Amer ojana shob kisu...

An in-depth profile of Facebook, written by Mashable () contributor Sid Yadav and edited by Pete Cashmore. Image credit: Bryan Veloso.

Facebook () is the second largest social network on the web, behind only MySpace () in terms of traffic. Primarily focused on high school to college students, Facebook has been gaining market share, and more significantly a supportive user base. Since their launch in February 2004, they’ve been able to obtain over 8 million users in the U.S. alone and expand worldwide to 7 other English-speaking countries, with more to follow. A growing phenomenon, let’s discover Facebook.

The Facebook Phenomenon

First, let’s start by looking into Facebook in a broad spectrum – as the network, the phenomenon, the company, and its brand.

History

Originally called thefacebook, Facebook was founded by former-Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg (while at Harvard) who ran it as one of his hobby projects with some financial help from Eduardo Saverin. Within months, Facebook and its core idea spread across the dorm rooms of Harvard where it was very well received. Soon enough, it was extended to Stanford and Yale where, like Harvard, it was widely endorsed.

Before he knew it, Mark Zuckerberg was joined by two other fellow Harvard-students – Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes – to help him grow the site to the next level. Only months later when it was officially a national student network phenomenon, Zuckerberg and Moskovitz dropped out of Harvard to pursue their dreams and run Facebook full time. In August 2005, thefacebook was officially called Facebook and the domain facebook.com was purchased for a reported $200,000.

Availability

Unlike its competitors MySpace, Friendster (), Xanga (), hi5 (), Bebo (), and others, Facebook isn’t available to everyone — which explains its relatively low user count. Currently, users must be members of one of the 30,000+ recognized schools, colleges, universities, organizations, and companies within the U.S, Canada, and other English-speaking nations. This generally involves having a valid e-mail ID with the associated institution.

Surveys & Studies

A large number of surveys and studies have been conducted around Facebook – some with interesting results. For instance, according to an internal September 2005 survey, approximately 85% of the students in the supported colleges had a Facebook account, with 60% of them logging in daily. A survey conducted by Student Monitor revealed Facebook was the most “in” thing after the iPod and tying with beer, and comScore Media Metrix discovered users spend approximately 20 minutes everyday on Facebook. Another 2005 survey said 90% of all undergraduates in the U.S. use either Facebook or MySpace regularly, and a detailed questionnaire analysis by Chris Roberts revealed that 76.2% never click on its ads. Perhaps the most amazing statistic of all may be that Facebook is the 7th most trafficked site in the U.S.

Hey Facebook Users!

Mashable’s shiny new Facebook account is HERE – feel free to add Mashable to your friends if you sign up, or you’re already a member.

Business & Funding

Given the situation other social networks on the web are facing, Facebook is in a good position financially. While it hasn’t managed to get acquired like its rival MySpace (despite some rumors about an $800m deal with Viacom), it’s been quite lucky in most aspects. For its initial funding, it received $500,000 from Peter Theil, co-founder of PayPal. A few months later, it was also able to get $13 million from Accel Partners, who are also investors in 15 other Web 2.0 startups, and $25 million from Greylock Partners, making their overall venture equal to approximately $40 million.

For users, Facebook’s core service is completely free and ad-supported. In fact, in August 2006 Facebook signed a three year deal with Microsoft to provide and sell ads on their site in return for a revenue split. The deal followed an announcement from Facebook’s direct competitor MySpace who signed a similar deal with Google (). The youthful demographic that both the services attract is highly prized amongst advertisers and should return a good amount of revenue for both the services to stay alive – and profit. Another deal which made news in July was Facebook’s agreement with Apple to give away 10 million free iTunes samplers to Facebook users. A deal has also been signed to provide Facebook credit cards.

Lawsuits & Concerns

In its early days, Facebook faced an extremely threatening lawsuit from ConnectU, a very similar social network which – like Facebook – shares its roots back to Harvard, and as a result almost got shutdown. The founders of ConnectU alleged that Facebook’s founder Mark Zuckerberg stole source code while he was in their employment. Zuckerberg denied the allegation and the lawsuit was dismissed.

Facebook has also been host to other issues and concerns, especially in the privacy sector where its privacy policy states “Facebook also collects information about you from other sources, such as newspapers and instant messaging services. This information is gathered regardless of your use of the Web Site.” Another theory is that Facebook could also be a data-gathering project or if not, used extensively for these purposes. Facebook’s policy also states that it “may share your information with third parties, including responsible companies with which we have a relationship.”

The Service

Now, let’s look into Facebook – the service itself, and some of its features, highlights, and the things that got Facebook where it is today.

Facebook Profiles

As Facebook has evolved, so have its profile pages – new fields have been added and users can share more information than before.

A typical Facebook profile consists of a number of different sections, including Information, Status, Friends, Friends in Other Networks, Photos, Notes, Groups, and The Wall. Most of the sections are self-explanatory but some are specific to Facebook.

Facebook Photos

With over 1.5 million photos uploaded daily, one of Facebook’s most popular features has been the ability to upload photos. Users can upload unlimited photos from their cell phone or through its Java-based web interface. Facebook is one of the few services to offer an unlimited quota with their only restriction being a 60-photos-per-album limit – this is much appreciated by Facebook’s college demographic.

