of growth, especially internationally. As of last December, the network had
55 million members, so its grown by 5 million in less than two months. In October,
LinkedIn’s network’s CEO, Jeff Weiner, said in the post that half of LinkedIn’s
membership is international. ” reports Techcrunch, Feb 11
Tagged
• All data told to me by Tagged directly on March 24 by ssarner at tagged.com
• Statistics: Total Registered Users: 100 Million
• Global Monthly Unique Visitors: 16 million
• USA Monthly Unique Visitors: 6 million
• Daily Users: 3.5 million
• Monthly Page Views: 7 billion
• Attention USA (comScore) Average Minutes per Visit: 12.2 – #1 social
network
• Total Monthly Minutes: 796 Million – #3 social network
• 10 million new friend connections made everyday
• Tagged “Meet Me” application produces 40 million daily page views
• Over 100,000 user generated virtual gifts, TAGS and skins available.
• Average of 75,000 – 100,000 new daily registrants

Twitter

• Hubspot luanches a report of Twitter.com registrations and shows a decrease

in rate of adoption. There’s also useful data within the report about followers and
their behaviors based on a sample methodology. Hubspot, Jan 19, 2010.
• Sysmos launched a report about global usage of Twitter, with most adoption
in US. Interesting that the key nugget is “… the number of U.S. unique users was
50.8%, a sharp drop from 62.1% in June. This suggests the use of Twitter outside
the U.S. has experienced significant growth over the past six months.”, Jan 14th,
Sysmos. Thanks Jean in the comments for the submission.
• Data indicates that many Twitter users are not active. read “The number of
Twitter users has climbed to a lofty 75 million, but the growth rate of new users is
slowing and a lot of current Twitterers are inactive” ComputerWorld, Jan 28
• Twitter themselves finally publish numbers indicating there are 50mm tweets
created each day. ”Folks were tweeting 5,000 times a day in 2007. By 2008, that
number was 300,000, and by 2009 it had grown to 2.5 million per day. Tweets grew
1,400% last year to 35 million per day. Today, we are seeing 50 million tweets per
day—that’s an average of 600 tweets per second. (Yes, we have TPS reports.)”
Twitter, Feb 22
• Twitter co-owner Biz Stone has revealed that the site now has 105 million
registered users. He revealed the startling number at a Twitter developer
conference, aptly title Chirp, and also mentioned that 30,000 people a day are
signing up to tweet. Techradar, from Twitter, April 14

Orkut
Developed by namesake Orkut Buyokkokten, a Google software engineer, during
personal time allowed to him through his employer, Orkut is not currently a part of
Google’s product portfolio, though some day it may be.
To become an Orkut member, one has to be invited by another member. Although
feeling a little “high schoolish,” absence from Orkut doesn’t last too long.
Eventually, one of your acquaintenances is sure to join and, in turn, invite you to
join as well. Once invited, you must fill out a form where you can choose to reveal
some very detailed information about yourself: your birthday, interests, geographic
location, marital status, etc. You can even post a picture of yourself. From there,
you can ask your friends to join and maybe make some new ones too. As of now,
Orkut has no ads nor are there any dues to join. So far, the site is strictly someone’s
labor of love.

Friendster
Like with Orkut, when joining Friendster you are asked to answer some basic
questions, though Friendster’s questions are not so detailed as Orkut’s. Friendster
lives up to its name — it is more of a “meet market” for people actively seeking to
meet others rather than to simply network. Friendster does display advertisements
and sponsored links.

Yelp

• As Yelp has grown from fledgling start-up to critical mass website, serving
over 30 million visitors a month. Brainstorm tech, April 2010.
YouTube

• Find out who is creating the top YouTube videos and who is embedding them.
“The study also looked at the demographics of bloggers who embed these videos. In
general, 20-to-35-year-old bloggers embed most of the videos (57%), followed by
teenagers (20%) and bloggers over 35 (20%).” Including stats on average number
of comments, duration and other tidbits, Read Write Web, Feb 15.

Mobile, Desktop and Social Networks

• There’s a sea change in more people using social networks from mobile
devices rather than desktop clients “more people are using the mobile web to
socialize (91%) compared to the 79% of desktop users who do the same. It appears
that the mobile phone is actually a better platform for social networking than the
PC.

Social Networking Sites in the Indian Market

Social networking has become a rage in India. More than 33 million Indians — which
is roughly 84% of the country’s total internet audience — visited social networking
sites in July this year, according to the latest figures released by comScore.com.
This makes India the seventh largest market worldwide for social networking, after
the U.S., China, Germany, Russian Federation, Brazil and the U.K.
What is more interesting is the impact the social networking sites are having on the
Internet experience. According to comScore.com, “The total Indian social
networking audience grew 43 percent in the past year, more than tripling the rate
of growth of the total Internet audience in India.”
The charge is led by Twitter and Facebook, which are the current favourites of
Indians. Orkut, which was the number one social networking site in India, has
slipped to the second position.

Facebook.com has overtaken Orkut.com and become the number one social
networking site in India.

According to the latest figures released by comScore.com on Wednesday,

Facebook.com set up a scorching pace through 2009. Its unique user base soared
from 7.47 million in July 2009 to 20.87 million in July 2010 – a stunning growth of
179%.

Against this, Orkut.com could register a growth of 16% — from 17.06 million to
19.87 million during the same period.

