Facebook phenomene

other personal information. Users can communicate with friends and other users through private or public messages and a chat feature. They can also create and join interest groups and « like pages » (formerly called « fan pages », until April 19, 2010), some of which are maintained by organizations as a means of advertising. 69] To allay concerns about privacy, Facebook enables users to choose their own privacy settings and choose who can see specific parts of their profile. [70] The website is free to users, and generates revenue from advertising, such as banner ads. [71] Facebook requires a user’s name and profile picture (if applicable) to be accessible by everyone. Users can control who sees other information they have shared, as well as who can find them in searches, through their privacy settings. 72] The media often compares Facebook to MySpace, but one significant difference between the two websites is the level of customization. [73] Another difference is Facebook’s requirement that users utilize their true identity, a demand that MySpace does not make. [74] MySpace allows users to decorate their profiles using HTML and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), while Facebook only allows plain text. [75] Facebook has a number of features with which users may interact.

They include the Wall, a space on every user’s profile page that allows friends to post messages for the user to see;[76] Pokes, which allows users to send a virtual « poke » to each other (a notification then tells a user that they have been poked);[77] Photos, where users can upload albums and photos;[78] and Status, which allows users to inform their friends of their whereabouts and actions. [79] Depending on privacy settings, anyone who can see a user’s profile can also view that user’s Wall.

In July 2007, Facebook began allowing users to post attachments to the Wall, whereas the Wall was previously limited to textual content only. [76] Over time, Facebook has added features to its website. On September 6, 2006, a News Feed was announced, which appears on every user’s homepage and highlights information including profile changes, upcoming events, and birthdays of the user’s friends. 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.

Initially, the News Feed caused dissatisfaction among Facebook users; some complained it was too cluttered and full of undesired information, while others were concerned it made it too easy for other people to track down individual activities (such as changes in relationship status, events, and conversations with other users). In response to this dissatisfaction, Zuckerberg issued an apology for the site’s failure to include appropriate customizable privacy features. Since then, users have been able to control what types of information are shared automatically with friends.

Users are now able to prevent friends from seeing updates about certain types of activities, including profile changes, Wall posts, and newly added friends. On February 23, 2010, Facebook was granted US patent 7669123 on certain aspects of their News Feed. The patent covers News Feeds where links are provided so that one user can participate in the same activity of another user. The patent may encourage Facebook to pursue action against websites that violate the patent, which may potentially include websites such as Twitter.

One of the most popular applications on Facebook is the Photos application, where users can upload albums and photos. Facebook allows users to upload an unlimited number of photos, compared with other image hosting services such as Photobucket and Flickr, which apply limits to the number of photos that a user is allowed to upload. During the first years, Facebook users were limited to 60 photos per album. As of May 2009, this limit has been increased to 200 photos per album. Privacy settings can be set for individual albums, limiting the groups of users that can see an album.

For example, the privacy of an album can be set so that only the user’s friends can see the album, while the privacy of another album can be set so that all Facebook users can see it. Another feature of the Photos application is the ability to « tag », or label users in a photo. For instance, if a photo contains a user’s friend, then the user can tag the friend in the photo. This sends a notification to the friend that they have been tagged, and provides them a link to see the photo. [91] During the week of April 7, 2008, Facebook released a Comet-based instant messaging application alled « Chat » to several networks, which allows users to communicate with friends and is similar in functionality to desktop-based instant messengers. On July 20, 2008, Facebook introduced « Facebook Beta », a significant redesign of its user interface on selected networks. The Mini-Feed and Wall were consolidated, profiles were separated into tabbed sections, and an effort was made to create a « cleaner » look. [98] After initially giving users a choice to switch, Facebook began migrating all users to the new version beginning in September 2008. [99] On December 11, 2008, it was announced that Facebook was testing a simpler signup process. 100] Many new smartphones offer access to the Facebook services either through their web-browsers or applications. An official Facebook application is available for the iPhone OS, the Android OS, and the WebOS. Nokia and Research In Motion both provide Facebook applications for their own mobile devices. More than 150 million active users access Facebook through mobile devices across 200 mobile operators in 60 countries. 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 an @facebook. om 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. Codenamed « Project Titan, » Facebook Messages took 15 months to develop. Reception According to comScore, Facebook is the leading social networking site based on monthly unique visitors, having overtaken main competitor MySpace in April 2008. 104] ComScore reports that Facebook attracted 130 million unique visitors in May 2010, an increase of 8. 6 million people. [105] According to Alexa, the website’s ranking among all websites increased from 60th to 7th in worldwide traffic, from September 2006 to September 2007, and is currently 2nd. [106] Quantcast ranks the website 2nd in the U. S. in traffic,[107] and Compete. com ranks it 2nd in the U. S. [108] The website is the most popular for uploading photos, with 50 billion uploaded cumulatively. 109] In 2010, Sophos’s « Security Threat Report 2010 » polled over 500 firms, 60% of which responded that they believed that Facebook was the social network that posed the biggest threat to security, well ahead of MySpace, Twitter, and LinkedIn. [53] Facebook is the most popular social networking site in several English-speaking countries, including Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States. In 2010, Facebook won the Crunchie “Best Overall Startup Or Product” the third year in a row[120] and was recognized as one of the « Hottest Silicon Valley Companies » by Lead411. 121] However, in a July 2010 survey performed by the American Customer Satisfaction Index, Facebook received a score of 64 out of 100, placing it in the bottom 5% of all private sector companies in terms of customer satisfaction, alongside industries such as the IRS e-file system, airlines, and cable companies. Reasons for why Facebook scored so poorly include privacy problems, frequent changes to the website’s interface, the results returned by the News Feed, and spam. [122] In December 2008, the Supreme Court of the Australian Capital Territory ruled that Facebook is a valid protocol to serve court notices to defendants.

It is believed to be the world’s first legal judgement that defines a summons posted on Facebook as legally binding. Employers (such as Virgin Atlantic Airways) have also used Facebook as a means to keep tabs on their employees and have even been known to fire them over posts they have made. By 2005, the use of Facebook had already become so ubiquitous that the generic verb « facebooking » had come into use to describe the process of browsing others’ profiles or updating one’s own. [126] In 2008, Collins English Dictionary declared « Facebook » as their new Word of the Year. 127] In December 2009, the New Oxford American Dictionary declared their word of the year to be the verb « unfriend », defined as « To remove someone as a « friend » on a social networking site such as Facebook. As in, “I decided to unfriend my roommate on Facebook after we had a fight” « . [128] Political impact Facebook’s role in the American political process was demonstrated in January 2008, shortly before the New Hampshire primary, when Facebook teamed up with ABC and Saint Anselm College to allow users to give live feedback about the « back to back » January 5 Republican and Democratic debates. 133][134][135] Charles Gibson moderated both debates, held at the Dana Center for the Humanities at Saint Anselm College. Facebook users took part in debate groups organized around specific topics, register to vote, and message questions. [136] Over 1,000,000 people installed the Facebook application ‘US politics’ in order to take part, and the application measured users’ responses to specific comments made by the debating candidates. [137] This debate showed the broader community what many young students had already experienced: Facebook was an extremely popular and powerful new way to interact and voice opinions.

An article written by Michelle Sullivan of Uwire. com illustrates how the « facebook effect » has affected youth voting rates, support by youth of political candidates, and general involvement by the youth population in the 2008 election. [138] In February 2008, a Facebook group called « One Million Voices Against FARC » organized an event that saw hundreds of thousands of Colombians march in protest against the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, better known as the FARC.