The process of uploading photos is very simple. Users create albums which they can assign limitations to (e.g. visible to my friends only) and upload photos within them. The album is then put into their profile, and other users with right credentials have the ability to see and comment on them. Facebook also gives the feature to share the photos with a simple web link or send them via AIM () or by e-mail. What’s more, users can also order prints online through a simple integrated interface.

Facebook Groups

Just like every other social network, Facebook has something called ‘groups.’ Users can create new ones or join and participate in existing ones. This is also displayed in their profile and is a good indication of hobbies and interests a person might have.

There are two kind of groups, a normal group and a secret group, which isn’t shown on the profile. A normal group is just like any other, but users can also create and invite others into secret groups. These can be used for collaborating on university projects, and provide a way to have closed discussions. About 80% of the groups are ‘fun-related’ and companies can even sponsor groups – as is the case with, for example, the Apple users group.

Facebook Events

Another Facebook success is their ‘events’ feature, which provides the ability to organize, be part of, and plan for events. This feature has been extremely successful when it comes to organizing parties.

Along with organizing and joining events, users can also invite and recommend others to an event. This feature, however, has raised some controversy as it is generally the start of underage drinking and dry campus violations. Colleges and universities use the feature to catch planning of such events before hand and investigate those that are over. In any case, it’s one of the most popular features of the service and even beats some of the competing products made specifically for this purpose.

Facebook Developers

As of August 2006, Facebook has offered a free Developers API called Facebook Developers. This essentially gives anyone access to Facebook’s internals and lets programmers create widgets, mashups, tools and projects based around Facebook.

This is an important feature for Facebook since it makes it the first major social network to give access to its API. Although it is limited to 100,000 requests a day, it’s more than enough for a decent web app to come through. What’s more, a selection of applications have already been created. FaceBank is a promising tool which lets you ‘keep track of depts and shared expenses with friends.’ Another interesting application is lickuacious which lets you ‘rank your friends by wall popularity.’ The Wall, of course, is Facebook’s comments feature.

Facebook Notes

Facebook’s most recent addition launched in late August. The service is called Facebook Notes, and allows users to write a Facebook blog. All notes are displayed in the user’s profile, and other members can add comments.

Notes possesses an important feature, which is the ability to import and syndicate an external blog, although unlike Technorati, doesn’t allow you to claim one only to yourself (e.g. it’s possible to claim the New York Times syndication feed easily in one’s Notes). The service allows HTML to be included in the posts, although JavaScript and Flash are disabled. You can attach photos and also post via cell phone by sending your notes to notes@facebook.com. Another interesting feature is tagging – tagging a post with a username will automatically send it to that specific user. The Notes feature has been well received.

The Future

Facebook is a massively successful social networking service that grew to prominence in virtually no time. It’s not hard to see why: its features and tools are highly appealing, and Facebook users are extremely well networked in real life. Rumors of an acquisition continue to circulate, with some estimates putting the price in the billions of dollars. In the short term, however, Facebook plans to go it alone, continuing to build out one of the world’s most successful social networks.

Hey Facebook Users!

Mashable’s shiny new Facebook account is HERE – feel free to add Mashable to your friends if you sign up, or you’re already a member.

Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook Profile

Uploading to Facebook Photos

Facebook Groups

Facebook Events

Facebook Notes

page 2>>>From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Facebook, Inc.

Type	Private
Founded	Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA[1]
Founder	Mark Zuckerberg Eduardo Saverin Dustin Moskovitz Chris Hughes
Headquarters	Palo Alto, California Dublin, Ireland (international headquarters for Europe, Africa, Middle East) Seoul, South Korea (international headquarters for Asia)
Area served	Worldwide
Key people	Mark Zuckerberg (CEO) Dustin Moskovitz (Co-founder) Sheryl Sandberg (COO) Matt Cohler (VP of Product Management) Chris Hughes (Co-founder)
Revenue	▲ 300 million USD (2008 est.)[2]
Employees	1200+[3]
Website	www.facebook.com
Alexa rank	2[4]
Type of site	Social network service
Advertising	Banner ads, referral marketing, Casual games
Registration	Required
Available in	Multilingual
Launched	February 4, 2004
Current status	Active
Screenshot[show] Screenshot of Facebook's homepage

Facebook is a social networking website that is operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc.^[1] Since September 2006, anyone who confirms themselves to be over the age of 13 with a valid e-mail address can become a Facebook user. Facebook's target audience is more for youths than adults.^[5][6] Users can add friends and send them messages, and update their personal profiles to notify friends about themselves. Additionally, users can join networks organized by workplace, school, or college. The website's 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.

Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg with his college roommates and fellow computer science students Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes.^[7] The website'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 later expanded further to include (potentially) any university student, then high school students, and, finally, to anyone aged 13 and over. The website currently has more than 400 million active users worldwide.^[8][9]

The original concept for Facebook was borrowed from a product produced by Zuckerberg's prep school Phillips Exeter Academy which for decades published and distributed a printed manual of all students and faculty, unofficially called the "face book".

