Myspace N Facebook Swagga

tags and large images. There are several independent web sites offering MySpace layout design utilities which let a user select options and preview what their page will look like with them. MySpace has recently added its own "Profile Customizer" to the site, allowing users to change their profile through MySpace. Using this feature bypasses the CSS loading delay issue, as the MySpace default code is changed for the customized profile. The MySpace profile editor also has a criticism with how the links appear on the profile.
Music
Sister project Wikinews has related news: MySpace to take on iTunes

MySpace profiles for musicians in the website's MySpace Music section differ from normal profiles in allowing artists to upload up to six MP3 songs. The uploader must have rights to use the songs (e.g. their own work, permission granted, etc). Unsigned musicians can use MySpace to post and sell music using SNOCAP, which has proven popular among MySpace users.

Shortly after MySpace was sold to Rupert Murdoch, the owner of Fox news and 20th Century Fox, in 2005 they launched their own record label, MySpace Records, in an effort to discover unknown talent currently on MySpace Music.[16] Regardless of the artist already being famous or still looking for a break into the industry, aspiring artists can upload their songs onto MySpace and have access to millions of people on a daily basis. Some well known singers such as Lilly Allen and Sean Kingston gained fame through MySpace. The availability of music on this website continues to develop, largely driven by young talent. Over eight million artists have been discovered by MySpace and many more continue to be discovered daily.[31]

MySpace has recently redesigned its music page adding new features for all musicians. These new features include the users' ability to create playlists, resembling the functions of lastfm and other social music websites, along with the popular ProjectPlaylist that is popular on profiles. The new music features also archive songs from many popular artists, resembling the services of iTunes and Napster.

MySpace features

Bulletins

Bulletins are posts that are posted on to a "bulletin board" for everyone on a MySpace user's friends list to see. Bulletins can be useful for contacting an entire friends list without resorting to messaging users individually. Some users choose to use Bulletins as a service for delivering chain messages about politics, religion, or anything else and sometimes these chain messages are considered threatening to the users, especially the ones that mention bad luck, death, or topics similar to that.[32] They have also become the primary attack point for phishing. Bulletins are deleted after ten days.

Groups

MySpace has a Groups feature which allows a group of users to share a common page and message board. Groups can be created by anybody, and the moderator of the group can choose for anyone to join, or to approve or deny requests to join.

MySpaceIM

Main article: MySpaceIM

In early 2006, MySpace introduced MySpaceIM, an instant messenger that uses one's MySpace account as a screen name. A MySpace user logs in to the client using the same e-mail associated with his or her MySpace account. Unlike other parts of MySpace, MySpaceIM is stand-alone software for Microsoft Windows. Users who use MySpaceIM get instant notification of new MySpace messages, friend requests, and comments.

MySpaceTV

In early 2007, MySpace introduced MySpaceTV, a service similar to the YouTube video sharing website. MySpaceTV is now in beta mode, and will probably be launched as a separate site in either 2008 or early 2009. MySpaceTV might be a standard channel that will be shown on television.

Applications

In 2008, MySpace introduced an API with which users could create applications for other users to post on their profiles. The applications are similar to the Facebook applications. In May 2008, MySpace had added some security options regarding interaction with photos and other media.

MySpace Mobile

There are a variety of environments in which users can access MySpace content on their mobile phone. American mobile phone provider Helio released a series of mobile phones in early 2006 that can utilize a service known as MySpace Mobile to access and edit one's profile and communicate with, and view the profiles of, other members.[33] Additionally, UIEvolution and MySpace developed a mobile version of MySpace for a wider range of carriers, including AT&T,[34] Vodafone[35] and Rogers Wireless.[36]

MySpace News

In the month of April 2007, MySpace launched a news service called MySpace News which displays news from RSS feeds that users submit. It also allows users to rank each news story by voting for it. The more votes a story gets, the higher the story moves up the page.

MySpace Classifieds

Full service classifieds listing offered beginning in August 2006. Has grown by 33 percent in one year since inception. MySpace Classifieds was launched right at the same time the site appeared on the internet.[37]

MySpace Karaoke

Launched April 29, 2008, ksolo.myspace.com is a combination of MySpace and kSolo, which allows users to upload audio recordings of themselves singing onto their profile page. Users' friends are able to rate the performances. A video feature is not yet available, but Tom Anderson, MySpace co-founder and president, states that it is in the works.[38]

MySpace Polls

MySpace Polls is a feature on MySpace that was brought back in 2008 to enable users to post polls on their profile and share them with other users.

MySpace forums

MySpace uses an implementation of community server for its forum system.[39]

Politics

* Many hopeful 2008 presidential candidates have set up MySpace profiles, presumably in an effort to attract younger voters. Most profiles feature photos, blogs, videos, and ways for viewers to get involved with campaigning. MySpace features these politicians' profiles on its front page in the "Cool New People" section, on what appears to be a random rotation.
* Many political organizations have created MySpace accounts to keep in touch with and expand their membership base. These range from larger organizations like Greenpeace and the ACLU to smaller locally focused environmentalist groups and Food Not Bombs activists.