BharatStudent.com with 4.4 million visitors climbed the podium by notching the
third spot.

Twitter.com, which was the fifth most popular social networking site, recorded an
astonishing growth of 239%.

Two Yahoo! properties — Yahoo! Pulse (3.5 million visitors) and Yahoo! Buzz (1.8
million visitors) — also made the top ten.

More than 33 million Internet users — age 15 and older in India — visited social
networking sites in July, representing 84 percent of the total Internet audience
Facebook Factsheet

About Facebook

Founded in February 2004, Facebook is a social utility that helps people

communicate more efficiently with their friends, family and coworkers. The
company develops technologies that facilitate the sharing of information through
the social graph, the digital mapping of people's real-world social connections.
Anyone can sign up for Facebook and interact with the people they know in a
trusted environment.

Product

Facebook, the product, is made up of core site functions and applications.

Fundamental features to the experience on Facebook are a person’s Home page
and Profile. The Home page includes News Feed, a personalized feed of his or her
friends updates. The Profile displays information about the individual he or she has
chosen to share, including interests, education and work background and contact
information. Facebook also includes core applications – Photos, Events, Videos,
Groups, and Pages – that let people connect and share in rich and engaging ways.
Additionally, people can communicate with one another through Chat, personal
messages, Wall posts, Pokes, or Status Updates.

Technology

Facebook is one of the most-trafficked sites in the world and has had to build
infrastructure to support this rapid growth. The company is the largest user in the
world of memcached, an open source caching system, and has one of the largest
MySQL database clusters anywhere. The site is largely written in PHP though the
engineering team developed a way to programmatically transform PHP source code
into C++ to gain performance benefits. Facebook has built a lightweight but
powerful multi-language RPC framework that seamlessly and easily ties together
infrastructure services written in any language, running on any platform. The
company has created a custom-built search engine serving millions of queries a
day, completely distributed and entirely in-memory, with real-time updates.
Facebook relies heavily on open source software and releases large pieces of its
own software infrastructure as open source.

Platform

Facebook Platform is a development platform that enables companies and

engineers to deeply integrate with the Facebook website and gain access to millions
of users through the social graph. Facebook is a part of millions of people’s lives all
around the world providing unparalleled distribution potential for applications and
the opportunity to build a business that is highly relevant to people’s lives.

Privacy, Safety and Security

Facebook has always focused on giving people control over their experience so they
can express themselves freely while knowing that their information is being shared
in the way they intend. Facebook's privacy policy is TRUSTe certified, and Facebook
provides simple and powerful tools that allow people to control what information
they share and with whom they share it. More information can be found at
http://www.facebook.com/privacy/explanation.php. From its beginning, Facebook
has worked to provide a safe and trusted environment by, for example, requiring
that people use their real names. Facebook also works with online safety experts
around the world and has established a global Safety Advisory Board that it consults
with on safety issues. More information can be found at

Funding

Round one: $500,000 from Peter Thiel, Summer 2004; Round two: $12.7 million
from Accel Partners, April 2005; Round three: $27.5 million from Greylock Partners
leading the round, Meritech Capital Partners participating, and Accel Partners and
Peter Thiel increasing their investment in the company.

Board

Members: Mark Zuckerberg, Marc Andreessen, Jim Breyer, Don Graham and Peter
Thiel; Observer: David Sze; Observer: Paul Madera

Employees
2,000+

Users
Over 500 million active (users who have returned to the site in the last 30 days)

Offices

Headquartered in Palo Alto, Calif. U.S. offices: Atlanta; Birmingham, Michigan;

Chicago; Dallas; Detroit; New York; Venice Beach, Calif.; Washington, DC; Austin
International offices: Dublin; Hamburg; Hong Kong; Hyderabad; London; Madrid;
Milan; Paris; Selangor; Singapore; Stockholm; Sydney; Tokyo; Toronto;
Statistics

People on Facebook

* More than 500 million active users

* 50% of our active users log on to Facebook in any given day
* Average user has 130 friends
* People spend over 700 billion minutes per month on Facebook

Activity on Facebook

* There are over 900 million objects that people interact with (pages, groups,
events and community pages)
* Average user is connected to 80 community pages, groups and events
* Average user creates 90 pieces of content each month
* More than 30 billion pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts,
notes, photo albums, etc.) shared each month.

Global Reach

* More than 70 translations available on the site

* About 70% of Facebook users are outside the United States
* Over 300,000 users helped translate the site through the translations
application

Platform

* Entrepreneurs and developers from more than 190 countries build with
Facebook Platform
* People on Facebook install 20 million applications every day
* Every month, more than 250 million people engage with Facebook on external
websites
* Since social plugins launched in April 2010, an average of 10,000 new websites
integrate with Facebook every day
* More than 2.5 million websites have integrated with Facebook, including over
80 of comScore's U.S. Top 100 websites and over half of comScore's Global Top 100
websites
*
Mobile

* There are more than 250 million active users currently accessing Facebook
through their mobile devices.
* People that use Facebook on their mobile devices are twice as active on
Facebook than non-mobile users.
* There are more than 200 mobile operators in 60 countries working to deploy
and promote Facebook mobile products

Timeline

2003

• October 28, 2003: Mark Zuckerberg releases Facemash, the predecessor to

Facebook. It was described as a Harvard University version of Hot or Not.