Facebook has met with some controversy. It has been blocked intermittently in several countries including Pakistan,^[10] Syria,^[11] China,^[12] Vietnam,^[13], and Iran.^[14] It has also been banned at many places of work to discourage employees from wasting time using the service.^[15]

Privacy has also been an issue, and it has been compromised several times. Facebook settled a lawsuit regarding claims over source code and intellectual property.^[16] The site has also been involved in controversy over the sale of fans and friends.^[17]

A January 2009 Compete.com study ranked Facebook as the most used social network by worldwide monthly active users, followed by MySpace.^[18] 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' birthdays, bug our friends, and play a rousing game of Scrabulous before Facebook?"^[19]

There have recently been reports of Facebook proposing an initial public offering (IPO), i.e. issue equity shares as stock to investors. However, Zuckerberg stresses that it will not be for a few more years, and the company is in no need of additional capital.^[20][21] Also, some analysts fear the Facebook IPO might be a particularly weak one.^[22]

History

Facemash

Mark Zuckerberg created Facebook in his Harvard dorm room.

Mark Zuckerberg wrote Facemash on October 28, 2003, while attending Harvard as a sophomore. The site represented a Harvard University version of Hot or Not, according to the Harvard Crimson.^[23] That night, Zuckerberg was blogging about a girl who had dumped him and trying to think of something to do to get her off his mind:^[24][25][26]

I'm a little intoxicated, not gonna lie. So what if it's not even 10 p.m. and it's a Tuesday night? What? The Kirkland [dorm] facebook is open on my desktop and some of these people have pretty horrendous facebook pics. I almost want to put some of these faces next to pictures of farm animals and have people vote on which is more attractive.

—9:48 pm

Yea, it's on. I'm not exactly sure how the farm animals are going to fit into this whole thing (you can't really ever be sure with farm animals...), but I like the idea of comparing two people together.

—11:09 pm

Let the hacking begin.

—12:58 am

According to The Harvard Crimson, Facemash "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". 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 directory with photos and basic information and the initial site generated 450 visitors and 22,000 photo-views in its first four hours online.^[27] That the initial site mirrored people’s physical community—with their real identities—represented the key aspects of what later became Facebook.^[28]

"Perhaps Harvard will squelch it for legal reasons without realizing its value as a venture that could possibly be expanded to other schools (maybe even ones with good-looking people...)," Zuckerberg wrote in his personal blog. "But one thing is certain, and it’s that I’m a jerk for making this site. Oh well. Someone had to do it eventually..."^[29] 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, but ultimately the charges were dropped.^[30]

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 website, with one image per page along with a comment section.^[28] He opened the site up to his classmates and people started sharing their notes. "The professor said it had the best grades of any final he’d ever given. This was my first social hack. With Facebook, I wanted to make something that would make Harvard more open," Zuckerberg said in a TechCrunch interview.

Thefacebook

Thefacebook on February 12, 2004.

The following semester, Zuckerberg began writing code for a new website in January 2004. He was inspired, he said, by an editorial in The Harvard Crimson about the Facemash incident. "It is clear that the technology needed to create a centralized Website is readily available," the paper observed. "The benefits are many."^[24] On February 4, 2004, Zuckerberg launched "Thefacebook", originally located at thefacebook.com.^[31] "Everyone’s been talking a lot about a universal face book within Harvard," Zuckerberg told The Harvard Crimson. "I think it’s kind of silly that it would take the University a couple of years to get around to it. I can do it better than they can, and I can do it in a week."^[32] "When Mark finished the site, he told a couple of friends. And then one of them suggested putting it on the Kirkland House online mailing list, which was...three hundred people," according to roommate Dustin Moskovitz. "And, once they did that, several dozen people joined, and then they were telling people at the other houses. By the end of the night, we were...actively watching the registration process. Within twenty-four hours, we had somewhere between twelve hundred and fifteen hundred registrants."^[33]

Just 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.^[34]

The three complained to the Harvard Crimson and the newspaper began an investigation. Zuckerberg used his site, TheFacebook.com, to look up members of the site who identified themselves as members of the Crimson. Then he examined a log of failed logins to see if any of the Crimson members had ever entered an incorrect password into TheFacebook.com. In the cases in which they had entered failed logins, Mark tried to use them to access the Crimson members' Harvard email accounts. He successfully accessed two of them.^[34] The three later filed a lawsuit against Zuckerberg, later settling.^[35]

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.^[36] Eduardo Saverin (business aspects), Dustin Moskovitz (programmer), Andrew McCollum (graphic artist), and Chris Hughes soon joined Zuckerberg to help promote the website. In March 2004, Facebook expanded to Stanford, Columbia, and Yale.^[37] This expansion continued when it opened to all Ivy League and Boston area schools, and gradually most universities in Canada and the United States.^[38] Facebook incorporated in the summer of 2004 and the entrepreneur Sean Parker, who had been informally advising Zuckerberg, became the company's president.^[39] In June 2004, Facebook moved its base of operations to Palo Alto, California.^[37] The company dropped The from its name after purchasing the domain name facebook.com in 2005 for $200,000.^[40]

Facebook launched a high school version in September 2005, which Zuckerberg called the next logical step.^[41] At that time, high school networks required an invitation to join.^[42] Facebook later expanded membership eligibility to employees of several companies, including Apple Inc. and Microsoft.^[43] Facebook was then opened on September 26, 2006, to everyone of ages 13 and older with a valid e-mail address.^[44][45] In October 2008, Facebook announced that it was to set up its international headquarters in Dublin, Ireland.^[46]

Facebook has been highly used in the years 2009-2010. It has crossed the visits of Google in some continents. And recently, Facebook.com was the top social network across eight of individual markets in the region, Philippines, Australia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, New Zealand, Hong Kong and Vietnam, while other brands commanded the top positions in certain markets, including Google-owned Orkut in India, Mixi.jp in Japan, CyWorld in South Korea and Yahoo!’s Wretch.cc in Taiwan^[47].

