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Facebook, formerly known as thefacebook, is a social networking service for high school, college, and university communities, primarily in English-speaking countries. The site has some similarities to MySpace, but differs in account availability, user control of display content, real-world identity, and overall neatness of appearance. As of December 2005, it has the largest number of registered users among college-focused sites (at over six million US college student accounts created with an additional 20,000 new accounts being created daily).[1]

Anyone with access to a valid e-mail address from 2,000+ universities can register for and access the site, a group that includes students, alumni, faculty, and staff, although the vast majority of Facebook’s users are students. Facebook is also available at 25,000+ American high schools. The site is free to users and is financed by advertising. Facebook employs 32 people in Palo Alto, California and another four in Boston, Massachusetts.[2]

Users create personal profiles, typically containing photos and lists of interests, exchange private or public messages, and join groups of friends. The viewing of detailed profile data is restricted to users from the same school or confirmed friends, though one can change their personal options regarding this. According to TechCrunch.com "about 85% of students in supported colleges have a profile [on the site]... [and] 60% log in daily. About 85% log in at least once a week, and 93% log in at least once a month." [1]

The name of the site is based on the paper facebooks that many colleges give to incoming students, faculty, and staff depicting members of the campus community.

History

File:Logo-left.jpg
The former banner of Facebook.com

Origins and expansion

Facebook was founded in February 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg at Harvard College. He enlisted the help of his friend Eduardo Saverin to initially fund the site. The website spread across the Harvard campus and within a few weeks, over half the undergraduate population had registered. By the end of February, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes had joined Zuckerberg as co-founders to spread the website. Within a few months, Facebook expanded to allow students from Cornell University, Columbia University, Stanford University, Georgetown University, Tufts University, Yale University, MIT, other Ivy League colleges, the University of Virginia, the Georgia Institute of Technology, Northwestern University, Carnegie Mellon University, UC Berkeley, and University of Chicago, and Washington University in St. Louis to register.[citation needed] It became something of a network phenomenon, spreading rapidly to other schools, despite some competition from similar, local websites. By December 2004, the number of registered users exceeded one million.

As the website’s popularity rose and advertising revenue grew, Zuckerberg and Moskovitz left Harvard to run Facebook fulltime. The pair soon moved to Palo Alto, established an office and recruited a staff of eight, including Sean Parker and Matt Cohler.

Stories about Facebook became commonplace in online and print media. Simultaneously, several competitor sites appeared attempting to capture some of the limelight. In late 2004, the owners of the website ConnectU (Divya Narendra, Cameron Winklevoss, and Tyler Winklevoss), another social networking website targeted towards college students, filed a lawsuit against Facebook, alleging that Zuckerberg had stolen source code intended for their website while in their employ [3] [4].

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In September 2004, Facebook received around $500,000 from Peter Thiel in an angel round. In May 2005, Facebook raised $12.7 million in venture capital from Accel Partners. [5]

In late August 2005, it was announced on the main website that the domain name facebook.com was acquired from Aboutface Corporation, and the website moved domains and dropped the "the" from the site name effective August 23, 2005. Also included in the move was a site overhaul, making profile pages more "user-friendly," according to Zuckerberg. Zuckerberg has since added more universities to Facebook (with an emphasis on forgotten schools in Canada as well as in the United States), but unlike in the past, the new schools are no longer publicized on the front page.

On September 2, 2005, deeming it the "next logical thing" to do, Zuckerberg launched a high school version of Facebook, which is kept totally separate from the college version. Although high school students could only join via an invitation for the first weeks, by September 17, an invitation was no longer necessary for most schools. So far, high school Facebook has failed to achieve the same popularity as the college version.

By October 2005, Facebook had nearly completed its expansion to smaller universities and junior colleges throughout the United States and Canada. In addition, Facebook expanded to 21 universities in the United Kingdom, and added the entire Instituto Tecnologico system in Mexico, the entire University of Puerto Rico system in Puerto Rico and the entire University of the Virgin Islands system in the U.S. Virgin Islands.

