Facebook (formerly [thefacebook]) is an online social networking service. Its name comes from a colloquialism for the directory given to students at some American universities. Facebook was founded in 2004. The founders had initially limited the website’s membership to Harvard students, but later expanded it to colleges in the Boston area, the Ivy League, and Stanford University. It gradually added support for students at various other universities and later to their high-school students. Facebook now allows anyone who claims to be at least 13 years old worldwide to become a registered user of the website, although proof is not required.
Users create a personal profile, add other users as friends, exchange messages, post status updates and photos, and receive notifications when others update their profiles. 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”. Facebook had over one billion active users as of September 2012 (of which approximately 9% were fake). Facebook held its initial public offering in 2012 and reached a peak market capitalization of $104 billion.
Truecaller’s no longer just an anti-spam service — now it wants to become the go-to service for contacts and personal information management. But, despite all the investment that’s pouring in, there’s… Read more »
Should employees be paid for the time they spend in line undergoing anti-theft searches at the end of a shift? An employee of an Amazon warehouse is leading an important test… Read more »
Twitter took an important step to throw more light on the legal processes the federal government uses to spy on users — the lawsuit seeks to expand earlier free speech rights… Read more »
There’s more to the story of restaurant food than a blurry smartphone photo can tell. Backed by GrubHub’s Matt Maloney, Morsel is creating a forum for chefs to communicate with their… Read more »
Led by a husband and wife team, and two former Facebook engineers, Interana thinks it can make any company do analytics just like the big web companies. Its software is designed… Read more »
Neuze says it has developed a revolutionary product that provides an easy-to-carry news summary curated by journalists that requires no power. It’s an inside joke on newspapers — but it still… Read more »
WhatsApp co-founder and CEO Jan Koum will keep his day job (in fact he’s being given 25 million restricted shares to stay put), but he’ll also take a spot of Facebook’s board. Read more »