Facebook is a social networking service and Web site launched in February 2004, operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc.[1] As of July 2011, Facebook has more than 800 million active users.[6]
Users must register before using the site, after which they may create a
personal profile, add other users as friends, and exchange messages,
including automatic notifications when they update their profile.
Additionally, users may join common-interest user groups, organized by
workplace, school or college, or other characteristics, and categorize
their friends into lists such as "People From Work" or "Close Friends".
The name of the service stems from the colloquial name for the book
given to students at the start of the academic year by some university
administrations in the United States to help students get to know each
other. Facebook allows any users who declare themselves to be at least
13 years old to become registered users of the site.
Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg with his college roommates and fellow computer science students Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes.[7] The Web site's membership was initially limited by the founders to Harvard students, but was expanded to other colleges in the Boston area, the Ivy League, and Stanford University.
It gradually added support for students at various other universities
before opening to high school students, and eventually to anyone aged 13
and over. However, based on ConsumersReports.org on May 2011, there are
7.5 million children under 13 with accounts, violating the site's terms
of service.[8]
A January 2009 Compete.com study ranked Facebook as the most used social networking service by worldwide monthly active users, followed by MySpace.[9] Entertainment Weekly
included the site on its end-of-the-decade "best-of" list, saying, "How
on earth did we stalk our exes, remember our co-workers' birthdays, bug
our friends, and play a rousing game of Scrabulous before Facebook?"[10] Quantcast estimates Facebook has 138.9 million monthly unique U.S. visitors in May 2011.[11] According to Social Media Today, in April 2010 an estimated 41.6% of the U.S. population had a Facebook account.[12]
Nevertheless, Facebook's market growth started to stall in some
regions, with the site losing 7 million active users in the United
States and Canada in May 2011.[13]
History
Mark Zuckerberg wrote Facemash, the predecessor to Facebook, on October 28, 2003, while attending Harvard as a sophomore. According to The Harvard Crimson, the site was comparable to Hot or Not,
and "used photos compiled from the online facebooks of nine houses,
placing two next to each other at a time and asking users to choose the
'hotter' person".[14][15]
To accomplish this, Zuckerberg hacked into the protected areas of Harvard's computer network and copied the houses' private dormitory ID images. Harvard at that time did not have a student "facebook"
(a directory with photos and basic information). Facemash attracted 450
visitors and 22,000 photo-views in its first four hours online.[14][16]
The site was quickly forwarded to several campus group list-servers,
but was shut down a few days later by the Harvard administration.
Zuckerberg was charged by the administration with breach of security,
violating copyrights, and violating individual privacy, and faced expulsion. Ultimately, however, the charges were dropped.[17] Zuckerberg expanded on this initial project that semester by creating a social study tool ahead of an art history final, by uploading 500 Augustan images to a Web site, with one image per page along with a comment section.[16] He opened the site up to his classmates, and people started sharing their notes.
The following semester, Zuckerberg began writing code for a new Web
site in January 2004. He was inspired, he said, by an editorial in The Harvard Crimson about the Facemash incident.[18] On February 4, 2004, Zuckerberg launched "Thefacebook", originally located at thefacebook.com.[19]
Six days after the site launched, three Harvard seniors, Cameron Winklevoss, Tyler Winklevoss, and Divya Narendra, accused Zuckerberg of intentionally misleading them into believing he would help them build a social network called HarvardConnection.com, while he was instead using their ideas to build a competing product.[20] The three complained to the Harvard Crimson, and the newspaper began an investigation. The three later filed a lawsuit against Zuckerberg, subsequently settling.[21]