Financials

Entrance to Facebook's current headquarters in the Stanford Research Park, Palo Alto, California.

Another view of Facebook's current headquarters.

Facebook received its first investment of US$500,000 in June 2004 from PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel.^[48] This was followed a year later by $12.7 million in venture capital from Accel Partners, and then $27.5 million more from Greylock Partners.^[48][49] A leaked cash flow statement showed that during the 2005 fiscal year, Facebook had a net loss of $3.63 million.^[50]

With the sale of social networking website MySpace to News Corp on July 19, 2005, rumors surfaced about the possible sale of Facebook to a larger media company.^[51] Zuckerberg had already said he did not want to sell the company, and denied rumors to the contrary.^[52] On March 28, 2006, BusinessWeek reported that a potential acquisition of Facebook was under negotiation. Facebook reportedly declined an offer of $750 million from an unknown bidder, and it was rumored the asking price rose as high as $2 billion.^[53]

In September 2006, serious talks between Facebook and Yahoo! took place concerning acquisition of Facebook, with prices reaching as high as $1 billion.^[54] Thiel, by then a board member of Facebook, indicated that Facebook's internal valuation was around $8 billion based on their projected revenues of $1 billion by 2015, comparable to Viacom's MTV brand, a company with a shared target demographic audience.^[55]

On July 17, 2007, Zuckerberg said that selling Facebook was unlikely because he wanted to keep it independent, saying "We're not really looking to sell the company... We're not looking to IPO anytime soon. It's just not the core focus of the company."^[56]

In September 2007, Microsoft approached Facebook, proposing an investment in return for a 5% stake in the company, offering an estimated $300–500 million.^[57] That month, other companies, including Google, expressed interest in buying a portion of Facebook.^[58]

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.^[59] However, Microsoft bought preferred stock that carried special rights, such as "liquidation preferences" that meant Microsoft would get paid before common stockholders if the company is sold. Microsoft's purchase also included rights to place international ads on Facebook.^[60]

In November 2007, Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing invested $60 million in Facebook.^[61]

In August 2008, BusinessWeek reported that private sales by employees, as well as purchases by venture capital firms, had and were being done at share prices that put the company's total valuation at between $3.75 billion and $5 billion.^[60]

In October 2008, Zuckerberg said "I don't think social networks can be monetized in the same way that search did... In three years from now we have to figure out what the optimum model is. But that is not our primary focus today."^[62]

In August 2009, Facebook acquired social media real-time news aggregator FriendFeed,^[63] a startup created by the former Google employee and Gmail's first engineer Paul Buchheit who, while at Google, coined the phrase "Don't be evil".^[64][65][66]

In September 2009, Facebook claimed that it had turned cash flow positive for the first time.^[67]

In February 2010, Facebook acquired Malaysian contact-importing startup Octazen Solutions.^[68]

On April 2, 2010, Facebook announced acquisition of photo-sharing service called Divvyshot for an undisclosed amount.^[69]

Website

Facebook's homepage features a login form on the top right for existing users and a registration form directly underneath for new visitors.

Users can create profiles with photos, lists of personal interests, contact information and other personal information. Communicating with friends and other users can be done through private or public messages or a chat feature. Users can also create and join interest groups and "like pages" (formerly called "fan pages" until April 19, 2010), some of which are maintained by organizations as a means of advertising.^[70] To allay concerns about privacy, Facebook enables users to choose their own privacy settings and choose who can see what parts of their profile.^[71]

The website is free to users and generates revenue from advertising, such as banner ads.^[72] By default, the viewing of detailed profile data is restricted to users from the same network and "reasonable community limitations".^[73]

Microsoft is Facebook's exclusive partner for serving banner advertising,^[74] and as such Facebook only serves advertisements that exist in Microsoft's advertisement inventory. 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!.^[75]

Interface evolution

Profile shown on Thefacebook in 2004.	Facebook profile shown in 2006.	Facebook profile shown in 2007.	Facebook Lite shown in 2009.
New Facebook homepage released in February 2010.

Facebook Lite

In August 2009, Facebook announced the rollout of a "lite" version of the site, optimized for users on slower or intermittent Internet connections. Facebook Lite offered fewer services, excluded most third-party applications and required less bandwidth.^[76] A beta version of the slimmed-down interface was released first to invited testers,^[77] before a broader rollout across users in the USA, Canada, and India.^[76].

It was announced shortly after on 20 April 2010 that support for the "Lite" service had ended and that users would be redirected back to the normal, full content, Facebook website. The service was only operational eight months.