On December 11, 2005, Facebook expanded further, adding universities in Australia and New Zealand. As of December 2005, the network had expanded to include 2,000+ college and 25,000+ high school institutions across the United States, Canada, Mexico, the UK, Australia, New Zealand and Ireland, including more than 11 million users worldwide. [6]

Addition of features

The expansion of Facebook to colleges and high schools has been accompanied by a gradual increase in the number of features the site provides to its users. Originally, a user's profile consisted of little more than a picture that could be uploaded and a few fields of biographical information and favorites that could be filled in. In the spring of 2004, users were able to designate themselves as alumni for the first time, and users were also given the option of listing their summer plans.

One Saturday in September 2004, the Groups feature was introduced and rapidly gained popularity, practically revolutionizing the way people used the Facebook, which until then had frequently been seen as a way for singles to meet or, as some cynics claimed, stalk one another. (Previously it had not been uncommon to see references to the site as "TheStalkerbook." [7] [8]) That autumn, many students who until then had refused to join the Facebook for this reason finally relented primarily because the groups feature made the Facebook a component of nearly all student groups, both official and unofficial. Individuals could also list the courses that they were taking for the first time that month, and the Wall feature appeared.

On October 27, 2005, the "My Photos" feature came into existence, allowing users to post pictures in photo albums for friends to view. Also in the autumn of that year, Facebook users were presented with the option of listing their "Favorite TV Shows."

On December 21, 2005, Facebook added two new features: a page showing the latest trends and most popular listings, called "Pulse," and the ability for a user to state how he or she is friends with someone, called "Friend Details." Only a few weeks later, January 13, 2006 marked the introduction of the "Social Timeline" feature, which utilizes Friend Details information from users to construct a complete chronology of a particular user's social setting.

Features

Profile

File:Facebookinterface.jpg
A sample profile a student at the University of Alabama created for Three's Company character Chrissy Snow. Although they are prohibited by official Facebook policy, many fake or celebrity profiles exist on the site.

Like other social networking websites, Facebook allows users to create an online profile and upload a user picture. Personal information is voluntarily supplied by the user, and access to it can be restricted, as can access to the user's wall, whose entries are also deletable by the user. Information that the user may display include:

  • City
  • Gender
  • Concentration
  • Birthday
  • Hometown and State
  • High School
  • Relationship Status
  • Sexual Orientation ("Interested in")
  • Political Views
  • Intended vote (Available prior to the 2004 Presidential Election)
  • Interests
  • Favorite Music
  • Favorite TV Shows
  • Favorite Movies
  • Favorite Books
  • Favorite Quotes
  • "About Me": A short description of the user

By clicking on profile entries, such as favorite music, current residence, or high school, a user can browse through a list of users with the same entry although coding problems may sometimes search the keyword within people's entire profiles. Also, one may choose to use the site's search feature. The profiles of users from each institution included in the network are stored on a unique subdomain, which limits profile viewing. A user may only view the profiles of users at his or her institution, although mutual friends from different schools may access each other's profiles. Each user is given a "wall" on their profile, for public peer-to-peer messaging.

Friends

Users can then search for other users and request an acknowledgment that they are "friends." A count of one's friends and the ability to browse a list of friends is available on each user's profile. On December 21, 2005, a feature was introduced that allows users to select how they met the people on their friends list, such as "Went to school together", "From an organization or team", or "We dated". These details can then be confirmed by the other person.

One of the early features of service was the ability for a user to download a csv or vCard file of that user's friends. This feature was removed without explanation in mid 2004. It may have been removed for anti-spam purposes as the site no longer has direct email links within the user profiles and instead shows email addresses as graphics that are not clickable links.

