These days, you don’t usually find many people who are not on Facebook. However, there still are those people that ask, “What is Facebook?” and I have dedicated this post to fill you all in – for those of you who are already very familiar with Facebook, let this be a little history lesson for you.
Facebook is a global social networking website that is operated and privately owned by Facebook Incorporated. Facebook users can add friends, send them messages, update their personal profiles to notify friends about themselves, and much more. Additionally, users can join networks organized by city, workplace, school, and region. The website’s name came from the informal name of books given at the start of the academic year by university administrations with the intention of helping students get to know each other better.
Mark Zuckerberg is founded Facebook, with the help of some of his college roommates and fellow computer science students while studying at Harvard University. The website’s membership was initially limited to Harvard students, but was expanded to other colleges in the Boston area, the Ivy League, and Stanford University. Later it expanded to included any university student, then high school students, and finally, to anyone age thirteen and older. Worldwide, Facebook has over 300 million active users currently.
Facebook is not allowed everywhere as it has met with some controversy. It has been blocked in several countries including Syria, China, and Iran. Workplaces also have banned it as to discourage employees from wasting time using the service. Privacy has also been an issue, and it has been compromised several times. Facebook settled a lawsuit regarding claims over source code and intellectual property.
In January of 2009, A Complete.com study ranked Facebook as the most used social network by worldwide monthly active users, followed by MySpace.
To get a bit more of a general idea on Facebook, click here! Want to get an account or just sign in? Click here!
Want to become a fan of Youth Are Awesome on Facebook? Click here 🙂