Features

The media often compares Facebook to MySpace, but one significant difference between the two websites is the level of customization.^[78] MySpace allows users to decorate their profiles using HTML and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), while Facebook only allows plain text.^[79]

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;^[80] Pokes, which allows users to send a virtual "poke" to each other (a notification then tells a user that they have been poked);^[81] Photos, where users can upload albums and photos;^[82] and Status, which allows users to inform their friends of their whereabouts and actions.^[83] 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.^[80]

Over time, Facebook has added features to its website. 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.^[84] This has 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.^[85] Initially, the News Feed caused dissatisfaction among Facebook users; some complained it was too cluttered and full of undesired information, while others were concerned it made it too easy for other people to track down individual activities (such as changes in relationship status, events, and conversations with other users).^[86] In response to this dissatisfaction, 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 friends from seeing updates about certain types of activities, including profile changes, Wall posts, and newly added friends.^[87] On February 23, 2010, Facebook was granted US patent 7669123 on certain aspects of their News Feed. The patent covers News Feeds where links are provided so that one user can participate in the same activity of another user.^[88] This patent is controversial in that it appears to cover all types of News Feeds.

One of the most popular applications on Facebook is the Photos application, where users can upload albums and photos.^[89] 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.^{[90][91][92][93]} 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.^[94]

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.^[44] During the week of April 7, 2008, Facebook released a Comet-based^[95] instant messaging application called "Chat" to several networks,^[96] 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.^[97][98] On May 14, 2007, Facebook launched Marketplace, which lets users post free classified ads.^[99] 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 only seen by users that are in the same network as that user, whereas listings posted on Craigslist can be seen by anyone.^[100]

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.^[101] After initially giving users a choice to switch, Facebook began migrating all users to the new version beginning in September 2008.^[102]

On December 11, 2008, it was announced that Facebook was testing a simpler signup process.^[103] On June 13, 2009, Facebook introduced a "Usernames" feature, whereby pages can be linked with simpler URLs such as http://www.facebook.com/facebook as opposed to http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=20531316728.^[104]

Platform

Facebook mobile graphical user interface.

Facebook's former headquarters in downtown Palo Alto, California.

Facebook launched the Facebook Platform on May 24, 2007, providing a framework for software developers to create applications that interact with core Facebook features.^[105][106] A markup language called Facebook Markup Language was introduced simultaneously; it is used to customize the "look and feel" of applications that developers create. Using the Platform, Facebook launched several new applications,^[105][106] including Gifts, allowing users to send virtual gifts to each other, Marketplace, allowing users to post free classified ads, Events, giving users a method of informing their friends about upcoming events, and Video, letting users share homemade videos with one another.^[107][108]

Applications that have been created on the Platform include chess, which both allow users to play games with their friends.^[109] In such games, a user's moves are saved on the website, allowing the next move to be made at any time rather than immediately after the previous move.^[110]

By November 3, 2007, seven thousand applications had been developed on the Facebook Platform, with another hundred created every day.^[111] By the second annual f8 developers conference on July 23, 2008, the number of applications had grown to 33,000,^[112] and the number of registered developers had exceeded 400,000.^[113]

Within a few months of launching the Facebook Platform, issues arose regarding "application spam", which involves Facebook applications "spamming" users to request it be installed.^[114]

Facebook Connect was announced for the Xbox 360 and Nintendo DSi on June 1, 2009 at E3.^[115] On November 18, 2009, Sony announced an integration with Facebook to deliver the first phase of a variety of new features to further connect and enhance the online social experiences of PlayStation 3.^[116] On February 2, 2010, Facebook announced the release of HipHop for PHP as an opensource project.

Facebook on smartphones

Many new smartphones offer access to the Facebook services either through their web-browsers or applications. The Facebook iPhone app was launched August 2007 and as of July 2008 over 1.5 million people use it regularly.^[117] A free application for the iPhone OS named "Facebook for iPhone" was launched July 2008.^[117] Version 2.0 of this app was released in September 2008 and featured improved services such as being able to respond to friend requests and notifications.^[118] Version 3.0 was released in August 2009 and added features such as events, and uploading video with a iPhone 3GS.^[119]

Nokia offers a Facebook app on its Ovi Store for Nokia S60 devices such as the N97 and contains most of the functionality of the full website.^[120]

Google's Android 2.0 OS automatically includes an official Facebook app. The first device to use this is the Motorola Droid. The app has options to sync Facebook friends with contacts, which adds profile pictures and status updates to the contacts list. RIM also offers a Facebook application for the BlackBerry. It includes a range of functions, including an ability to integrate Facebook events into the BlackBerry calendar, and using Facebook profile pictures for Caller ID.^[121]

Server infrastructure

At QCon San Francisco 2008,^[122] Director of Engineering Aditya Agarwal indicated that the front-end servers are running a PHP LAMP stack with the addition of Memcache, and the back-end services are written in a variety of languages including C++, Java, Python and Erlang. Other components of the Facebook infrastructure (which have been released as open source projects) include Scribe, Thrift and Cassandra, as well as existing open-source components such as ODS.