Controversy over corporate history

Spam/Tom Anderson PR

In September 2006, a lengthy article written by web journalist Trent Lapinski, "MySpace: The Business of Spam 2.0," was published by the Silicon Valley gossip blog, Valleywag (a Gawker Media property). The article recounted a detailed corporate history of MySpace, alleging that MySpace was not organically grown from Tom Anderson's garage, but rather was a product developed by eUniverse aimed at overtaking Friendster, and that had initially gained popularity through an intensive mass internet campaign and not by word of mouth.[40] Amongst other claims was the assertion that Tom Anderson had originally been hired as a copyeditor and his "founder" and "first friend" status was a public relations invention. Lapinski suggested that News Corp. had attempted to suppress the publication of the history by threatening his original publisher. In addition, Tom's age on the site was lowered to "appeal" to younger users. [41]

Brad Greenspan/The MySpace Report

In October 2006, Brad Greenspan (the former Chairman, CEO and largest individual shareholder of Intermix Media, who claims to be the true "founder of MySpace") launched a website and published "The MySpace Report" that called for the Securities and Exchange Commission, the United States Department of Justice and the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance to investigate News Corp's acquisition of MySpace as "one of the largest merger and acquisition scandals in U.S. history."[42] The report's main allegation is that News Corp. should have valued MySpace at US$20 billion rather than US$327 million, and had, in effect, defrauded Intermix shareholders through an unfair deal process.[43] The report received a mixed response from financial commentators in the press.[44] An initial lawsuit led by Greenspan challenging the acquisition was dismissed by a judge.[45]

Greenspan's report also states that the MySpace program code had originally been the brainchild of an Intermix/eUniverse programmer named Toan Nguyen who made the breakthrough technical contributions to the project.[46]

Valleywag speculated that Greenspan was likely a key source for Lapinski's September article, "MySpace founder accuses company of defrauding investors of $20 billion."

Criticism

Accessibility and reliability

Because most MySpace pages are designed by individuals with little HTML experience, a very large proportion of pages do not satisfy the criteria for valid HTML or CSS laid down by the W3C. Poorly formatted code can cause accessibility problems for those using software such as screen readers.[47] The MySpace home page, as of August 18, 2008, fails HTML validation with around 125 errors (the number changes on sequential validations of the home page due to dynamic content), using the W3C's validator.[48]

Furthermore, MySpace is set up so that anyone can customize the layout and colors of their profile page with virtually no restrictions, provided that the advertisements are not covered up by CSS or using other means. As MySpace users are usually not skilled web developers, this can cause further problems. Poorly constructed MySpace profiles could potentially freeze up web browsers due to malformed CSS coding, or as a result of users placing many high bandwidth objects such as videos, graphics, and Flash in their profiles (sometimes multiple videos and sound files are automatically played at the same time when a profile loads). While MySpace blocks potentially harmful code (such as JavaScript) from profiles, users have occasionally found ways to insert such code. PC World cited this as its main reason for naming MySpace as #1 in its list of twenty-five worst web sites ever.[49]

In addition, new features have been gradually added (see featuritis). This, and the increasing number of MySpace members, leads to an increase in bandwidth used. This increase in usage often slows down the servers and may result in a "Server Too Busy" error message for some users who are on at peak hours, "Sorry! an unexpected error has occurred. This error has been forwarded to MySpace's technical group," or a variety of any other error messages throughout the day.[50]

Security

In October 2005, a flaw in MySpace's site design was exploited by "Samy" to create the first self-propagating cross-site scripting (XSS) worm. MSNBC has reported that "social-networking sites like MySpace are turning out to be hotbeds for spyware," with "infection rates are on the rise, in part thanks to the surging popularity of social-networking sites like MySpace.com."[51] In addition to this, the customization of user pages currently allows the injection of certain HTML which can be crafted to form a phishing user profile, thus keeping the myspace.com domain as the address.[52] More recently, there has been spam on bulletins that has been the result of phishing.[53] Users find their MySpace homepage with bulletins they didn't post, realizing later they had been phished. The bulletin consists of an advertisement that provides a link to a fake login screen, tricking people into typing in their MySpace e-mail and password.

Other security fears regarding profile content itself are also present. For example, the embedding of videos inherently allows all of the format's abilities and functions to be used on a page. A prime example of this surfaced in December 2006, when embedded QuickTime videos were shown to contain hyperlinks to JavaScript files, which would be run simply by a user visiting a 'phished' profile page, or even in some cases by simply viewing a user's 'about me' elsewhere on the site. Users who entered their login information into a fake login bar that appeared would also become 'phished', and their account would be used to spam other members, thus spreading this security problem.[54]

MySpace's anti-phishing and anti-spam measures have also come under fire. In 2007, MySpace made changes such that external links on profiles would be redirected through the http://msplinks.com domain. For example, http://en.wikipedia.org would be changed to http://www.msplinks.com/MDFodHRwOi8vZW4ud2lraXBlZGlhLm9yZw==. (The new links are determined by Base64 encoding, as there are ways of decoding the link back into its original URL. [2]) MySpace staffers would be able to disable potentially dangerous links. (The changed links only work if the HTTP referrer is a MySpace page; otherwise, the link will appear to be disabled.) This move has been criticized that it makes profile editing inconvenient and that it does nothing to deter spammers. In February 2008, MySpace changed the system such that users who click such links (except for whitelisted domains like Wikipedia and YouTube) will receive a warning that they will be leaving the myspace.com domain. As of March 2008, this "feature" has been extended to blogs as well, although previous blog entries are unaffected unless the user updates them.

