 | |
| Type | Private |
|---|---|
| Founded | Cambridge, Massachusetts[1](2004) |
| Founder | Mark Zuckerberg Chris Hughes Dustin Moskovitz Eduardo Saverin |
| Headquarters | Palo Alto, California, U.S. (main headquarters; serves the Americas) Dublin, Ireland (headquarters for Europe, Africa, Middle East) Seoul, South Korea (headquarters for Asia) Wellington, New Zealand(headquarters for Oceania) |
| Area served | Worldwide |
| Key people | Mark Zuckerberg (CEO) Chris Cox (VP of Product) Sheryl Sandberg (COO) |
| Revenue | ▲ US$800 million (2009 est.)[2] |
| Employees | 1400 (2010)[3] |
| Website | facebook.com |
| Alexa rank | ▬ 2 (August 2010)[4] |
| Type of site | Social network service |
| Advertising | Banner ads, referral marketing, Casual games |
| Registration | Required |
| Users | 500 million[5] (active in July 2010)[N 1] |
| Available in | Multilingual |
| Launched | February 4, 2004 |
| Current status | Active |
Facebook is a social networking website launched in February 2004 that is operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc.,[1] with more than 500 million[5] active users in July 2010, which is about one person for every fourteen in the world.[6][N 1] 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 who declares themselves to be 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.[7] 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.
Facebook has met with some controversy. It has been blocked intermittently in several countries including Pakistan,[8] Syria,[9] the People's Republic of China,[10] Vietnam,[11], Iran[12], andNorth Korea. It has also been banned at many places of work to discourage employees from wasting time using the service.[13] Facebook's privacy has also been an issue, and the safety of their users has been compromised several times. Facebook settled a lawsuit regarding claims over source code and intellectual property.[14] The site has also been involved in controversy over the sale of fans and friends.[15]
A January 2009 Compete.com study ranked Facebook as the most used social network by worldwide monthly active users, followed by MySpace.[16] Entertainment Weekly put it on its end-of-the-decade 'best-of' list, saying, "How on earth did we stalk our exes, remember our co-workers' birthdays, bug our friends, and play a rousing game of Scrabulous before Facebook?"[17]
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