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.[22] Eduardo Saverin (business aspects), Dustin Moskovitz (programmer), Andrew McCollum (graphic artist), and Chris Hughes soon joined Zuckerberg to help promote the Web site. In March 2004, Facebook expanded to Stanford, Columbia, and Yale.[23] It soon opened to the other Ivy League schools, Boston University, New York University, MIT, and gradually most universities in Canada and the United States.[24][25]
Facebook incorporated in the summer of 2004, and the entrepreneur Sean Parker, who had been informally advising Zuckerberg, became the company's president.[26] In June 2004, Facebook moved its base of operations to Palo Alto, California.[23] It received its first investment later that month from PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel.[27] The company dropped The from its name after purchasing the domain name facebook.com in 2005 for $200,000.[28]
| Date | Users (in millions) |
Days later | Monthly growth[N 2] |
|---|---|---|---|
| August 26, 2008 | 100[29] | 1,665 | 178.38% |
| April 8, 2009 | 200[30] | 225 | 13.33% |
| September 15, 2009 | 300[31] | 160 | 9.38% |
| February 5, 2010 | 400[32] | 143 | 6.99% |
| July 21, 2010 | 500[33] | 166 | 4.52% |
| January 5, 2011 | 600[34][N 3] | 168 | 3.57% |
| May 30, 2011 | 700[35] | 145 | 3.45% |
| September 22, 2011 | 800[36] | 115 | 3.73% |
Facebook launched a high-school version in September 2005, which Zuckerberg called the next logical step.[37] At that time, high-school networks required an invitation to join.[38] Facebook later expanded membership eligibility to employees of several companies, including Apple Inc. and Microsoft.[39] Facebook was then opened on September 26, 2006, to everyone of age 13 and older with a valid email address.[40][41]
On October 24, 2007, Microsoft announced that it had purchased a 1.6%
share of Facebook for $240 million, giving Facebook a total implied
value of around $15 billion.[42] Microsoft's purchase included rights to place international ads on Facebook.[43] In October 2008, Facebook announced that it would set up its international headquarters in Dublin, Ireland.[44] In September 2009, Facebook said that it had turned cash-flow positive for the first time.[45] In November 2010, based on SecondMarket Inc., an exchange for shares of privately held companies, Facebook's value was $41 billion (slightly surpassing eBay's) and it became the third largest U.S. Web company after Google and Amazon.[46] Facebook has been identified as a possible candidate for an IPO by 2013.[47]
Traffic to Facebook increased steadily after 2009. More people visited Facebook than Google for the week ending March 13, 2010.[48]
In March 2011 it was reported that Facebook removes approximately
20,000 profiles from the site every day for various infractions,
including spam, inappropriate content and underage use, as part of its
efforts to boost cyber security.[49]
In early 2011, Facebook announced plans to move to its new headquarters, the former Sun Microsystems campus in Menlo Park, California.[50][51]
Release of statistics by DoubleClick
showed that Facebook reached one trillion pageviews in the month of
June 2011, making it the most visited Web site in the world.[52] It should however be noted that Google and some of its selected Web sites are not counted in the DoubleClick rankings.
Company
Ownership
The ownership percentages of the company are[when?] as follows. Mark Zuckerberg: 24%, Accel Partners: 10%, Digital Sky Technologies: 10%,[53] Dustin Moskovitz: 6%, Eduardo Saverin: 5%, Sean Parker: 4%, Peter Thiel: 3%, Greylock Partners and Meritech Capital Partners: between 1 to 2% each, Microsoft: 1.3%, Li Ka-shing: 0.75%, the Interpublic Group: less than 0.5%. A small group of current and former employees and celebrities own less than 1% each, including Matt Cohler, Jeff Rothschild, Adam D'Angelo, Chris Hughes, and Owen Van Natta, while Reid Hoffman and Mark Pincus
have sizable holdings of the company. The remaining 30% or so are owned
by employees, an undisclosed number of celebrities, and outside
investors.[54] Adam D'Angelo,
chief technology officer and friend of Zuckerberg, resigned in May
2008. Reports claimed that he and Zuckerberg began quarreling, and that
he was no longer interested in partial ownership of the company.[55]
Management
Key management personnel comprise Chris Cox (VP of Product), Sheryl Sandberg (COO), and Donald E. Graham (Chairman). As of April 2011, Facebook has over 2,000 employees, and offices in 15 countries.[56]
Revenue
Most of Facebook's revenue comes from advertising. Microsoft is Facebook's exclusive partner for serving banner advertising,[57] and therefore Facebook serves only advertisements that exist in Microsoft's advertisement inventory.