In January 2008, the states attorneys general of 49 states of the USA wrote guidelines for online safety for MySpace and other services. They included restrictions for behavior on social networking services.[55]

On January 26, 2008 over 567,000 private MySpace user pictures were uploaded from the site by using a bug published on YouTube and put on the Piratebay torrent site for download.[56]

MySpace party problems

MySpace is often used as a venue for publicizing parties, sometimes with the host's knowledge and sometimes without. There have been some well-publicized incidents where MySpace parties have caused thousands of dollars damage to property, and even (in at least one case) loss of life.

* A party hosted by Corey Worthington, a 16-year-old boy from Narre Warren in Melbourne, Australia, and advertised on MySpace, attracted 500 people. Police cars were attacked, and the dog squad and a helicopter were called in. The incident received international coverage. (Worthington subsequently found work as a party promoter, and appeared on the Ten Network's Australian version of Big Brother.)[57] The Sydney Morning Herald's online technology writer, Asher Moses, has noted that MySpace/Facebook parties are particularly prone to gatecrashing because news of events can spread to uninvited guests via "newsfeeds." He suspects some party hosts are oblivious to the actual number of people who get the message."[58] [58][59]
* In April 2007, a 17-year-old British girl hosted a party after distributing information about it on MySpace that was reportedly subtitled "Let's trash the average family-sized house disco party." Her parents were left with an approximately £24,000 ($48,000) bill from police.[58][60]
* Allen Joplin, a 17-year-old American high school student from Seattle, was shot dead at a party which had been publicized through MySpace.[58][61]

Child safety

The minimum age to register an account on MySpace is 14. [62] Profiles with ages set from 14 to 15 years are automatically private. Users whose ages are set at 16 or over have the option to set their profile to public viewing. Accessing the full profile of, or messaging someone when their account is set to "private" (or if under sixteen) is restricted to a MySpace user's direct friends.

MySpace will delete fake profiles if the victim verifies their identity and points out the profile via e-mail.[63]

Recently, MySpace has been the focus of a number of news reports stating that teenagers have found ways around the restrictions set by MySpace, and have been the target of online predators. Stricter methods for enforcing age admission will be enforced in the future, such as blocking a person from accessing MySpace using a computers IP address.[64] In response, MySpace has given assurances to parents that the website is safe for people of all ages. Beginning in late June 2006, MySpace users whose ages are set over 18 could no longer be able to add users whose ages are set from 14 to 15 years as friends unless they already know the user's full name or email address.[65] Some third party Internet safety companies like Social Shield[66] have launched online communities for parents concerned about their child's safety on MySpace.

In June 2006, 16-year-old American Katherine Lester flew to the Middle East, to Tel Aviv, Israel, after having tricked her parents into getting her a passport in order to be with a 20-year-old man she met through MySpace.[67] U.S. officials in Jordan persuaded the teen to turn around and go home.

In October 2006, 13-year-old Megan Meier committed suicide after being the victim of cyber-bullying instigated by the mother of a friend who had posed as a 16-year old named "Josh Evans".[68]

In December 2006, MySpace announced new measures to protect children from known sex offenders. Although precise details were not given they said that "tools" would be implemented to prevent known sex offenders from the USA creating a MySpace profile.[69]

In February 2007, a U.S. District Judge in Texas dismissed a case when a family sued MySpace for negligence, fraud, and misrepresentation; a girl in the family had been sexually assaulted by a man she met through MySpace, after she had misrepresented her age as 18 when she was 13. Regarding his dismissal of the case, U.S. District Judge Sam Sparks wrote: "If anyone had a duty to protect Julie Doe, it was her parents, not MySpace."[70]

In July 2007, the company found and deleted 29,000 profiles belonging to registered sex offenders.[71] Anti-pedophile organization Perverted Justice has praised MySpace for its efforts to combat pedophiles using their service.[72]

In October 2007, a study published in the Journal of Adolescence conducted by Sameer Hinduja (Florida Atlantic University) and Justin W. Patchin (University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire) concluded that most adolescents use MySpace responsibly: "When considered in its proper context, these results indicate that the problem of personal information disclosure on MySpace may not be as widespread as many assume, and that the overwhelming majority of adolescents are responsibly using the website," they say.[73]

Social and cultural

Dave Itzkoff, in the June 2006 Playboy magazine, related his experiences of experimentation with membership in MySpace. Among his other criticisms, one pertains to the distance afforded by the Internet that emboldens members, such as females who feature photos of themselves in scant clothing on their profile pages or behave in ways they would not in person, and he indicated that this duplicity undercuts the central design of MySpace, namely, to bring people together. Itzkoff also referenced the addictive, time-consuming nature of the site, mentioning that the Playboy Playmate and MySpace member Julie McCullough, who was the first to respond to his add-friend request, pointedly referred to the site as "cybercrack". Itzkoff argued that MySpace gives many people access to a member’s life, without giving the time needed to maintain such relationships and that such relationships do not possess the depth of in-person relationships.

Furthermore, in terms of MySpace's potential for underhanded commercial exploitation, Itzkoff is particularly critical of the disturbing and fraudulent behavior of people who can contact a member, unsolicited, as when he was contacted by someone expressing a desire to socialize and date, but whose blog (to which Itzkoff was directed via subsequent emails) was found to be a solicitation for a series of commercial porn sites. Itzkoff is similarly critical of the more subtle commercial solicitations on the site, such as the banner ads and links to profiles and video clips that turn out to be, for example, commercials for new 20th Century Fox films. He also observed that MySpace’s much-celebrated music section is heavily weighted in favor of record labels rather than breakthrough musicians.

