Seven Interesting Facts About Facebook You May Not Know

Jun 15th, 2010 by UmiNoor

Perhaps you’re one of 400 million Facebook users who logs once every month or perhaps you log in every day and has what psychologists call FAD (Facebook Addiction Disorder). No matter how addicted you are to Facebook, you may not know some of the following interesting facts about Facebook.

1. Launch of Facebook

Facebook was launched on February 4^th, 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with his fellow Harvard classmates Dustin Moskovitz, Chris Hughes and Eduardo Saverin from their Harvard dorm room. It started out as a social networking site to connect those who are Harvard students as well as graduates. It eventually includes other colleges and high schools to eventually be open for anyone in the world. It was formerly known as thefacebook.com which was later changed to simply Facebook.

2. Facebook Scandal
Facebook became the center of public attention when it was sued for copyright infringement. Former Harvard classmates twin brothers Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss and Divya Narendra claimed that Mark Zuckerberg who was supposed to work with them in creating the base software for their social networking site ConnectU has stolen their business idea and technology and used them to start his own competitive site Facebook. The suit was settled in June 2008. The founders of ConnectU were reported to have received $65 million in stocks and cash.

  3. Yahoo's attempt to buy Facebook Facebook has become quite a powerhouse networking site that in 2006 Yahoo whose failed social service Yahoo 360, has tried to purchase it for $1 billion. However, Zuckerberg declined the offer claiming that Facebook is worth $4 billion which couldn’t be far from the truth as Facebook is now estimated to be valued between $7.9 to $11 billion now.
4. Facebook traffic stats
The traffic to Facebook is growing every day being only second to Google. YouTube comes in third while other networking sites like Twitter comes in at eleventh place and mySpace in twenty-fifth position.
5. Important statistics about Facebook :

• Four hundred million users log in at least once every month; half of which log in every day.
• Seventy percent of Facebook users come from outside the United States.
• Half of Denmark population are active users of Facebook.
• 8.3 billion hours are spent monthly on Facebook.
• The two most popular Facebook Pages are that of Michael Jackson and Homer Simpson.

6. Facebook investors
At the startup of Facebook, Zuckerberg got financial backing in the amount of half a million dollars from Peter Thiel who is the co-founder of Paypal. In May 2005, Accel Partners contributed $12.7 million to Facebook startup capital. Later, other companies like Microsoft, Greylock Partners and Digital Sky Technologies also invested in Facebook in return for a share in Facebook.
7. How Facebook makes money
Facebook offers free membership to its users. Facebook revenue comes mainly from advertising where advertisers are able to target specific audience based on Facebook users’ profile.
Facebook is becoming more and more popular and is now the current number one social networking site on the internet. You may likely be one of Facebook users and may find these facts about Facebook totally unknown to you. So hopefully with this article, you know more about Facebook.

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Fascination Facebook: Failings Of Social Media

It's a theme which simply cannot be laid to rest: Facebook, MySpace and sundry others make the news every few weeks with yet another tale of a personal profile gone wrong: personal privacy; personal security; copyright theft; pornography; identity theft, they all feature at some time in the constant reports of what Social Media brings with its apparent and much vaunted freedom of expression.

Yet there is far more behind the headlines which doesn't make it into the news reports; the workings in the background and the fight to keep some semblance of social interaction as a Real Life experience.

The main target is, and probably will be for some time to come, Facebook. Many are the tales of workers being ejected from their place of employment because, having reported themselves ill and bedded down, photographs of a wild party they attended whilst too ill tom work have appeared on their profile page.

There are also tales of potential employees not being accepted prior to their final interviews; the entries on their social pages showing someone who is perhaps untrustworthy, frivolous, lacking in the right motivation to complete their prospective job according to the judgment of their future employer.

For Facebook it is simple: what a person publishes on their profile page, what they write on their Wall, what they upload to the albums is a matter for those individuals and no one else. It is a matter of free choice, and Facebook is not designed, they claim, to intervene in any way. All information entered is from the people themselves, it is voluntary and, as such, each person must be prepared to take all reasonable precautions to ensure their own security, to ensure that what they publish is suitable for all.

The reality is somewhat different. Facebook, for example, has a strict policy of what may and what may not be uploaded onto their servers. They have a complaints procedure in place - including the right to send a DMCA for copyright contraventions - which covers almost every eventuality.