2004

• January 2004: Zuckerberg begins writing Facebook.

• January 11, 2004: Zuckerberg registers thefacebook.com domain.
• February 4, 2004: Zuckerberg launches Facebook.
• March 2004: Facebook expands to Stanford University, Dartmouth College,
Columbia University, and Yale University.
• April 13, 2004: Zuckerberg, Dustin Moskovitz, and Eduardo Saverin form
Thefacebook.com LLC, a partnership
• June 2004: Facebook receives its first investment from Peter Thiel for
US$500,000.
• June 2004: Facebook incorporates into a new company, and Sean Parker
(early employee of Napster) becomes its president.
• June 2004: Facebook moves its base of operations to Palo Alto, California.
• August 2004: To compete with growing campus-only service i2hub,
Zuckerberg launches Wirehog. It is a precursor to Facebook Platform applications.
• September 2004: ConnectU files a lawsuit against Zuckerberg and other
Facebook founders

2005

• May 26, 2005: Accel Partners invests $13 million into Facebook.
• July 19, 2005: News Corp acquires MySpace, spurring rumors about the
possible sale of Facebook to a larger media company.
• August 23, 2005: Facebook acquires Facebook.com domain for $200,000.
• September 2005: Facebook launches a high school version of the website.
2006

• 2006: A leaked cash flow statement shows that Facebook had a net loss of
$3.63 million for the 2005 fiscal year.
• March 28, 2006: A potential acquisition of Facebook is reportedly under
negotiations, for $750 million first, then later $2 billion.
• September 2006: Facebook discusses with Yahoo! about the latter possibly
acquiring the former, for $1 billion.
• September 26, 2006: Facebook is open to everyone aged 13 and over, and
with a valid email address.

2008

• June 2008: Facebook settles both lawsuits, ConnectU vs Facebook, Mark

Zuckerberg et al. and intellectual property theft, Wayne Chang et al. over The
Winklevoss Chang Group's Social Butterfly project. The settlement effectively had
Facebook acquiring ConnectU for $20 million in cash and over $1.2 million in shares,
valued at $45 million based on $15 billion company valuation.
• August 2008: Employees reportedly privately sell their shares to venture
capital firms, at a company valuation of between $3.75 billion to $5 billion.
• October 2008: Facebook sets up its international headquarters in Dublin,
Ireland.

2009

• August 2009: Facebook acquires FriendFeed.

• September 2009: Facebook claims that it has turned cash flow positive for
the first time.

2010

• February 2010: Facebook acquires Malaysian contact-importing startup

Octazen Solutions.
• April 2, 2010: Facebook announces the acquisition of photo-sharing service
called Divvyshot for an undisclosed amount.
• April 19, 2010: Facebook introduces Community Pages, which are Pages that
are populated with articles from Wikipedia.
• April 21, 2010: Facebook introduces Instant Personalization, starting with
Microsoft Docs, Yelp, and Pandora.
• June 2010: Facebook employees sell shares of the company on SecondMarket
at a company valuation of $11.5 billion.
• October 1, 2010: The Social Network, a film about the beginnings of Facebook
directed by David Fincher is released. The film is met with widespread critical
acclaim as well as commercial success; however, Mark Zuckerberg claims the film
to be a largely inaccurate account of what happened.

2011

• January 2011: $500 million is invested into Facebook for 1% of the company,
placing its worth at $50 billion.