| Year | Revenue | Growth |
|---|---|---|
| 2006 | $52[58] | — |
| 2007 | $150[59] | 188% |
| 2008 | $280[60] | 87% |
| 2009 | $775[61] | 177% |
| 2010 | $2,000[62] | 158% |
| 2011 | $4,270[63] | 114% |
Facebook generally has a lower clickthrough rate
(CTR) for advertisements than most major Web sites. According to
BusinessWeek.com, banner advertisements on Facebook have generally
received one-fifth the number of clicks compared to those on the Web as a
whole,[64] although specific comparisons can reveal a much larger disparity. For example, while Google
users click on the first advertisement for search results an average of
8% of the time (80,000 clicks for every one million searches),[65] Facebook's users click on advertisements an average of 0.04% of the time (400 clicks for every one million pages).[66]
Sarah Smith, who was Facebook's Online Sales Operations Manager, reports that successful advertising campaigns on the site can have clickthrough rates as low as 0.05% to 0.04%, and that CTR for ads tend to fall within two weeks.[67] By comparison, the CTR for competing social network MySpace
is about 0.1%, about 2.5 times better than Facebook's rate but still
low compared to many other Web sites. According to BizReport.com,
Facebook's low CTR is because Facebook users are more technologically
savvy and therefore use ad blocking
software to hide advertisements, users are younger and therefore better
at ignoring advertising messages, users spend their time communicating
with friends and therefore have their attention diverted away from
advertisements.[68]
On pages for brands and products, however, some companies have reported CTR as high as 6.49% for Wall posts.[69]
Involver, a social marketing platform, announced in July 2008 that it
managed to attain a CTR of 0.7% on Facebook (over 10 times the typical
CTR for Facebook ad campaigns) for its first client, Serena Software, managing to convert 1.1 million views into 8,000 visitors to their Web site.[70]
A study found that, for video advertisements on Facebook, over 40% of
users who viewed the videos viewed the entire video, while the industry
average was 25% for in-banner video ads.[71]
Mergers and acquisitions
Main article: List of acquisitions by Facebook
On November 15, 2010, Facebook announced it had acquired the domain name fb.com from the American Farm Bureau Federation
for an undisclosed amount. On January 11, 2011, the Farm Bureau
disclosed $8.5 million in "domain sales income", making the acquisition
of FB.com one of the ten highest domain sales in history.[72]
Operations
A custom-built data center with substantially reduced ("38% less") power consumption compared to existing Facebook data centers opened in April 2011 in Prineville, Oregon.[73]
Website
Main articles: Facebook features and Facebook Platform
Users can create profiles with photos, lists of personal interests,
contact information, and 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" (called "fan pages" until April 19, 2010), some
of which are maintained by organizations as a means of advertising.[74]
To allay concerns about privacy, Facebook enables users to choose
their own privacy settings and choose who can see specific parts of
their profile.[75] The Web site is free to users, and generates revenue from advertising, such as banner ads.[76]
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.[77]
The media often compares Facebook to MySpace, but one significant difference between the two Web sites is the level of customization.[78] Another difference is Facebook's requirement that users give their true identity, a demand that MySpace does not make.[79] MySpace allows users to decorate their profiles using HTML and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), while Facebook allows only plain text.[80] 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;[81] Pokes, which allows users to send a virtual "poke" to each other (a notification then tells a user that they have been poked);[82] Photos, where users can upload albums and photos;[83] and Status, which allows users to inform their friends of their whereabouts and actions.[84]
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.[81]
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.[85]
This 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.[86]
Initially, the News Feed caused dissatisfaction among Facebook users;
some complained it was too cluttered and full of undesired information,
others were concerned that it made it too easy for others to track
individual activities (such as relationship status changes, events, and
conversations with other users).[87]
In response, 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 user-set
categories of friends from seeing updates about certain types of
activities, including profile changes, Wall posts, and newly added
friends.[88]
On February 23, 2010, Facebook was granted a patent[89]
on certain aspects of its News Feed. The patent covers News Feeds in
which links are provided so that one user can participate in the same
activity of another user.[90]
The patent may encourage Facebook to pursue action against Web sites
that violate its patent, which may potentially include Web sites such as
Twitter.[91]
One of the most popular applications on Facebook is the Photos application, where users can upload albums and photos.[92] 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.[93][94][95][96]
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.[97]
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.[40] During the week of April 7, 2008, Facebook released a Comet-based[98] instant messaging application called "Chat" to several networks,[99] 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.[100][101] On May 14, 2007, Facebook launched Marketplace, which lets users post free classified ads.[102] 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 seen only by users in the
same network as that user, whereas listings posted on Craigslist can be
seen by anyone.[103]
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.[104]
After initially giving users a choice to switch, Facebook began
migrating all users to the new version starting in September 2008.[105] On December 11, 2008, it was announced that Facebook was testing a simpler signup process.[106]
On June 13, 2009, Facebook introduced a "Usernames" feature, whereby pages can be linked with simpler URLs such as
http://www.facebook.com/facebook instead of http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=20531316728.[107] Many new smartphones
offer access to Facebook services through either their Web browsers or
applications. An official Facebook application is available for the
operating systems Android, iOS, and 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.com 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 Web site'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.[108][109]
In February 2011, Facebook began to use the hCalendar microformat to mark up events, and the hCard microformat for the events' venues, enabling the extraction of details to users' own calendar or mapping applications.[110]
Since April 2011 Facebook users have had the ability to make live
voice calls via Facebook Chat, allowing users to chat with others from
all over the world. This feature, which is provided free through
T-Mobile's new Bobsled service, lets the user add voice to the current
Facebook Chat as well as leave voice messages on Facebook.[111]
On July 6, 2011, Facebook launched its video calling services using
Skype as its technology partner. It allows one to one calling using a
Skype Rest API.[112]
For a brief period of time earlier that day, the URL "facebook.com" led
to a Swedish Web site that was hosted through Google Sites. On July 14
Facebook wouldn't allow access.