In relating criticism from another person, whom Itzkoff called "Judas," he illustrated that, while the goal of attempting to bring together people who might not otherwise associate with one another in real life may seem honorable, MySpace inherently violates a social contract only present when people interact face-to-face, rendering, in his opinion, the website nothing more than a passing fad:
“ There will come a moment when, like deer quivering and flicking up their ears toward a noiseless noise in the woods, the first adopters will suddenly realize they’re spending their time blogging, adding, and gawking at the same alarming photos as an army of 14-year olds, and quick as deer, they’ll dash to the next trend. And before you know it, we’ll all follow.[74] ”

Censorship

Activist group MoveOn.org has criticized MySpace, claiming that the website practices censorship by not showing anti-media ads, removing fake profiles for high-profile media executives like Rupert Murdoch, and allegedly attempting to force users away from using third-party Flash applications on their profiles.[75] MySpace also generated controversy for censoring YouTube videos.

Stalking

According to Alison Kiss, program director for Security on Campus, social networking websites such as MySpace and Facebook have made it easier for stalkers who target women on college campuses.[76]

MySpace China

The Chinese version of MySpace, launched in April 2007, has many censorship-related differences from other international versions of the service. Discussion forums on topics such as religion and politics are absent, and a filtering system that prevents the posting of content about Taiwan independence, the Dalai Lama, Falun Gong, and other "inappropriate topics" has been added.[77] Users are also given the ability to report the "misconduct" of other users for offenses including "endangering national security, leaking state secrets, subverting the government, undermining national unity, and spreading rumors or disturbing the social order."[78]

See also: Internet censorship in the People's Republic of China

Religious discrimination

On January 30, 2008, Bryan J. Pesta, a Cleveland State University assistant professor, and moderator of the Atheist and Agnostic Group, accused MySpace of pandering to religious intolerance by deleting atheist users, groups and content. Specifically, Pesta alleges that MySpace deleted AAG's account, and his own personal profile, based on complaints from people offended by atheism, and this was the second time MySpace deleted the group since November 2007, even though, according to Pesta, it had never violated the site's Terms of Service. The page was again hacked on Thanksgiving 2007, and restored three weeks later, before being ultimately removed again.[79]

International sites

Since early 2006, MySpace has offered the option to access the service in different regional versions. The alternative regional versions present automated content according to locality (e.g. UK users see other UK users as "Cool New People," and UK oriented events and adverts, etc.), offer local languages other than English, or accommodate the regional differences in spelling and conventions in the English-speaking world (e.g. United States: "favorites," mm/dd/yyyy; the rest of the world: "favourites," dd/mm/yyyy).

Sites currently offered are:

* MySpace Global
* MySpace Australia
* MySpace Brazil (currently in beta)
* MySpace Canada (in English) (currently in beta)
* MySpace Canada (in French) (currently in beta)
* MySpace China (currently in beta)
* MySpace Denmark
* MySpace France
* MySpace Finland
* MySpace Germany (currently in beta)
* MySpace Ireland
* MySpace Latin America (in Spanish) (currently in beta)
* MySpace India (currently in beta)
* MySpace Italy (currently in beta)



* MySpace Japan (currently in beta)
* MySpace Korea (currently in beta)
* MySpace Mexico
* MySpace Netherlands
* MySpace New Zealand
* MySpace Poland (currently in beta)
* MySpace Portugal
* MySpace Russia (currently in beta)
* MySpace Spain
* MySpace Sweden
* MySpace Turkey (currently in beta)
* MySpace UK
* MySpace USA (in Spanish)
* MySpace USA (in English) (this is, in fact, identical to the "global" site)

MySpace Developer Platform (MDP)

On February 5, 2008, MySpace set up a developer platform which allows developers to share their ideas and write their own MySpace applications. The opening was inaugurated with a workshop at the MySpace, San Francisco offices two weeks before the official launch. The MDP is based on the Open Social API which was presented by Google in November 2007 to support social networks to develop social and interacting widgets and can be seen as an answer to Facebooks developer platform. The first public beta of the MySpace Apps was released on March 5, 2008, with around 1,000 applications available.[80] [81]

Musicians' rights and MySpace Terms of Use Agreement

Until June 2006, there was a concern amongst musicians, artists, and bands on MySpace such as songwriter Billy Bragg owing to the fine print within the user agreement that read, "You hereby grant to MySpace.com a non-exclusive, fully paid and royalty-free, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense through unlimited levels of sublicensees) to use, copy, modify, adapt, translate, publicly perform, publicly display, store, reproduce, transmit, and distribute such Content on and through the Services." The fine print brought particular concern as the agreement was being made with Murdoch's News Corporation. Billy Bragg brought the issue to the attention of the media during the first week of June 2006.[82] Jeff Berman, a MySpace spokesman swiftly responded by saying, "Because the legalese has caused some confusion, we are at work revising it to make it very clear that MySpace is not seeking a license to do anything with an artist's work other than allow it to be shared in the manner the artist intends."

By June 27, 2006, MySpace had amended the user agreement with, "MySpace.com does not claim any ownership rights in the text, files, images, photos, video, sounds, musical works, works of authorship, or any other materials (collectively, 'Content') that you post to the MySpace Services. After posting your Content to the MySpace Services, you continue to retain all ownership rights in such Content, and you continue to have the right to use your Content in any way you choose."