General Features of Facebook

Chat
On April 5, 2008, Facebook pre-released Facebook Chat. As of April 23, 2008,
Facebook Chat was released to the entire Facebook user base. Users are
only able to chat with their Facebook friends and on a one-to-one basis,
although a user may chat with multiple friends simultaneously through
separate chat interfaces. Instant messaging clients that currently support
Facebook Chat include AOL Instant Messenger, eBuddy, Flock, Miranda IM,
Trillian, Empathy, Digsby, Pidgin, Adium, Nimbuzz, FIM (Windows Mobile /
Windows Phone 7), Palringo (Windows Mobile), Meebo, Tokbox as well as QIP
Infium with a Firefox plugin. Windows Live Messenger 2011 (Wave 4) can
connect to Facebook as well. Facebook Chat can also be run on the desktop
using Gabtastik, a dedicated web chat browser. Facebook Chat can also be
run on the iPhone or iPad using Facebook Chat for iPhone app. On May 13,
2008, a Facebook developer announced that they are working on XMPP
support, allowing hundreds of instant messaging clients to interoperate with
the service; this functionality became operational on February 10, 2010.
Credits
Facebook Credits
Facebook Credits are a virtual currency you can use to buy gifts, and virtual
goods in many games and applications on the Facebook platform. As of July
2010, users of Facebook can purchase Facebook credits in Australian Dollars,
British Pound, Canadian Dollars, Chilean Peso, Colombian Peso, Danish
Krone, Euro, Hong Kong Dollar, Japanese Yen, Norwegian Krone, Swedish
Krona, Swiss Franc, Turkish Lira, US Dollars, and Venezuelan Bolivar.
Facebook credits can be used on many popular games such as Happy
Aquarium, Happy Island, Zoo Paradise, Happy Pets, Hello City, FarmVille, and
Mafia Wars.
As on 30 August 2010, Facebook gifts were disabled and from then on,
Facebook credits are being used for the Games alone.
Facebook Live
On August 13, 2010 Facebook launched a new service called "'Facebook
Live'", a live streaming video channel that is intended to keep Facebook
users updated to what is happening on the social networking site. The
service, powered by Livestream, will feature videos from Facebook staff
members and celebrity interviews, but not designed for Facebook users to
showcase their own videos. All the content shown on Facebook Live will have
some tie-in with Facebook products, features, or how people are using the
site. Facebook said this is not an opening to get them into the video
distribution space. The first official guest was America Ferrera, the leading
actress in the television series Ugly Betty. She discussed her new
independent film The Dry Land, that was being promoted almost exclusively
through social media channels.
IPv6
According to a June 2010 report by Network World, Facebook said that it was
offering "experimental, non-production" support for IPv6, the long-
anticipated upgrade to the Internet's main communications protocol. The
news about Facebook's IPv6 support was expected; Facebook told Network
World in February 2010, that it planned to support native IPv6 user requests
"by the midpoint of this year."
In a presentation at the Google IPv6 Implementors Conference, Facebook's
network engineers said it was "easy to make the site available on v6."
Facebook said it deployed dual-stack IPv4 and IPv6 support on its routers,
and that it made no changes to its hosts in order to support IPv6. Facebook
also said it was supporting an emerging encapsulation mechanism known as
Locator/Identifier Separation Protocol (LISP), which separates Internet
addresses from endpoint identifiers to improve the scalability of IPv6
deployments. "Facebook was the first major Web site on LISP (v4 and v6),"
Facebook engineers said during their presentation. Facebook said that using
LISP allowed them to deploy IPv6 services quickly with no extra cost.
Facebook's IPv6 services are available at www.v6.facebook.com,
m.v6.facebook.com, www.lisp6.facebook.com and m.lisp6.facebook.com.
Messages and Inbox
Since the website's founding, it has allowed users to send messages to each
other. A Facebook user can send a message to any number of his/her friends
at a time. Deleting a message from one's inbox does not delete it from the
inbox of other users, thus disabling a sender to redo a message sent by him.
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 a @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.
Networks, Groups, and Like Pages
Facebook allows different networks and groups to which many users can join.
It also allows privacy settings on basis of networks. Groups are used for
discussions and events etc. Groups are a way of enabling a number of people
to come together online to share information and discuss specific subjects.
They are increasingly used by clubs, companies and public sector
organizations to engage with stakeholders - be they members of the public,
employees, members, service users, shareholders or customers. A group
includes but is not limited to the following: the members who have joined,
recent news contents, wall contents, photos, posted items, videos and all
associated comments of such items. In this respect, groups are similar to
pages but contain more features. Groups are limited to 300 groups per user,
though it is possible to find some users with more than 300 groups because
it was possible to dodge this limit in a few ways, until recently when they
fixed those exploits. The urls of group pages start with
http://www.facebook.com/group... and do not include the name of the group.
Individuals or companies can create "Like Pages" which allows fans of an
individual, organization, product, service, or concept to join a Facebook fan
club. Like Pages look and behave much like a user's personal private profile,
with some significant differences. Public Profiles are integrated with
Facebook's advertising system, allowing Public Profile owners to easily
advertise to Facebook's users. Owners can send updates to their fans, which
shows up on their home page. They also have access to insights and
analytics of their fan base. Early on, users had the option to "become a fan"
of the page until 19 April 2010 when the option was later changed to "like"
the page. While an individual with a personal profile can acquire up to 5,000
friends, a "Like Page" can have an unlimited number of "Likers". "Like Pages"
can also be customized by adding new Tabs using the Static FBML
application. This powerful feature can bring additional functionality to a page
such as e-mail collection, specialized content, or a landing page for sales
activity. The urls of "Like Pages" start with http://www.facebook.com/pages... and
do include the name of the individual etc. liked.
News Feed
On 6 September 2006, Ruchi Sangvhi announced a new home page feature
called News Feed. Originally, when users logged into Facebook, they were
presented with a customizable version of their own profile. The new layout,
by contrast, created an alternative home page in which users saw a
constantly updated list of their friends' Facebook activity. News Feed
