What is Facebook

Facebook (stylized facebook) is a social networking service and website launched in February 2004, operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc.^[1] As of January 2011, Facebook has more than 600 million active users.^[5][6] Users 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. The name of the service stems from the colloquial name for the book given to students at the start of the academic year by university administrations in the United States to help students get to know each other better. Facebook allows anyone who declares themselves to be at least 13 years old to become a registered user of the website.

Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg with his college roommates and fellow computer science students Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz andChris Hughes.^[7] The website's membership was initially limited by the founders to Harvard students, but was expanded to other colleges in the Bostonarea, the Ivy League, and Stanford University. It gradually added support for students at various other universities before opening to high school students, and, finally, to anyone aged 13 and over.

A January 2009 Compete.com study ranked Facebook as the most used social networking service by worldwide monthly active users, followed byMySpace.^[8] 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?"^[9] Quantcast estimates Facebook has 135.1 million monthly unique U.S. visitors in October 2010.^[10] According to Social Media Today, in April 2010 an estimated 41.6% of the U.S. population had a Facebook account.^[11]