In January 2010, Facebook confirmed it is building the company's first custom data center in Prineville, Oregon.^[123] When completed in June 2011, the 147,000 square feet (13,700 m²) building will occupy 30 acres (0.12 km²) of the 124 acres (0.50 km²) site they purchased, and will house 35 employees.^[124][125]

Downtime and outages

Facebook has had a number of outages and downtime large enough to draw some media attention. A 2007 outage resulted in a security hole that enabled some users to read other users' personal mail.^[126] In 2008, the site was inaccessible for about a day, from many locations in many countries.^[127] In spite of these occurrences, a report issued by Pingdom found that Facebook had less downtime in 2008 than most social networking websites.^[128] On September 16, 2009, Facebook started having major problems with loading when people signed in. On September 18, 2009, Facebook went down for the second time in 2009, the first time being when a group of hackers were deliberately trying to drown out a political speaker who had social networking problems from continuously speaking against the Iranian election results.^{[citation needed]} In October 2009, an unspecified number of Facebook users were unable to access their accounts for over three weeks.^{[129][130][131][132][133]}

URL shortener

On December 14, 2009, Facebook launched its own URL shortener based on FB.me domain name.^[134] From that point on, all links based on facebook.com can be accessed under fb.me, which is seven characters shorter.

Effect on politics - Saint Anselm College presidential debates

The stage at the Facebook - Saint Anselm College debates in 2008

Facebook's effect on the American political system became clear 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.^{[135][136][137]} 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.^[138] Over 1,000,000 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.^[139] This debate showed the broader community what many what young students had already experienced: that Facebook was an extremely popular and powerful new way to interact and voice opinions. An article written 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.^[140]

Reception

According to comScore, Facebook is the leading social networking site based on monthly unique visitors, having overtaken main competitor MySpace in April 2008.^[141] ComScore reports that Facebook attracted 132.1 million unique visitors in June 2008, compared to MySpace, which attracted 117.6 million.^[142]

According to Alexa, the website's ranking among all websites increased from 60th to 7th in worldwide traffic, from September 2006 to September 2007, and is currently 2nd.^[143] Quantcast ranks the website 4th in the U.S. in traffic,^[144] and Compete.com ranks it 2nd in the U.S.^[145] The website is the most popular for uploading photos, with 14 million uploaded daily.^[146]

Facebook is the most popular social networking site in several English-speaking countries, including Canada,^[147] the United Kingdom,^[148] and the United States.^{[149][150][151][152]} The website has won awards such as placement into the "Top 100 Classic Websites" by PC Magazine in 2007,^[153] and winning the "People's Voice Award" from the Webby Awards in 2008.^[154] 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.^[155]

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.^[156]

In 2008, Collins English Dictionary declared "Facebook" as their new Word of the Year.^[157] In December 2009, the New Oxford American Dictionary declared their word of the year to be the verb "unfriend":

unfriend – verb – 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.”

As of April 2010, according to the New York Times, countries with most Facebook users are the United States, the United Kingdom and Indonesia.^[158]

Use by courts

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.^[159]

In March 2009, the New Zealand High Court associate justice David Glendall allowed for the serving of legal papers on Craig Axe by the company Axe Market Garden via Facebook.^[160]

Use by employers

Employers (such as Virgin Atlantic) have also used Facebook as a means to keep tabs on their employees and have even been known to fire them over posts they've made.^[161]

Criticism

Facebook has drawn criticism from a number of groups and has been banned by certain organizations or entire governments.^{[citation needed]} Criticism often centers around the privacy of members or third parties, the way in which Facebook uses members' information and controversial content posted by members.

Litigation

ConnectU

In 2004, ConnectU, a company founded by classmates of Zuckerberg, filed a lawsuit against Facebook. They claimed that Zuckerberg had broken an oral contract for them to build the Facebook site, copied their idea,^[162] and used source code that belonged to them.^{[29][163][164][165]} The parties reached a confidential settlement agreement in February 2008.^[35] In 2008, they attempted unsuccessfully to rescind the settlement, claiming that Facebook had understated its valuation in connection with its settlement negotiations.^{[166][167][168][169][170]} Despite the confidentiality agreement, a law firm that represented ConnectU inadvertently disclosed the $65 million settlement amount.^[171]

StudiVZ

On July 18, 2008, Facebook sued StudiVZ in a California federal court, alleging that StudiVZ copied its look, feel, features, and services. StudiVZ denied the claims, and asked for declaratory judgment at the District Court in Stuttgart, Germany.^[172] On September 10, 2009, a settlement was reached, resulting in StudiVZ paying an undisclosed sum to Facebook and both companies continuing business as usual.^[173]

Grant Raphael

On July 24, 2008, the High Court in London ordered British freelance cameraman Grant Raphael to pay £22,000 (then about US$43,700) for breach of privacy and libel. Raphael had posted a fake Facebook page purporting to be that of a former schoolfriend and business colleague, Mathew Firsht, with whom Raphael had fallen out in 2000. The fake page claimed that Firsht was homosexual and untrustworthy. The case is believed to be the first successful invasion of privacy and defamation verdict against someone over an entry on a social networking site.^{[174][175][176][177][178][179]}

Adam Guerbuez

Facebook won a lawsuit against Canadian Adam Guerbuez, of Montreal, and his business, Atlantis Blue Capital. Guerbuez had spammed the website with over 4 million messages containing various advertisements including penis enlargement products and marijuana. The judgment awarded Facebook US$873 million.^[180]

Popular culture

Books

American author Ben Mezrich published a book in July 2009 about Mark Zuckerberg and the founding of Facebook, titled The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding Of Facebook, A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius, and Betrayal.