highlights information that includes profile changes, upcoming events, and
birthdays, among other updates. This has 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. News Feed also
shows conversations taking place between the walls of a user's friends. An
integral part of the News Feed interface is the Mini-Feed, a news stream on
the user's profile page that shows updates about that user. Unlike in the
News Feed, the user can delete events from the Mini-Feed after they appear
so that they are no longer visible to profile visitors.
Initially, the addition of the News Feed caused some discontent among
Facebook users. Many users complained that the News Feed was too
cluttered and full of undesired information. Others were concerned that the
News Feed made it too easy for other people to track activities like changes
in relationship status, events, and conversations with other users. This
tracking is often casually referred to as "Facebook-Stalking." In response to
this dissatisfaction, creator Mark Zuckerberg issued an apology for the site's
failure to include appropriate customizable privacy features. Thereafter,
users were able to control what types of information were shared
automatically with friends. Currently, users may prevent friends from seeing
updates about several types of especially private activities, although other
events are not customizable in this way.
With the introduction of the "New Facebook" - in early February 2010 - came
a total redesign of the pages, several new features and changes to News
Feeds. On their personal Feeds (now integrated with Walls), users were given
the option of removing updates from any application as well as choosing the
size they show up on the page. Furthermore, the community feed (containing
recent actions by the user's friends) contained options to instantly select
whether to hear more or less about certain friends or applications.
Notifications
Notifications of the more important events, for example, someone sharing a
link on the user's wall or commenting on a post the user previously
commented on, briefly appear for a few seconds in the bottom left as a
popup message (if the user is online), and a red counter is updated on the
toolbar at the top, thus allowing the user to keep track of all the most recent
notifications.
Phone
On September 2010, rumors of a "Facebook Phone" similar to Google's
Android, circulated in business and tech industry news. In an interview with
well-known technology blog Techcrunch, CEO Mark Zuckerberg was noted to
have said, "Our strategy is very horizontal. We're trying to build a social
layer for everything," while denying that they were attempting to compete
with the Apple iPhone or Android.
Poke
The poke feature is intended to be a "nudge" to attract the attention of
another user. Many Facebook users use this feature to attract attention or
say "hello" to their friends. A previous version of Facebook's FAQ gave
additional insight into the origin of the feature, stating: "When we created
the poke, we thought it would be cool to have a feature without any specific
purpose. People interpret the poke in many different ways, and we
encourage you to come up with your own meanings."
There are several applications on Facebook which extend the idea of the
poke feature by allowing users to perform other actions to their friends—
such as "kick" or "wave to". People often reciprocate pokes back and forth
until one side gives up, an event known as a "Poke War".
Smartphones
Many new smartphones offer access to the Facebook services either through
their web-browsers or applications. The Facebook iPhone-compatible web
site was launched August 2007 and as of July 2008 over 1.5 million people
used it regularly, at the point when a free application for the iOS named
"Facebook for iPhone" was launched. Version 2.0 of this app was released in
September 2008 and featured improved services such as being able to
respond to friend requests and notifications. Version 3.0 was released in
August 2009 and added features such as events, and uploading video with
an iPhone 3GS. In the latest update for the Facebook for iPhone app, GPS use
is also integrated in the app under the section "places" in which you can
discover moments and experiences when you and your friends are at the
same place at the same time. This app is compatible with iPhone 3G, 3Gs,
and 4, running iOS 3.0 or later.
Nokia offers a Facebook app on its Ovi Store for Nokia S60 devices such as
the N97 and contains most of the functionality of the full website.
Google's Android 2.0 OS automatically includes an official Facebook app. The
first device to use this is the Motorola Droid. The app has options to sync
Facebook friends with contacts, which adds profile pictures and status
updates to the contacts list. Microsoft also offers an Facebook application for
its Windows Mobile platform, including features such as messaging,
uploading pictures and video straight from the device, managing profile
information, contact integration allowing users to call anyone in their friends
list that has their number in their profile information. It is also possible to add
an chat feature to Windows Mobile via third-party software. Research In
Motion also offers a Facebook application for the BlackBerry. It includes a
range of functions, including an ability to integrate Facebook events into the
BlackBerry calendar, and using Facebook profile pictures for Caller ID.
Status Updates
Facebook has a feature called "status updates" (also referred to simply as
"status") which allows users to post messages for all their friends to read. In
turn, friends can respond with their own comments, and also press the "Like"
button to show that they enjoyed reading it. A user's most recent status
update appears on the user's wall, and is also noted in the "Recently
updated" section of a user's friend list.
Originally, the purpose of the feature was to allow users to inform their
friends of their current "status" (for example, their current feelings,
whereabouts, or actions) by referring to themselves in the third person (for
example, "George is happy" or "John is with Robert at his house"). However,
users are no longer required to write in the third person. Facebook originally
prompted the status update with "Username is..." and Facebook users filled
in the rest. However, on December 13, 2007, the requirement to start a
status update with is was removed. The question "What are you doing right
now?" was introduced. In March 2009, the status update question was
changed from "What are you doing right now?" to "What's on your mind?"
In 2009, Facebook added the feature to tag certain friends (or groups etc.)
within one's status update by adding an @ character before their name,
turning the friend's name into a link to their profile and including the
message on the friend's wall.
URL shortener
On December 14, 2009, Facebook launched its own URL shortener based on
FB.me domain name. From that point on, all links based on facebook.com
can be accessed after fb.me, which is seven characters shorter.