Details and Social Timeline

For each friend, a user has the option of selecting how they know the individual, including these options:

  • Lived together
  • Worked together
  • From an organization or team
  • Took a course together
  • From a summer / study abroad program
  • Went to school together
  • Traveled together
  • In my family
  • Through a friend
  • Through Facebook
  • Met randomly
  • We hooked up
  • We dated
  • I don't even know this person. (Deletes them as friend)

Most of these options are customizable; for example, a user who knows a particular friend through an organization can also specify what the name of the organization was and the time period that they knew each other through that group. Users are given the option of confirming or editing friend details about them submitted by other users. Until they are confirmed, these details are visible only to the user who submits them; once confirmed, they are visible to anyone who views either user's friend list.

The "Social Timeline" feature uses the information provided through friend details to construct a complete social timeline for the user. For each year, the timeline presents the people that the user had social contact with, through courses, clubs, residences, etc, and also groups them according to information that the user specifies, such as different courses or clubs. These individuals' Facebook pictures are also shown on the page according to the first point in time that the user has indicated he or she knew the friend.

Groups and Events

Members may also create and join groups. These groups range from online mirrors of real campus organizations, such as fraternities and sororities, sports, and recognized clubs, to common interest groups (such as people from the same area code or people who attended a public school), to joke groups. Facebook also includes a feature that allows users to list parties, invite users and receive RSVPs. Like the groups feature, the party listing has also been used for jokes, although fraternities often announce parties through this. Groups made by a user are limited to membership within the user's school; however, some advertisers can create groups that have membership from all campuses. A user who creates a party listing can also invite friends from other schools.

Messages

Facebook also allows users to send private messages and “pokes” to other users. The "poke" feature simply sends the text, "You have been poked," and provides an option to poke back. While the creators of Facebook maintain that there is no actual intended purpose for implementing the "poking" option, it is often used simply to gain the attention of the person who is poked. While it is sometimes used as a playful way to flirt on Facebook when a user develops an interest in another's picture or the information that he or she provides, it is most often used as a joke amongst mutual friends, since those who are already acquainted with each other have more efficient ways, such as Facebook's internal private messaging system, to make contact. Although it is not possible to view the profiles of non-mutual friends from other schools, they can still be messaged or poked.

Wall

In addition to sending messages and poking other, people can also write on the "walls" of others' Facebooks to convey messages to their friends. Unlike poking and messaging which are completely private, visible to only the sender and designated receiver, walls are visible to every person who has access to that person's profile.

The "wall" initially functioned as a wiki—any user viewing the profile could edit the wall as they chose, and walls were not divided into separate entries. However, in late 2005, the "wall" was changed to a message board format, and users no longer edit it as before. Now, users have the ability to create new posts on others' walls, and the wall owner is able to remove unwanted posts.

My Photos

File:Facebookphotos.jpg
Photos can be associated with specific users if the uploader tags the image (similar to Flickr).

Another feature is the My Photos page. Users can upload apparently unlimited numbers of photos to their Facebook accounts and sort them in named albums. Users can "tag" or list who is in each photo with tags, tying photos to account holders or applying other tags of their choosing. This allows one to view all the pictures on Facebook of a particular person, regardless of who uploaded them. Tagged users also have the option of "untagging" themselves from pictures.

Advertising

All features are free, except for public announcements, which are a type of advertising students can purchase on Facebook. Rates vary by school from $9 per day at Penn Tech (and numerous others) to a high of $22 per day at Penn State. The website also generates revenue from mainstream advertisers who are interested in targeting college students, such as Apple Computer, who can pay for banner ads or sponsored groups.

Pulse

The "Pulse" page provides statistics and trends (much like Google's Zeitgeist), updated daily, regarding members of the website. The page displays Top Ten lists for various sections of the profile (e.g. Movies, Music, Television, Books, Hometowns, etc.) for both the user's school and other institutions or the Facebook community in general. Also provided are current trends: the fastest rising and falling items on the lists.

Criticisms

Usability

Facebook has been criticized for not allowing users to view profiles of people at other colleges who have not already listed them as a friend (or "poked" them). Facebook has stated on its website that security purposes prevent them from allowing outsiders to see one's profile. Problems with maintenance have been an issue as many new accounts are made each day causing heavy traffic for the servers. Furthermore, there are still many bugs in the coding that have caused minor problems for some users.