Films

The Social Network, an upcoming comedy-drama film directed by David Fincher about the founding of Facebook, is set to be released October 1, 2010. The film features an ensemble cast consisting of Jesse Eisenberg as Mark Zuckerberg, Justin Timberlake as Sean Parker, Brenda Song as Joanna Simmons, Andrew Garfield as Eduardo Saverin, Rooney Mara as Erica, and Armie Hammer as Cameron Winklevoss. The film is written by Aaron Sorkin and adapted from Ben Mezrich's 2009 book The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding Of Facebook, A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius, and Betrayal. The film will be distributed by Columbia Pictures.

None of the Facebook staff, including Zuckerberg, are involved with the project. One of the co-founders, Eduardo Saverin, was a consultant for Mezrich's book.

See also

San Francisco Bay Area portal

Companies portal

• Criticism of Facebook
• Facebook Beacon
• Facebook features
• MySpace
• CampusNetwork

References

1. ^ ^{a b} Eldon, Eric. (2008-12-18). "2008 Growth Puts Facebook In Better Position to Make Money". VentureBeat. http://venturebeat.com/2008/12/18/2008-growth-puts-facebook-in-better-position-to-make-money/. Retrieved 2008-12-19.
2. ^ "By The Numbers: Billionaire Bachelors". Forbes. http://www.forbes.com/2008/09/16/billionaire-bachelors-single-lists-cx_mm_0916bachelor_slide_11.html?thisSpeed=30000. Retrieved 2008-09-20.
3. ^ "Press Info", Facebook. Retrieved April 19, 2010.
4. ^ "Facebook.com - Traffic Details from Alexa". Alexa Internet, Inc. http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/facebook.com. Retrieved 2009-10-17.
5. ^ "Help Wanted: Adults on Facebook". CNN. 2008-03-21. http://money.cnn.com/2008/03/21/technology/kirkpatrick_facebook.fortune/index.htm. Retrieved 2010-05-02.
6. ^ Facebook, Inc.. Facebook TOS as of December 21, 2009. Facebook.com. . URL:http://www.facebook.com/terms.php?ref=pf. Accessed: 2010-04-11.)
7. ^ Carlson, Nicholas (2010-03-05). "At Last -- The Full Story Of How Facebook Was Founded". Business Insider. http://www.businessinsider.com/how-facebook-was-founded-2010-3#we-can-talk-about-that-after-i-get-all-the-basic-functionality-up-tomorrow-night-1.
8. ^ "Facebook Statistics". http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics. Retrieved February 12, 2010.
9. ^ Anthony Ha, VentureBeat. "Facebook has 400M users, 100M on Connect." April 21, 2010.
10. ^ http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-501465_162-20005388-501465.html
11. ^ "Red lines that cannot be crossed". The Economist. July 24, 2008. http://www.economist.com/world/mideast-africa/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11792330. Retrieved August 17, 2008.
12. ^ "China's Facebook Status: Blocked". ABC News. July 8, 2009. http://blogs.abcnews.com/theworldnewser/2009/07/chinas-facebook-status-blocked.html. Retrieved 13 July 2009.
13. ^ Ben Stocking (2009-11-17). "Vietnam Internet users fear Facebook blackout". Associated Press. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2009/11/17/international/i033256S37.DTL. Retrieved 2009-11-17.
14. ^ Shahi, Afshin. (July 27, 2008). "Iran's Digital War"". Daily News Egypt. http://dailystaregypt.com/article.aspx?ArticleID=15313. Retrieved August 16, 2008.
15. ^ Benzie, Robert (May 3, 2007). "Facebook banned for Ontario staffers". Toronto: TheStar.com. http://www.thestar.com/News/article/210014. Retrieved August 16, 2008.
16. ^ Stone, Brad (April 7, 2008). "Facebook to Settle Thorny Lawsuit Over Its Origins". The New York Times (blog). http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/04/07/facebook-to-settle-thorny-lawsuit-over-its-origins/. Retrieved November 5, 2009.
17. ^ "Facebook frowns on buddy-buyer company". The New York Post. September 4, 2009. http://www.nypost.com/p/news/national/facebook_frowns_on_buddy_buyer_company_DixVGIpAnBGuoWCeMqt5QJ. Retrieved December 7, 2009.
18. ^ Kazeniac, Andy (2009-02-09). "Social Networks: Facebook Takes Over Top Spot, Twitter Climbs". Compete.com. http://blog.compete.com/2009/02/09/facebook-myspace-twitter-social-network/. Retrieved 2009-02-17.
19. ^ Geier, Thom; Jensen, Jeff; Jordan, Tina; Lyons, Margaret; Markovitz, Adam; Nashawaty, Chris; Pastorek, Whitney; Rice, Lynette; Rottenberg, Josh; Schwartz, Missy; Slezak, Michael; Snierson, Dan; Stack, Tim; Stroup, Kate; Tucker, Ken; Vary, Adam B.; Vozick-Levinson, Simon; Ward, Kate (December 11, 2009)). "THE 100 Greatest Movies, TV Shows, Albums, Books, Characters, Scenes, Episodes, Songs, Dresses, Music Videos, and Trends that entertained us over the 10 Years". Entertainment Weekly.
20. ^ Alexei Oreskovic. "Reuters.com". Reuters.com. http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE54I77G20090519. Retrieved 2010-03-23.