Blocking

Multiple schools, public libraries, and employers in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia and Malaysia have restricted access to MySpace, seeing it as "a haven for gossip and malicious comments."[83]

A Catholic school in New Jersey has even prohibited students from using MySpace at home, an action made to protect students from online predators as claimed by the school, although experts questioned the legality of such a ban. In Autumn of 2005 Pope John XXIII Regional High School in Sparta Township, New Jersey made headlines by forbidding its students to have pages on MySpace or similar websites (such as Gaia) under threat of suspension or expulsion.[84][85][86]

Although schools, businesses, and some public libraries try to prevent the use of MySpace, they are not always successful; students have been known to use web proxies and downloadable software, along with "fake browsers" in order to log in to the site.[citation needed]

Legal issues

In May 2006, Long Island, New York teenagers Shaun Harrison and Saverio Mondelli were charged with illegal computer access and attempted extortion of MySpace, after both had allegedly hacked into the site to steal the personal information of MySpace users before threatening to share the secrets of how they broke into the website unless MySpace paid them $150,000. Both teens were arrested by undercover Los Angeles police detectives posing as MySpace employees.[87]

In April 2007, police in County Durham, United Kingdom, arrested a 17-year-old girl on charges of criminal damage following a party advertised on MySpace, held at her parents' house without their consent. Over 200 teenagers came to the party from across the country, causing £20,000 of damage, such as cigarette butts, urine on clothing, and writing on the walls. The girl's parents, who were away at the time, had to move out of the house.[88][89]

YouTube

YouTube first appeared on the web in early 2005, and it quickly gained popularity on MySpace due to MySpace users' ability to embed YouTube videos in their MySpace profiles. Realizing the competitive threat to the new MySpace Videos service, MySpace banned embedded YouTube videos from its user profiles. MySpace users widely protested the ban, prompting MySpace to lift the ban shortly thereafter.[90]

Since then YouTube has become one of the fastest-growing websites on the World Wide Web,[91] outgrowing MySpace's reach according to Alexa Internet.[92] In July 2006 several news organizations reported that YouTube had overtaken MySpace.[93] In a September 2006 investor meeting, News Corp. COO Peter Chernin claimed that virtually all modern Web applications (naming YouTube, Flickr, Blogger, Google and Photobucket) were really just "driven off the back of MySpace" and that "we ought to be able to match them if not exceed them.


Facebook
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
(Redirected from FaceBook)
Jump to: navigation, search
Semi-protected
Facebook, Inc.
Type Private
Founded Cambridge, Massachusetts
(February 4, 2004)[1]
Headquarters Palo Alto, California
Dublin, Ireland (international headquarters for Europe, Africa, Middle East)
Key people Mark Zuckerberg, Founder and CEO
Dustin Moskovitz, Co-founder
Sheryl Sandberg, COO
Matt Cohler, VP of Product Management
Chris Hughes, Co-founder
Revenue ▲ 300 million USD (2008 est.)[2]
Employees 700 (November 2008)[3]
Website facebook.com
Type of site Social network service
Advertising Banner ads, referral marketing
Registration Required
Available in Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese (simplified), Chinese (Hong Kong), Chinese (Taiwan), Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English (American), English (British), English (Pirate), Filipino, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Indonesian, Irish, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Malay, Norwegian (bokmål), Polish, Portuguese (Brazilian), Portuguese (European), Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovene, Spanish (Castilian), Swedish, Thai, Turkish, Vietnamese, Welsh
Launched February 2004
Current status Active

Facebook is a popular, free-access social networking website that is operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc.[1] Users can join networks organized by city, workplace, school, and region to connect and interact with other people. People can also add friends and send them messages, and update their personal profile to notify friends about themselves. The website's name refers to the paper facebooks depicting members of a campus community that some US colleges and preparatory schools give to incoming students, faculty, and staff as a way to get to know other people on campus.

Mark Zuckerberg founded Facebook while he was a student at Harvard University.[4] Website membership was initially limited to Harvard students, but was expanded to other colleges in the Boston area, the Ivy League, and Stanford University. It later expanded further to include any university student, then high school students, and, finally, to anyone aged 13 and over. The website currently has more than 150 million active users worldwide.[5]

Facebook has met with some controversy over the past few years. It has been blocked intermittently in several countries including Syria[6] and Iran.[7] It has also been banned at many places of work to increase productivity.[8] Privacy has also been an issue, and it has been compromised several times. It is also facing several lawsuits from a number of Zuckerberg's former classmates, who claim that Facebook had stolen their source code and other intellectual property.
Contents
[hide]

* 1 History
* 2 Financials
* 3 Website
o 3.1 Features
o 3.2 Platform
* 4 Reception and popularity
o 4.1 Use by courts
* 5 Potential future film
* 6 Controversies
o 6.1 Beacon
o 6.2 Privacy
* 7 Litigation
o 7.1 ConnectU
o 7.2 StudiVZ
o 7.3 Grant Raphael
o 7.4 Adam Guerbuez
* 8 References
* 9 External links

History

Mark Zuckerberg founded "The Facebook," originally located at thefacebook.com, on February 4, 2004[9] while attending Harvard University as a sophomore.[10] The company dropped The from its name after purchasing the domain name facebook.com in 2005 for $200,000.[11]