Usernames
Starting June 13, 2009, Facebook introduced a feature that allowed users to
choose a Facebook username to make user location easier. The user is able
to direct others to their page through a simple link such as
www.facebook.com/username rather than an otherwise complex URL. This
feature on Facebook quickly spread, with more than 1 million users
registering usernames in the first three hours. Usernames are now available
to any existing or newly registered user.
According to the FAQ, "Facebook reserves the right to remove and/or reclaim
any username at any time for any reason".
Wall
The Wall is a space on each user's profile page that allows friends to post
messages for the user to see while displaying the time and date the message
was written. One user's Wall is visible to anyone with the ability to see his or
her full profile, and different users' Wall posts show up in an individual's
News Feed. Many users use their friends' Walls for leaving short, temporal
notes. More private discourse is saved for messages, which are sent to a
user's inbox, and are visible only to the sender and recipient(s) of the
message, much like email.
In July 2007, Facebook allowed users to post attachments to the Wall,
whereas previously the Wall was limited to text only. In May 2008, the Wall-
to-Wall for each profile was limited to only 40 posts. Recently Facebook has
allowed users to insert html code in boxes attached to the wall via apps like
Static FBML which has allowed marketers to track use of their fan pages with
Google Analytics.
Questions
On March 24, 2011, Facebook announced that its new product - Facebook
Questions - facilitates short, poll-like answers in addition to long-form
responses, and also links directly to relevant items in Facebook's directory of
"fan pages."
Applications
Events
Facebook events are a way for members to let friends know about upcoming
events in their community and to organize social gatherings. Events require
an event name, network, host name, event type, start time, location, and a
guest list of friends invited. Events can be Public or Private. Private events
cannot be found in searches and are by invitation only. People who have not
been invited cannot view Private event description, Wall or photos. They also
will not see any Feed stories about the event. When setting up an event the
user can choose to allow friends to upload photos or videos. Note that unlike
real world events, all events are treated as separate entities (when the
reality is some events sit inside other events, going to one event would
preclude going to another, and so on).
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.
Marketplace
In May 2007, Facebook introduced the Facebook Marketplace allowing users
to post free classified ads within the following categories: For Sale, Housing,
Jobs, and Other. Ads can be posted in either available or wanted format. The
market place is available for all Facebook users and is currently free. In
2009, Facebook transferred ownership of the Marketplace to Oodle.
Notes
Facebook Notes was introduced on 22 August 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.
A recent use of Notes includes the Internet meme - "25 Random Things
About Me" which involves writing 25 things about the user that their friends
don't already know about them and using the tag function to ask 25 friends
to also do so. Nearly 5 million "25 Random Things" notes were written on
Facebook profiles in the first week of February 2009.
Places
Facebook announced Places on August 18, 2010. It is a feature that lets
users "check in" to Facebook using a mobile device to let a user's friends
know where they are at the moment. This feature is already known from
Foursquare, a social network where users share their geolocation data via
mobile phones.
In November 2010, Facebook announced "Deals", a subset of the Places
offering, which allows for users to check in from restaurants, supermarkets,
bars, and coffee shops using an app on a mobile device and then be
rewarded discounts, coupons, and free merchandise. This feature is
marketed as a digital version of a loyalty card or coupon where a customer
gets rewarded for loyal buying behavior.
Available countries: places is currently available only in some countries:
Australia, Austria, Bulgaria, Estonia, Canada, Japan, United Kingdom, United
States, France, Italy, Spain, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, South Africa,
Finland, Ireland, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, Hong Kong, and Philippines,
with many more on the way.
Supported phones: On October 10, 2010, Places became available on
Blackberry, after iPhone. The Android OS is also places capable. Other users,
including Windows Mobile users, must use a HTML5 browser to use Places via
Facebook Touch Site.
Platform
Facebook Platform
The Facebook Platform provides a set of APIs and tools which enable 3rd
party developers to integrate with the "open graph" — whether through
applications on Facebook.com or external websites and devices. Launched
on May 24, 2007, Facebook Platform has evolved from enabling development
just on Facebook.com to one also supporting integration across the web and
devices.
Facebook Platform Statistics as of May 2010:
• More than one million developers and entrepreneurs from more than
180 countries
• More than 550,000 active applications currently on Facebook Platform
• Every month, more than 70% of Facebook users engage with Platform
applications
• More than 250,000 websites have integrated with Facebook Platform
• More than 100 million Facebook users engage with Facebook on
external websites every month
Third party companies such as Adonomics, Kontagent and Mixpanel provide
application metrics, and blogs such as AppRate, Inside Facebook, and Face
Reviews have sprung up in response to the clamor for Facebook applications.
On July 4, 2007, Altura Ventures announced the "Altura 1 Facebook
Investment Fund," becoming the world's first Facebook-only venture capital
firm.
On August 29, 2007, Facebook changed the way in which the popularity of
applications is measured, to give attention to the more engaging
applications, following criticism that ranking applications only by the number
of people who had installed the application was giving an advantage to the
highly viral, yet useless applications. Tech blog Valleywag has criticized
Facebook Applications, labeling them a "cornucopia of uselessness."[5]
Others have called for limiting third-party applications so the Facebook "user
experience" is not degraded.
Primarily attempting to create viral applications is a method that has
certainly been employed by numerous Facebook application developers.
Stanford University even offered a class in the Fall of 2007, entitled,
Computer Science (CS) 377W: "Create Engaging Web Applications Using
Metrics and Learning on Facebook". Numerous applications created by the
class were highly successful, and ranked amongst the top Facebook
applications, with some achieving over 3.5 million users in a month.

