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.
Amazon is once again adding to its business-suite arsenal, this time with the announcement of WorkMail, the company’s new email and calendar service, according to a report by the Wall Street… Read more »
Looks like Facebook has decided it can do Twitter’s job better. The social media site has built a live news hub for Sunday’s upcoming Super Bowl. It will feature user posts… Read more »
You might not have noticed it, but depending on the phone platform you use, your Facebook mobile app is about 10 to 15 faster than it used to be. How’s that? Read more »
Mobile analytics firm App Annie released a report on app trends on Wednesday that sorts out what kind of software people downloaded on their phones and tablets in 2014. The answer: Facebook-owned apps, including… Read more »
Snapchat is distancing itself from its core messaging feature with its new Discover product. Instead of offering new communication tools, it’s focusing on media content to hook users. It’s hoping that will… Read more »
The headline du jour for the Federal Trade Commission’s report on the Internet of Things is that the agency recommends Congress should come up with some sort of technology-neutral law to… Read more »
In his new book “The Internet Is Not The Answer,” author Andrew Keen continues a theme he introduced in previous books, about how the internet is a net negative for the… Read more »
With competitors like Snapchat and WhatsApp continuing to grow and expand the range of their features, Twitter is rolling out a new group direct-message offering as well as a hosted video… Read more »
Facebook’s outage early on Tuesday, which also took out linked services such as Instagram and Tinder, was down to a technical issue caused by the company itself rather than external factors… Read more »
All those carefully crafted images of snowscapes will have to stay locked up for a bit, East Coasters, because Facebook and Instagram are down. (Update 11:12pm: Our brief Facebook-related national nightmare… Read more »