Membership was initially restricted to students of Harvard College, and within the first month, more than half the undergraduate population at Harvard was registered on the service.[12] Eduardo Saverin (business aspects), Dustin Moskovitz (programmer), Andrew McCollum (graphic artist), and Chris Hughes soon joined Zuckerberg to help promote the website. In March 2004, Facebook expanded to Stanford, Columbia, and Yale.[13] This expansion continued when it opened to all Ivy League and Boston area schools, and gradually most universities in Canada and the United States.[14] In June 2004, Facebook moved its base of operations to Palo Alto, California.[13] In October 2008, Facebook announced that it was to set up its international headquarters in Dublin, Ireland. [15]

Facebook launched a high school version in September 2005, which Zuckerberg called the next logical step.[16] At that time, high school networks required an invitation to join.[17] Facebook later expanded membership eligibility to employees of several companies, including Apple Inc. and Microsoft.[18] Facebook was then opened to everyone of ages 13 and older with a valid e-mail address on September 26, 2006.[19][20]

Financials
Facebook headquarters in Palo Alto, California

Facebook received its first investment of US$500,000 in June 2004 from PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel.[21] This was followed a year later by $12.7 million in venture capital from Accel Partners, and then $27.5 million more from Greylock Partners.[21][22] A leaked cash flow statement showed that during the 2005 fiscal year, Facebook had a net loss of $3.63 million.[23]

With the sale of social networking website MySpace to News Corp on July 19, 2005, rumors surfaced about the possible sale of Facebook to a larger media company.[24] Zuckerberg had already said he did not want to sell the company, and denied rumors to the contrary.[25] On March 28, 2006, BusinessWeek reported that a potential acquisition of Facebook was under negotiation. Facebook reportedly declined an offer of $750 million from an unknown bidder, and it was rumored the asking price rose as high as $2 billion.[26]

In September 2006, serious talks between Facebook and Yahoo! took place concerning acquisition of Facebook, with prices reaching as high as $1 billion.[27] Thiel, by then a board member of Facebook, indicated that Facebook's internal valuation was around $8 billion based on their projected revenues of $1 billion by 2015, comparable to Viacom's MTV brand, a company with a shared target demographic audience.[28]

On July 17, 2007, Zuckerberg said that selling Facebook was unlikely because he wanted to keep it independent, saying "We're not really looking to sell the company. ... We're not looking to IPO anytime soon. It's just not the core focus of the company."[29]

In September 2007, Microsoft approached Facebook, proposing an investment in return for a 5% stake in the company, offering an estimated $300–500 million.[30] That month, other companies, including Google, expressed interest in buying a portion of Facebook.[31]

On October 24, 2007 Microsoft announced that it had purchased a 1.6% share of Facebook for $246 million, giving Facebook a total implied value of around $15 billion.[32] However, Microsoft bought preferred stock that carried special rights, such as "liquidation preferences" that meant Microsoft would get paid before common stockholders if the company is sold. Microsoft's purchase also included rights to place international ads on Facebook.[33]

In November 2007, Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing invested $60 million in Facebook.[34]

In August 2008, BusinessWeek reported that private sales by employees, as well as purchases by venture capital firms, had and were being done at share prices that put the company's total valuation at between $3.75 billion and $5 billion.[33]

In October 2008, Zuckerberg said "I don't think social networks can be monetized in the same way that search did. ... In three years from now we have to figure out what the optimum model is. But that is not our primary focus today."[35]

Website
Facebook's new homepage features a login form on the top right for existing users and a registration form directly underneath for new visitors.

Facebook users may choose to join one or more networks, organized by city, workplace, school, and region.[36] These networks help users connect with members of the same network. Users can also connect with friends, giving them access to their friends' profiles.[37]

The website is free to users, but generates revenue from advertising. This includes banner ads.[38] Users can create profiles including photos and lists of personal interests, exchange private or public messages, and join groups of friends.[39] By default, the viewing of detailed profile data is restricted to users from the same network and "reasonable community limitations".[40]

Microsoft is Facebook's exclusive partner for serving banner advertising,[41] and as such Facebook only serves advertisements that exist in Microsoft's advertisement inventory. According to comScore, an internet marketing research company, Facebook collects as much data from its visitors as Google and Microsoft, but considerably less than Yahoo!, when compared with other web companies.[42]

Features

Main article: Facebook features

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The media often compares Facebook to MySpace, but one significant difference between the two websites is the level of customization.[43] MySpace allows users to decorate their profiles using HTML and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), while Facebook only allows plain text.[44]

Facebook has a number of features for users to interact with. They include the Wall, a space on every user's profile page that allows friends to post messages for the user to see,[45] Pokes, which allows users to send a virtual "poke" to each other (a notification that tells a user that they have been poked),[46] Photos, where users can upload albums and photos,[47] and Status, which allows users to inform their friends of their whereabouts and actions.[48] A user's Wall is visible to anyone who is able to see that user's profile, which depends on their privacy settings. In July 2007, Facebook began allowing users to post attachments to the Wall, whereas the Wall was previously limited to textual content only.[45]

Over time, Facebook has added several new 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 related to the user's friends.[49] 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).[50] 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 different types of activities, including profile changes, Wall posts, and newly added friends.[51]

One of the most popular applications on Facebook is the Photos application, where users can upload albums and photos.[52] 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. However, users are limited to 60 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 applications 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.[53]

Facebook Notes was introduced on August 22, 2006, a blogging feature that allowed tags and embeddable images. Users were later able to import blogs from Xanga, LiveJournal, Blogger, and other blogging services.[19] During the week of April 7, 2008, Facebook released a Comet-based[54] instant messaging application called "Chat" to several networks,[55] which allows users to communicate with friends and is similar in functionality to desktop-based instant messengers.