Questions
In May 2010, Facebook began testing and software production.The Questions
is, an application in which users submit questions for their friends to answer.
It is expected to compete directly with services such as Yahoo! Answers.
Photos
One of the most popular applications on Facebook is the Photos application,
where users can upload albums of photos, tag friends helped by face
recognition technology, and comment on photos. According to Facebook,
• 50+ billion user photos (in July 2010)
• More than 1.5 petabytes (1.5 million gigabytes) of photo storage used
(in May 2009).
• 220 million photos added each week which take up 25 terabytes of
disk space (in May 2009).
• 3+ billion photo images served to users every day (in May 2007).
• 550,000+ images served per second during peak traffic windows (in
May 2009).
Videos
During the time that Facebook released its platform, it also released an
application of its own for sharing videos on Facebook. Users can add their
videos with the service by uploading video, adding video through Facebook
Mobile, and using a webcam recording feature. Additionally, users can "tag"
their friends in videos they add much like the way users can tag their friends
in photos, except the location of the friend in the video is not displayed.
Users also have the option of video messaging. Videos cannot be placed in
categories, whereas photos are sorted by albums.
Languages
As of March 2011, Facebook supports the following languages:

• Afrikaans • Croatian • Bosnian • Chilean

• Bahasa • Chinese language Spanish
Melayu • Norwegian • Esperanto • Venezuelan
• Bahasa • Basque Spanish
• Polish
Indonesia • Faroese • Mexican
• Portuguese Spanish
• Catalan • Irish
• Brazilian
 • Czech Portuguese • Icelandic • Colombian
• Welsh • Romanian • Galician Spanish

• Danish • Russian • Swahili • Malagasy

• Dutch • Slovene • Latvian • Maltese

• English (UK) • Slovak • Xhosa • Uzbek

• English (US) • Thai • Zulu • Quechua

• English • Vietnamese • Kurdish • Somali

(Upside- • Turkish • Leet Speak • Tatar
down) • Yiddish
• Finnish • Latin
• English • Limburgish
(Pirate) • Greek • Albanian
• Hebrew • Javanese • Chinese
• Spanish Simplified
• Castilian • Arabic • Aymara
• Japanese
Spanish • Azerbaijani • Cherokee
• Tamil
• Filipino • Lithuanian • Swedish
• Telugu
• French • Estonian • Indian
• Canadian English
French
• Korean
• German
• Hungarian

Important Statistics regarding Facebook

SWOT Analysis of Facebook

Strengths
• Rapid growth in US and international
• One of the top leading social networking sites
• One of the fastest evolving and adopted websites
• Attracts top talent from Google
• Easy use, user friendly
• Customer loyalty
• Strong financial position
• Leader in market share for industry
• Translated in over 70 languages
• Millions of users
• Acts as a virtual reality
• Fun element
 • Businesses can connect to consumers
• Advertising
• Businesses can create profiles and pages for free
• Free
• #1 app on all cell phones
• Connect with old friends
• Easy-to-use features
• A way to follow friends, celebrities, companies

Weaknesses

• Security/Privacy
• Complex interface
• Becoming corporate
• Over use of advertising
• Constant change to page design
• Confusing for Businesses to use (properly market, advertrise, etc.)
• Liabilities regarding bugs and problems that users face when
operating the website
• Don't get real answers to your problems, have to figure out problems
based on FAQs
• Lack of ability to customize page
• Flash animation banners are distracting and need to be positioned
differently so it won't get in the way of the user
• Too many irrelevant and useless applications
• Facebook chat has too many glitches in its system

Opportunities

• Become a default address book

• Creates business partners
• Advertising impact will be an opportunistic approach in reaching
target markets globally
• Way of showing consumer behavior for businesses
 • A way of drawing people into stores by offering promotions etc. to
them via the facebook page
• Businesses can collect user data through polls and surveys
• Communication that is free
• Buy/sell via Facebook marketplace
• Innovation
• Facebook Email
• Facebook Video chat

Threats

• Other social media networks (twitter, etc.)

• Social networks come and go (examples :- myspace, friendster,hi5)
• New entrants into the industry
• Privacy settings- leak millions of photos a year
• Spamming
• Users get bored easily when using applications and programs(one
time usage)

Recommendations
Search. Currently Google is the king of search. But Google cannot keep me
up to speed on the cutting edge of news quite like twitter search can. So
what if Facebook enabled search.
Not the search they have right now… but a status/activity search. A public
timeline search.
The proposed facebook search feature could be used to determine who is
training for a marathon. Sports companies could then direct targeted
messages to them for my brand’s shoes? Or perhaps people are uploading
pictures of their recent visit to Kerala (in facebook) imagine what the Kerala
travel and Tourism Department would pay to direct ads towards that user in
6 months or in 9 months as they plan their next trip. For what it’s worth,
KTDC, might pay more to advertise to that user.
Enabling the more reach/depth
Facebook should change it’s privacy settings to allow for this. Right now you
are allowed to set privacy settings for almost all modules/parts of
facebook/apps to the following choices:
• Friends of Friends
• Only Friends
• Some Friends
• Only Me
• Specific Networks

I recommend adding the following categories:

• Everyone (General Public)
• All Facebook Users
Why Everyone?
Google could now index the Everyone content. Facebook could attract new
users as more Google searches for general information/content would return
a facebook page. Currently if you search for a person’s name Facebook will
be on page one. But, if you search for a fact that is on their profile, Facebook
will not show up in the results. An example would be a search for “knee
replacement.” Facebook potentially has a lot of people talking about having,
or having had their knee replaced. But that content will not show on a
Google search for it. If it did, more people would see facebook content, more
people would signup for accounts, more ads would be generated, more views
of ads, more clicks of ads. All all that equals more money for Facebook.
Why All Facebook Users?
Now comes the fun part. Any company with its advertisements on facebook
would love to search the entire facebook userbase for people talking about
key terms for their brand. This would essentially be the twitter search for
facebook. They could also find out the trends in the facebook crowd.
Because the facebook population is a different crowd than twitter, trends
could be very different! This type of information availability has been hinted
at; it is referred to as a facebook public timeline. Facebook has a larger
userbase, more content and in general different content.

