Facebook is a social networking website launched in 2004 thats operated and privately owned by Fb, Inc.with more than 500 million active user in 2010 which about one person for every fourteen in the world. Users can add people as friends and send them messages, update their personal profiles to notify friends about themselves. Additionally, users can join networks organized by workplace, school, college. The websites name stems from the colloquial name of books given to students at the start of the academic year by university administrations in the US with the intention of helping students to get to know each other better. Fb allows anyone who declares themselves to be aged 13 or older to become a member of the website.
Fb was founded by Mark with his roommates and fellow computer science students Ed, Du and Ch . The websites membership was initially limited by the founders to Harvard students, but was expanded to other colleges in the Boston area, the Ivy League,and Sf University.It gradually added support for students at various other universities before opening to high school students, finally, to anyone aged 13 and over.
Fb has met with some controversy. It has been block intermittently in several countrie including Pakistan, Syria, China,Vietnam, Iran, North Korea. It has also been banned at many place of work to discourage employee from wasting time using the service. Fb's privacy has also been an issue, the safety of their users has been compromised several time. Fb settled a lawsuit regarding claims over source code and intellectual property. The site has also been involved in controversy over the sale of fans and friends.
2009 Compete.com study ranked Fb as the most used social network by worldwide monthly active users, followed by MySpace.Entertainment Weekly put it on its end-of-the-decade 'best-of' list, saying, How on earth did we stalk our exes, remember our co-workers birthday, bug our friends, and play a rousing game of Scrabulous before Fb?