They claim, but cannot as yet show, or refuse to prove, that each complaint received is checked by a human employee before a final decision on suitability is made. Once that decision has been reached there is no backing down, no redress, no recompense. It is this complaints system which contributes to some of the problems Facebook users are faced with on an almost daily basis: the complaints are made by other subscribers but remain, as far as the person being complained over is concerned, anonymous. They can be part of a systematic attack against a particular person or a means of revenge for some perceived wrong.

They can also be directed at the wrong person, and that person cannot undo any decision Facebook may make concerning their entries, their posts, their photographs. Once an entry is deleted it is gone; Facebook make it plain in their FAQ that they are unable, for technical reasons, to provide even a copy of material which has been deleted, nor are they willing to enter into any discussion on their actions.

Pornography, as only one example, is not allowed on Facebook. That there is a wealth of private, commercial and indeed sometimes illegal pornographic material on Facebook - as photographs, text or video - belies the seriousness of this regulation.

Facebook relies on other members to make a complaint before they will consider action, something which may well be understandable if their claims of over five hundred million users worldwide can be taken as a serious figure. That Facebook is also used, fortunately not as often as would be possible, to transport child pornography from one user to another hardly seems to merit comment.

A complaint detailing the publication of child pornography by a registered user is processed in the same manner as every other complaint, and it may take many hours before a real live person gets around to actually checking out the claims and then, hopefully, removing the offending material. Here Facebook is also circumspect: their FAQs show clearly that they will not necessarily delete material which contravenes their regulations, may perhaps only issue a warning to the offender and leave it at that.

There is, despite a well planned and laid out reporting system, no fast track method of reporting anything, be it child pornography, racist entries or anything else which contravenes the FAQs.
Facebook is not a social media platform in the normal sense of the phrase. It merely claims to 'help you connect and share with the people in your life': that is, with people you already know. Facebook is not designed for people wishing to make new friends with similar tastes or interests: in fact the adding or attempt to add someone who is not known to a Friends List is specifically not allowed.

A user may have their access to the Add Friends application suspended for two days should someone complain that they don't know the applicant; repeated complaints can lead to an account being deleted, with no redress. That it is predominantly used by those seeking others with similar interests is clear to all and, while this unacceptable practice works wonders for those who can carry it out without complaints, it can lead to expulsion from the ranks of those inhabiting this virtual world.

The complaints system is also very unstable. No fast track for illegal materials - such as child pornography - no redress to right a wrong. It can also be very selective: an entry which displeases one person being deleted - a recent example being an article over smuggling, perfumes and food additives which was deleted - while another containing explicit sexual material remains untouched. It is open to misuse: concerted attacks from a small group of people lodging complaints which result in an ill-favored person being deleted completely, regardless of what the background to the complaints may be.

The human workforce - a claimed five hundred million users makes this excuse acceptable - can hardly be expected to check all other entries in a profile, nor ascertain the veracity of a series of complaints made against one user. There is also no opportunity given for a user to correct an entry, to justify their actions. The offending user receives a warning, without any specific reference to what has offended or why, and the matter has been dealt with.

And yet sites similar to Facebook, and Facebook itself, will remain a major part of our virtual world for some time to come, regardless of their faults and failings. They fulfill a personal need and desire to communicate which, thanks to the mobility of our society, is hard to emulate by any other means.

The integral family unit is a thing of the past, global communication, global mobility and a wish for constant contact with those we know - or wish to know - remains as strong as ever. It remains the task of those users taking advantage of this form of communication, of this extra freedom through modern technology, to decide what they wish to publish and to whom.

It should be, and perhaps one day will be, the task of social media platforms such as Facebook to ensure that this freedom is not abused in order to protect and nurture it. However, until service providers such as Facebook, MySpace and all the others are capable of providing what their customers desire with a high level of security and reliability, and without the threat of abuse or misuse, many more years are likely to pass, and many more media reports of the failings of an otherwise ideal system will appear on front pages.

Viktoria Michaelis is an eighteen year old American student (born July 1992) currently resident in Germany on a Student Exchange Program Intensive Training Course in Property Management, Translation and Executive Management Skills. She regularly writes in her personal Blog at Viktoria Michaelis. Article Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Viktoria_Michaelis