Popularity contest

File:Facebookotherfriends.jpg
An example of a "long list" of friends from other schools, which can be criticised by some reluctant users as a "popularity contest."

Another criticism, which many claim as their reason for not using it, is its tendency to become a popularity contest. Users often boast of their "friend" count, with special emphasis going to the number of friends at other universities. With many users having friend counts of over 500, it is possible that the user does not know all of his or her "friends," let alone has met them all in person. Newsweek called Charlie Rosenbury, the University of Missouri student who amassed over 70,000 friends, the site's celebrity [9]. Since then, Facebook staff have cracked down on those who collected too many friends, saying that Facebook "was not designed to do complex manipulations with exceedingly long lists of friends" and that the addition of users that one doesn't know as 'friends' "creates an unrealistic aberration in the real life social network that makes the site less useful for regular users" [10]. Charlie Rosenbury's list of friends was lowered by Facebook staff to 4,000 [11]. Students have also created programs which spam others with friendship requests. Facebook has since placed a limit on how many friends a user may request at a time.

Perhaps in response to this phenomenon, Facebook's "How do you know this person?" feature, introduced in December 2005, presents users with the option, "I don't even know this person." If this option is selected, the software replies, "Then why are you friends with them?" and presents the user with the option of removing them as a friend.

Fake profiles

Since registration is open to all email addresses within a specific domain name (@school.edu), students with access to more than one such email address may take advantage of the situation to create fake profiles. As a result, littering Facebook's database are profiles for real-life historical figures, celebrities, and campus personalities such as football coaches, university presidents, athletics mascots, and even inanimate objects such as beer. Although this practice is against Facebook policy (as the Facebook FAQ says, "Dude, everyone knows that you aren't Paris Hilton") and requests for name changes must be approved by Facebook staff, new fake profiles continue to be created.

Fears of data mining and surveillance

Recently there have been some worries of the use of Facebook as a means of surveillance and data mining. Some theories have been written about the possible misuse of Facebook [12]. There is also some concern over the privacy agreement. According to the Privacy Policy, "Facebook also collects information about you from other sources, such as newspapers and instant messaging services. This information is gathered regardless of your use of the Web Site." There is also some concern because of this statement as well: "We may share your information with third parties, including responsible companies with which we have a relationship."

In response to these concerns, on January 16, 2006, Chris Hughes (Facebook's spokesman), stated that the above clause related to the collection of information would not be included in a new version of the privacy policy. He said that the Facebook "used to have a couple features on the site that aren’t still there, such as collecting users’ away messages from AIM (if they said they wanted it) and displaying mentions of their names in campus newspapers (again, upon request)". In addition to assuring the removal of the opt-in features, he also denied any data mining, saying "we have absolutely no relationship with any government agency. Contrary to these rumors, we are not harvesting data for the CIA or any other group." [13]

Responses

Use in investigations

Main article: Facebook's use in investigations

The information students provide on Facebook has been used in investigations by university and local police. Facebook's Terms of Use specify that "the website is available for your personal, noncommercial use only," misleading some to believe that college administrators and police may not use the site for conducting investigations.

Alcohol policy violations

It has become increasingly common for colleges and universities to use Facebook to investigate underage drinking and violations of dry campus policies. Students who violate these policies may be discovered through photographs of illicit drinking behavior, membership in drinking-related groups, or party information posted on the Facebook website. For example, four students at Northern Kentucky University were fined for posting pictures of a drinking party on Facebook. The pictures, taken inside a dormitory, were considered proof that the students were in violation of the university's dry campus policy. [14]

In response to the monitoring, some students have begun to submit "red herring" party listings. [15] In one case at George Washington University, shown at CakeParty.org, students advertised their party and were raided by campus police. The police found only cake, no alcohol, and later claimed the dorm raid had been triggered by a noise complaint. [16]

Other investigations

The United States Secret Service met with a University of Oklahoma freshman in March 2005 after he posted a joke about assassinating President Bush. However, this investigation began after a fellow OU student alerted the Secret Service to the threat and did not stem from federal monitoring of the site as some proposed. [17]

During student government elections held in October 2005, results at both the University of Missouri and University of Pennsylvania were delayed due to early campaigning violations on Facebook. [18][19] The University of California, Berkeley has also experienced similar problems.