What else could this affect?

If Facebook opened an API to this “public timeline.” Then a world of
possibilities would be open. Imaging a Facebook Deck, or a Facebookirl. Third
party developers could then integrate facebook trends or facebook public
timeline search into their application.
The applications are limitless, an app that adjusts your adwords budget for
an SEM campaign based on trends in facebook, or an application that
allowed you to monitor responses on facebook to activities your brand is
currently doing in real life or on hulu, or on TV.
Then there is monetization which seems to be difficult for both twitter and
facebook. If they went the route of sponsored ads on searches they would
finally be able to be viable. I know of brands who would purchase sponsored
ads on either netowrk’s search tool today. I’d recommend all my SEM clients
to integrate twitter search and facebook search as a part of their campaigns.
Twitter is considering sponsored ads with it’s search feature. If Facebook
added the search feature they could increase the over all cost per click on
their current paid ads which would then bring in real revenue.

For Students
Studies and statistics show that a sizeable proportion of facebook users are
students. A huge window of opportunity opens up if facebook could tie up
with online study material site like ‘scribd’, ‘authorstream’, ‘docmaster’ etc
by which a facebook user could log in to these study materials sites and
download/refer areas of their interest.

Facebook could potentially be a safer and more private social networking site
by improving upon its security features and making these security features
user-friendly.

Questionnaire

1 What is your age group?

19
Below
- >24
19
24

2 What is your gender?

Mal
Female
e

3 Do you have a Facebook account?

Ye
No
s
If your answer is 'Yes ', please jump to question 6.
If your answer is 'No', please jump to question 5.
 4 Why do you not have a Facebook account?
Do not know about Facebook

Do not require Facebook to interact

If your answer is 'Do not require Facebook to interact', you already finish all the questions. Please mail the
filled questionnaire back
If your answer is 'Do not know about Facebook ', you already finish all the questions. Please mail the filled
questionnaire back

5 How long have you been a Facebook user?

Less than a month

More than a month but less than 3 months

More than 3 months

What do you use Facebook for? Please rate the following 7 activities according to the frequency
of usage with 1 being the most frequent and 7 being the least.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
6 Find new friends

7 Play interactive games

8 Play non-interactive games

9 Chat (including comments and wall)

Check out how your friends are doing(photos,
10
walls etc)
11 Update your profile

12 To pass time

13 In the last 3 months, how many strangers have you initiated to add as friends?
1
11
Non 1- 6- 6-
- >20
e 5 10 2
15
0

14 Would you accept strangers who added you as friends on Facebook?

Ye
No
s
 15 Would you like to have an intensive search engine be built into facebook?

Yes

N
o
When adding or accepting new friends, what criteria do you look at? . Please rank the activities
according to importance, with 1 being the most important to you
1 2 3 4 5
16 Common hobbies and interests

17 Games you play

18 Looks (eg. an attractive display picture)

19 Number of common friends

20 Gender
With all factors constant, that is, hobbies/number of common friends etc, are you more likely to:
(Rank from 1-3, with 1 being most likely),
whether you would add or accept a friend with:

21 No display picture
1 2
3

22 An attractive display picture

1 2
3

23 Not so attractive display picture

1 2
3

24 How frequently do you log into Facebook?

Several times a
Daily
day
Weekly Monthly
Less than
monthly

25 On average, how long do you spend on Facebook per week?

Less than an hour
 1 - (just under) 2 hours

2 - (just under) 3 hours

3 - (just under) 4 hours

4 hours or more

26 Would you like the security and privacy measures of facebook to improve?
Yes

No

Can’t say

27 How much more time does Facebook allow you to interact with your friends, including
those that are separated geographically?
Littl Aver
Significant
e age

The questionnaire was mailed to 50 participants who answered it and few of the
important results have been illustrated below:-

Suggestions
 • Facebook could probably improve their
security and privacy measures in the wake
of many users posting and sharing private
information and photos
• Facebook could also ensure that it doesn’t
make the same mistakes as social
networking sites that once had the largest
no. of members and get complacent on its
wave of success of being the no.1 social
networking site.
• It should constantly innovate with new
ideas and constantly take the users’
recommendations into consideration.
• A built-in search engine would prevent the
users from navigating to other search
engines and thus spend less time on
facebook.

Conclusion
Facebook has come a long way from its
launch in 2004 and has overtaken sites such
as Myspace, Orkut anf Hi5 to become the
No.1 social networking site only through its
strategy of constant innovation, wide range of
features, user-friendly applications and
constant churning out and updating to the
latest technology available.

Bibliography
• Wikipedia
• Scribd.com
• Docmaster.com
• http://www.ebizmba.com/articles/social-networking-websites
• http://social-networking-websites-review.toptenreviews.com/
• http://blog.compete.com/2009/02/09/facebook-myspace-
twitter-social-network/
• http://www.wealthvest.com/blog/sean-browne/statistics-
social-networks-will-recieve-11-of-online-ad-spending-in-
2011/
• http://www.labnol.org/india/social-sites-india/18649/
• http://www.dreamgrow.com/world-map-of-social-networks-
2010/