On September 14, 2011, Facebook launched a Subscribe button. The
feature allows for users to follow public updates, and these are the
people most often broadcasting their ideas.[113] There were major modifications that the site released on September 22, 2011.[114]
Privacy
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!.[115] In 2010, the security team began expanding its efforts to reduce the risks to users' privacy,[116] but privacy concerns remain. On November 6, 2007, Facebook launched Facebook Beacon, which was an ultimately failed attempt to advertise to friends of users using the knowledge of what purchases friends made.
Reception
According to comScore, Facebook is the leading social networking site based on monthly unique visitors, having overtaken main competitor MySpace in April 2008.[117] ComScore reports that Facebook attracted 130 million unique visitors in May 2010, an increase of 8.6 million people.[118] According to Alexa,
the Web site's ranking among all Web sites increased from 60th to 7th
in worldwide traffic, from September 2006 to September 2007, and is
currently 2nd.[119] Quantcast ranks the Web site 2nd in the U.S. in traffic,[120] and Compete.com ranks it 2nd in the U.S.[121] The Web site is the most popular for uploading photos, with 50 billion uploaded cumulatively.[122] 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.[116]
Facebook is the most popular social networking site in several English-speaking countries, including Canada,[123] the United Kingdom,[124] and the United States.[125][126][127][128]
In regional Internet markets, Facebook penetration is highest in North
America (69 percent), followed by Middle East-Africa (67 percent), Latin
America (58 percent), Europe (57 percent), and Asia-Pacific (17
percent).[129]
The Web site has won awards such as placement into the "Top 100 Classic Websites" by PC Magazine in 2007,[130] and winning the "People's Voice Award" from the Webby Awards in 2008.[131] 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.[132]
On March 2010, Judge Richard Seeborg issued an order approving the class settlement in Lane v. Facebook, Inc., the class action lawsuit arising out of Facebook's Beacon program.
In 2010, Facebook won the Crunchie "Best Overall Startup Or Product" for the third year in a row[133] and was recognized as one of the "Hottest Silicon Valley Companies" by Lead411.[134] 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.
The reasons why Facebook scored so poorly include privacy problems,
frequent changes to the Web site's interface, the results returned by
the News Feed, and spam.[135]
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.[136]
In March 2009, the New Zealand High Court associate justice David
Gendall allowed for the serving of legal papers on Craig Axe by the
company Axe Market Garden via Facebook.[137][138] 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.[139]
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.[140] In 2008, Collins English Dictionary declared "Facebook" as its new Word of the Year.[141] In December 2009, the New Oxford American Dictionary declared its 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.'"[142]
In April 2010, according to The New York Times, countries with the most Facebook users were the United States, the United Kingdom, and Indonesia.[143]
Indonesia has become the country with the second largest number of
Facebook users, after the United States, with 24 million users, or 10%
of Indonesia's population.[144] Also in early 2010, Openbook was established, an avowed parody (and privacy advocacy) Web site[145] that enables text-based searches of those Wall posts that are available to "Everyone", i.e. to everyone on the Internet.
Writers for The Wall Street Journal
found in 2010 that Facebook apps were transmitting identifying
information to "dozens of advertising and Internet tracking companies".
The apps used an HTTP referrer
which exposed the user's identity and sometimes their friends'.