Students have been expelled over criticism of a campus police officer [20] and the posting of pictures showing the student in question dressed in drag [21]. One student was arrested after he set a composite sketch of a rape suspect as his profile picture [22] . Others have been punished for rushing a football field [23], hate speech against gays [24], and criticising a teacher [25].

Use in other areas

It has been rumored that employers are looking at Facebook profiles of prospective employees or interns. Whether or not this practice is common is unknown, but students looking for jobs should be aware that information posted on Facebook is potentially accessible to employers with faculty or alumni accounts. [26]

Students who are related to politicians or other public figures have had screenshots of their profiles or photo albulms taken and shared in an attempt to embarrass their relatives. [27]

A group calling itself Performing Politics, Inc. publically displayed the profiles of students at Yale who had made comments about homosexuality in an effort to show evidence of homophobia at the school. [28]

Militant members of the Animal Liberation Front in Britain appear to have threatened students at Oxford who support the university's proposed South Parks laboratory saying they are legitimate targets for attack. A counter-activist group called Pro-Test has warned students not to support the lab's construction on Facebook as they believe ALF is monitoring the site. [29]

Students that had created a Facebook group to complain about a professor's teaching shortcomings at the University of Louisville help lead to the dismissal of their targeted instructor in February of 2006, and were not punished. [30]

Schools block access

The University of New Mexico in October 2005 blocked access to Facebook from UNM campus computers and networks, citing unsolicited e-mails and a similar site called UNM Facebook. [31] After a UNM user signed into Facebook from off campus, a message from Facebook said, "We are working with the UNM administration to lift the block and have explained that it was instituted based on erroneous information, but they have not yet committed to restore your access."

UNM, in a message to students who tried to access the site from the UNM network, wrote, "This site is temporarily unavailable while UNM and the site owners work out procedural issues. The site is in violation of UNM's Acceptable Computer Use Policy for abusing computing resources (e.g., spamming, trademark infringement, etc.). The site forces use of UNM credentials (e.g., NetID or email address) for non-UNM business."

Many highschools across the United States have blocked access to Facebook on all school computers after students have started anti-school groups like the notorious School Sucks group. Some schools have even gone as far as to suspend students that are members of Facebook hate groups towards peers or staff members. At East Lansing High School, MI, many students were threatened with disciplinary action for joining a Facebook group about how much they hate the principal.[citation needed] Other schools, such as The Bullis School, MD, have threatened students with suspension for simply being members of the site under the Bullis School's name.[citation needed]

Digital mourning

A notable ancillary effect of social networking websites, particularly Facebook, is the abilitiy for participants to mourn publicly for a passed individual. This particular phenomenon is nameless, though it may be referred to as digital mourning. Generally, students will leave messages of sadness, grief or hope on the Wall of the individual, transforming its role into one of a public book of condolences. This particular phenomenon has been documented at a number of schools, including Louisiana State University, University of Wisconsin, University of Texas, Western Illinois University, University of Missouri, Kansas City, Tufts University, University of Virginia, and Boston University. According to Facebook spokesperson Chris Hughes, "In the past, we have removed profiles as soon as we were made aware of the student's death, but we are now re-evaluating the policy in light of numerous requests to the contrary from users." [32]


Notes

  1. ^ a b Arrington, Michael. 85% of College Students use FaceBook TechCrunch.
  2. ^ Morgan, Lauren. Facebook can hurt employment chances Red and Black. Accessed December 9, 2005.

See also

External links

Official website

Print media

College newspapers

Online media

Information

source: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Facebook&oldid=40601962

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