Facebook launched Gifts on February 8, 2007, which allows users to send virtual gifts to their friends that appear on the recipient's profile. Gifts cost $1.00 each to purchase, and a personalized message can be attached to each gift.[56][57] On May 14, 2007, Facebook launched Marketplace, which lets users post free classified ads.[58] Marketplace has been compared to Craigslist by CNET, which points out that the major difference between the two is that listings posted by a user on Marketplace are only seen by users that are in the same network as that user, whereas listings posted on Craigslist can be seen by anyone.[59]

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.[60] After initially giving users a choice to switch, Facebook began migrating all users to the new version beginning September, 2008.[61]

On December 11, 2008, it was announced that Facebook is testing out a new simpler signup process.[62]

Platform
This article or section needs to be updated. Please update the article to reflect recent events or newly available information, and remove this template when finished.

Facebook launched the Facebook Platform on May 24, 2007, providing a framework for software developers to create applications that interact with core Facebook features.[63][64] A markup language called Facebook Markup Language was introduced simultaneously; it is used to customize the "look and feel" of applications that developers create. Using the Platform, Facebook launched several new applications,[63][64] including Gifts, allowing users to send virtual gifts to each other, Marketplace, allowing users to post free classified ads, Events, giving users a method of informing their friends about upcoming events, and Video, letting users share homemade videos with one another.[65][66]

Applications that have been created on the Platform include chess and Scrabble, which both allow users to play games with their friends.[67][68] These games are asynchronous, meaning that a user's moves are saved on the website, allowing the next move to be made at any time rather than immediately after the previous move.[69]

By November 3, 2007, seven thousand applications had been developed on the Facebook Platform, with another hundred created everyday.[70] By the second annual f8 developers conference on July 23, 2008, the number of applications had grown to 33,000,[71] and the number of registered developers had exceeded 400,000.[72]

Within a few months of launching the Facebook Platform, issues arose regarding "application spam", which involves Facebook applications "spamming" users to request it be installed.[73] Application spam has been considered one of the possible causes to the drop in visitors to Facebook starting from the beginning of 2008, when its growth had fallen from December 2007 to January 2008, its first drop since its launch in 2004.

Reception and popularity

According to comScore, Facebook is the leading social networking site based on monthly unique visitors, having overtaken main competitor MySpace in April 2008.[74] ComScore reports that Facebook attracted 132.1 million unique visitors in June 2008, compared to MySpace, which attracted 117.6 million.[75]

According to Alexa, the website's ranking among all websites increased from 60th to 7th in terms of worldwide traffic, from September 2006 to September 2007, and is currently 5th.[76] Quantcast ranks the website 15th in US in terms of traffic,[77] and Compete.com ranks it 14th in US.[78] The website is the most popular for uploading photos, with 14 million uploaded daily.[79]

Facebook is the most popular social networking site in several English-speaking countries, including Canada[80] and the United Kingdom.[81] However, in the United States, it has only 36 million users compared to MySpace's 73 million.[82] The website has won awards such as placement into the "Top 100 Classic Websites" by PC Magazine in 2007,[83] and winning the "People's Voice Award" from the Webby Awards in 2008.[84] In a 2006 study conducted by Student Monitor, a New Jersey-based company specializing in research concerning the college student market, Facebook was named the second most popular thing among undergraduates, tied with beer and only ranked lower than the iPod.[85]

Use by courts

In December 2008, the High Court of Australia in Canberra ruled that Facebook is a valid protocol to serve court notices to defendants. It is believed to be the world's first legal judgment that defines a summons posted on Facebook to be legally binding. [86]

Potential future film

Sony Pictures, and The West Wing creator Aaron Sorkin, have confirmed they are in the process of developing a movie "about the founders of social networking site Facebook." Sorkin has set up his own account on the site, stating, "I honestly don't know how this works, which is why I'm here." The film so far, is untitled, and will be produced by Scott Rudin.[87] According to the Telegraph, the film is expected to focus on Zuckerberg, and 2,500 Facebook users have joined the movies group associated with Sorkin's film, suggesting "plot pointers, offering to help or even asking for a role in the film."[88] Sony was quick to refute suggestions that the film is a hoax (especially after musings that it might be a fake Sorkin account of which there are a number already),[87] with Steve Elzer saying, "We are developing the film that has been reported".[89] However, a spokesperson for Facebook said that, "We are routinely approached by writers and filmmakers interested in telling the Facebook story... At this point, we have not agreed to cooperate with any film project, but we are flattered by the interest."[90]

Controversies

See also: Criticism of Facebook and Use of social network websites in investigations

Facebook has met with some controversy over the past few years. In October 2005, the University of New Mexico blocked access to Facebook from its campus computers and networks.[91] It cited a violation of the university's Acceptable Use Policy for abusing computer resources as the reason, stating the website forces use of the university's credentials for activity not related to the university. The school later unblocked Facebook after the website rectified the situation by displaying a notice on the login page stating the credentials used on the website are separate from the ones used for their school accounts.[92] The Ontario government also blocked access to Facebook for its employees in May 2007, stating the website was "not directly related to the workplace".[93]