Facebook said, "We have taken immediate action to disable all
applications that violate our terms".[146]
Criticism
Main article: Criticism of Facebook
Facebook has met with controversies. It has been blocked intermittently in several countries including the People's Republic of China,[147] Vietnam,[148] Iran,[149] Uzbekistan,[150] Pakistan,[151] Syria,[152]
and Bangladesh on different bases. For example, it was banned in many
countries of the world on the basis of allowed content judged as
anti-Islamic and containing religious discrimination. It has also been
banned at many workplaces to prevent employees from using it during work
hours.[153] The privacy of Facebook users
has also been an issue, and the safety of user accounts has been
compromised several times. Facebook has settled a lawsuit regarding
claims over source code and intellectual property.[154]
In May 2011 emails were sent to journalists and bloggers making
critical allegations about Google's privacy policies; however it was
later discovered that the anti-Google campaign, conducted by PR giant
Burson-Marsteller, was paid for by Facebook in what CNN referred to as
"a new level skullduggery" and which Daily Beast called a "clumsy
smear".[155]
In July 2011 German authorities began to discuss the prohibition of
events organized on Facebook. The decision is based on several cases of
overcrowding by people not originally invited.[156][157]
1600 "guests" attended the 16th birthday party for a Hamburg girl who
accidentally posted the invitation of the event as public. After reports
of overcrowding, more than a hundred police were deployed for crowd
control. A policeman was injured and eleven participants were arrested
for assault, property damage and resistance to authorities.[158] In another unexpected event with overcrowding, 41 young people were arrested and at least 16 injured.[159]
In May 2011, HCL Technologies announced that approximately 50% of British employers had banned Facebook from the work place.[160]
A 2011 study by Internet scholars danah boyd, Eszther Hargittai, Jason Schultz and John Palfrey in the online journal First Monday,
“Why Parents Help Their Children Lie to Facebook About Age: Unintended
Consequences of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act," examines
how parents consistently enable children as young as 10 years old to
sign up for accounts, directly violating Facebook's policy banning young
visitors. This policy technically allows Facebook to avoid conflicts
with the 1998 Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA),
requiring that minors aged 13 or younger gain explicit parental consent
to access commercial websites. Of the more than 1,000 households
surveyed for the study, more than three-quarters (76%) of parents
reported that their child joined Facebook when she was younger than 13,
the minimum age in the site’s terms of service. The study notes that, in
response to widespread reports of underage users, a Facebook executive
has said that “Facebook removes 20,000 people a day, people who are
underage." The study's authors also note, "Indeed, Facebook takes
various measures both to restrict access to children and delete their
accounts if they join." The findings of the study raise questions
primarily about the shortcomings of federal law, but also implicitly
continue to raise questions about whether or not Facebook does enough to
publicize its terms of service with respect to minors. Only 53% of
parents said they were aware that Facebook has a minimum signup age; 35%
of these parents believe that the minimum age is a site recommendation
(not a condition of site use), or thought the signup age was 16 or 18,
and not 13.[161]
Impact
Media impact
In April 2011, Facebook launched a new portal for marketers and
creative agencies to help them develop brand promotions on Facebook.[162]
The company began its push by inviting a select group of British
advertising leaders to meet Facebook's top executives at an
"influencers' summit" in February 2010. Facebook has now been involved
in campaigns for True Blood, American Idol, and Top Gear.[163]
Social impact
Facebook has affected the social life and activity of people in
various ways. Especially with its availability on many mobile devices,
Facebook allows users to continuously stay in touch with friends,
relatives and other acquaintances wherever they are in the world, as
long as there is access to the Internet. It can also unite people with
common interests and/or beliefs through groups and other pages, and has
been known to reunite lost family members and friends. One such reunion
was between John Watson and the daughter he had been seeking for 20
years. They met after Watson found her Facebook profile.[164]
Another father-daughter reunion was between Tony Macnauton and Frances
Simpson, who had not seen each other for nearly 48 years.[165]
Some argue that Facebook is beneficial to one's social life because
they can continuously stay in contact with their friends and relatives,
while others say that it can cause increased antisocial tendencies
because people are not directly communicating with each other. Some
studies have named Facebook as a source of problems in relationships.
Several news stories have suggested that using Facebook causes divorce and infidelity, but the claims have been questioned and refuted by other commentators.[166][167]
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.[168][169][170] 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.[171]
Over a million 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.[172]
This debate showed the broader community what many young students had
already experienced: Facebook was a popular and powerful new way to
interact and voice opinions. An article 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.[173]
In February 2008, a Facebook group called "One Million Voices Against
FARC" organized an event in which hundreds of thousands of Colombians
marched in protest against the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, better known as the FARC (from the group's Spanish name).[174] In August 2010, one of North Korea's official government Web sites and the official news agency of the country, Uriminzokkiri, joined Facebook.[175]
In 2010 an English director of public health, whose staff was researching syphilis,
linked and attributed a rise in cases of the disease in areas of
Britain to Facebook. The reports of this research were rebuked by
Facebook as "ignoring the difference between correlation and causation".[176]
In 2011 a controversial ruling by French government to uphold a 1992
decree which stipulates that commercial enterprises should not be
promoted on news programs. President Nicolas Sarkozy's colleagues have
agreed has said that it will enforce a law so that the words "Facebook"
will not be allowed to be spoken on the television or on the radio.[177]
In 2011, Facebook filed paperwork with the Federal Election Commission to form a political action committee under the name FB PAC.[178] In an email to The Hill,
a spokesman for Facebook said "FB PAC will give our employees a way to
make their voice heard in the political process by supporting candidates
who share our goals of promoting the value of innovation to our economy
while giving people the power to share and make the world more open and
connected."[179]
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