On January 1, 2008, a memorial group on Facebook posted the identity of murdered Toronto teenager Stefanie Rengel, whose family had not yet given the Toronto Police Service their consent to release her name to the media, as well as the identities of her accused killers — despite the fact that under Canada's Youth Criminal Justice Act, it is illegal to publish the name of an underage criminal.[94] While police and Facebook staff attempted to comply with the privacy regulations by deleting posts mentioning her name, they noted it was difficult to effectively police individual users who repeatedly republished the deleted information.[95]

Due to the open nature of Facebook, several countries have banned access to it including Syria and Iran.[96][97] The Syrian government cited the ban was on the premise that the website promoted attacks on authorities.[96][98] The government also feared Israeli infiltration of Syrian social networks on Facebook.[96] Facebook was also used by Syrian citizens to criticize the government, and public criticism of the Syrian government is punishable by imprisonment.[96] In Iran, the website was banned because of fears that opposition movements were being organized on the website.[97]

On February 5, 2008, Fouad Mourtada, a citizen of Morocco, was arrested for the alleged creation of a faked Facebook profile of Prince Moulay Rachid of Morocco.[99][100][101][102][103][104][105][106][107][108]

Beacon

Main article: Facebook Beacon

Facebook announced Facebook Beacon on November 7, 2007, a marketing initiative that allows websites to publish a user's activities to their Facebook profile as "Social Ads" and promote products.[109] When launching Beacon, Facebook stated "no personally identifiable information is shared with an advertiser in creating a Social Ad", and that "Facebook users will only see Social Ads to the extent their friends are sharing information with them."[110] After Facebook was criticized for collecting more user information for advertisers than was previously stated, Zuckerberg publicly apologized on December 5, 2007 for the way Facebook launched Beacon, saying, "The problem with our initial approach of making it an opt-out system instead of opt-in was that if someone forgot to decline to share something, Beacon still went ahead and shared it with their friends."[111][112]

Privacy

Several concerns have emerged regarding the use of Facebook as a means of surveillance and data mining.[113] Two MIT students were able to download over 70,000 Facebook profiles from four schools (MIT, New York University, the University of Oklahoma, and Harvard University) using an automated shell script, as part of a research project on Facebook privacy published on December 14, 2005.[114] The possibility of data mining remains open, as evidenced in May 2008, when the BBC technology program "Click" demonstrated that personal details of Facebook users and their friends could be stolen by submitting malicious applications.[115]

Privacy proponents have criticized the site's privacy agreement, which states: "We may use information about you that we collect from other sources, including but not limited to newspapers and Internet sources such as blogs, instant messaging services, Facebook Platform developers and other users of Facebook, to supplement your profile."[116] Another clause that received criticism concerned Facebook's right to sell a user's data to private companies, stating: "We may share your information with third parties, including responsible companies with which we have a relationship."[117] This concern was addressed by Facebook spokesman Chris Hughes who said, "Simply put, we have never provided our users' information to third party companies, nor do we intend to."[118]

Concerns have also been raised regarding the difficulty of deleting user accounts. Previously, Facebook only allowed users to "deactivate" their accounts so that their profile was no longer visible. However, any information the user had entered into the website and on their profile remained on the website's servers. This outraged many users who wished to remove their accounts permanently, citing reasons such as the inability to erase "embarrassing or overly-personal online profiles from their student days as they entered the job market, for fear employers would locate the profiles".[119] Facebook changed its account deletion policies on February 29, 2008, allowing users to contact the website to request that their accounts be permanently deleted.[120]

Litigation

ConnectU

Main article: Criticism of Facebook#Connectu.com lawsuit

In 2004 ConnectU, a company founded by classmates of Zuckerberg filed a lawsuit against Facebook, claiming that Zuckerberg had broken an oral contract for them to build the Facebook site, copied their idea,[121] and used source code that belonged to them.[122][123][124][125] The parties reached a confidential settlement agreement in February, 2008.[126] In 2008 they attempted unsuccessfully to rescind the settlement, claiming that Facebook had understated its valuation in connection with its settlement negotiations.[127][128][129][130][131]

StudiVZ

On July 18, 2008, Facebook sued StudiVZ in a California federal court, alleging that Studivz copied its look, feel, features and services. StudiVZ denied the claims, and asked for declaratory judgment at the District Court in Stuttgart, Germany.[132]

Grant Raphael

On July 24, 2008 the High Court in London ordered Grant Raphael to pay GBP £22,000 (about USD $44,000 at July 2008 exchange rates) for breach of privacy and libel. Raphael had posted a fake Facebook page purporting to be that of a former schoolfriend and business colleague, Mathew Firsht, with whom Raphael had fallen out in 2000. The fake page claimed that Firscht was homosexual and untrustworthy. The case is believed to be the first successful invasion of privacy and defamation verdict against someone over an entry on a social networking site.[133][134][135][136][137][138]

Adam Guerbuez

Facebook won a lawsuit against Canadian Adam Guerbuez, of Montreal, worth $873 million dollars. Guerbuez had spammed the website with various advertisements including penis enhancements and marijuana. Guerbuez founded Atlantis Blue Capital.