21. ^ By David Gelles and Richard Waters, FT.com. "CNN.com". Edition.cnn.com. http://edition.cnn.com/2009/BUSINESS/11/24/facebook.ipo.ft/index.html. Retrieved 2010-03-23.
22. ^ Salkever, Alex. "DailyFinance.com". DailyFinance.com. http://www.dailyfinance.com/story/why-facebooks-ipo-could-be-disappointingly-weak/19134422. Retrieved 2010-03-23.
23. ^ Tabak, Alan J. (February 9, 2004). "Hundreds Register for New Facebook Website". Harvard Crimson. http://web.archive.org/web/20050403215543/www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=357292. Retrieved 2008-11-07.
24. ^ ^{a b} Hoffman, Claire (2008-06-28). "The Battle for Facebook". Rolling Stone. http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/21129674/the_battle_for_facebook/. Retrieved 2009-02-05.
25. ^ Schwartz, Bari (2003-11-04). "Hot or Not? Website Briefly Judges Looks". Harvard Crimson. http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=349808. Retrieved 2009-07-26.
26. ^ "Facemash Returns As (What Else?) A Facebook App Called ULiken". Tech Crunch. 2008-05-13. http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/05/13/facemash-returns-as-what-else-a-facebook-app-uliken/. Retrieved 2009-02-05.
27. ^ Locke, Laura. "The Future of Facebook", Time Magazine, July 17, 2007. Retrieved November 13, 2009.
28. ^ ^{a b} McGirt, Ellen. "Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg: Hacker. Dropout. CEO. ", Fast Company, May 1, 2007. Retrieved November 5, 2009.
29. ^ ^{a b} O'Brien, Luke (November/December 2007). "Poking Facebook". 02138: p. 66. http://www.02138mag.com/magazine/article/1724.html. Retrieved 2008-06-26.
30. ^ Kaplan, Katherine (2003-11-19). "Facemash Creator Survives Ad Board". The Harvard Crimson. http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=350143. Retrieved 2009-02-05.
31. ^ Seward, Zachary M. (2007-07-25). "Judge Expresses Skepticism About Facebook Lawsuit". The Wall Street Journal. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118539991204578084.html?mod=googlenews_wsj. Retrieved 2008-04-30.
32. ^ Tabak, Alan (February 9, 2004). "Hundreds Register for New Facebook Website". Harvard Crimson. http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=357292. Retrieved 2008-11-07.
33. ^ Cassidy, John (2006-05-13). "Me Media". The New Yorker. http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/05/15/060515fa_fact_cassidy. Retrieved 2009-07-20.
34. ^ ^{a b} Carlson, Nicolas (2010-03-05). "In 2004, Mark Zuckerberg Broke Into A Facebook User's Private Email Account". Business Insider. http://www.businessinsider.com/how-mark-zuckerberg-hacked-into-the-harvard-crimson-2010-3. Retrieved 2010-03-05.
35. ^ ^{a b} Brad Stone (2008-06-28). "Judge Ends Facebook’s Feud With ConnectU". New York Times. http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/06/26/judge-ends-facebooks-feud-with-connectu/index.html.
36. ^ Phillips, Sarah (2007-07-25). "A brief history of Facebook". The Guardian (London). http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2007/jul/25/media.newmedia. Retrieved 2008-03-07.
37. ^ ^{a b} "Press Room". Facebook. 2007-01-01. http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?timeline. Retrieved 2008-03-05.
38. ^ Rosmarin, Rachel (2006-09-11). "Open Facebook". Forbes. http://www.forbes.com/2006/09/11/facebook-opens-up-cx_rr_0911facebook.html. Retrieved 2008-06-13.
39. ^ Rosen, Ellen (2005-05-26). "Student's Start-Up Draws Attention and $13 Million". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/26/business/26sbiz.html?_r=2&scp=1&sq=thefacebook+parker&st=nyt. Retrieved 2009-05-18.
40. ^ Williams, Chris (2007-10-01). "Facebook wins Manx battle for face-book.com". The Register. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/10/01/facebook_domain_dispute/. Retrieved 2008-06-13. |
41. ^ Dempsey, Laura (2006-08-03). "Facebook is the go-to Web site for students looking to hook up". Dayton Daily News.
42. ^ Lerer, Lisa (2007-01-25). "Why MySpace Doesn't Card". Forbes. http://www.forbes.com/security/2007/01/25/myspace-security-identity-tech-security-cx_ll_0124myspaceage.html. Retrieved 2008-06-13.
43. ^ Lacy, Sarah (2006-09-12). "Facebook: Opening the Doors Wider". BusinessWeek. http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/sep2006/tc20060912_682123.htm?chan=top+news_top+news+index_technology. Retrieved 2008-03-09.
44. ^ ^{a b} Abram, Carolyn (2006-09-26). "Welcome to Facebook, everyone". Facebook. http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=2210227130. Retrieved 2008-03-08.
45. ^ "Terms of Use". Facebook. 2007-11-15. http://www.facebook.com/terms.php. Retrieved 2008-03-05.
46. ^ "Press Releases". Facebook. 2008-11-30. http://www.facebook.com/press/releases.php?p=59042. Retrieved 2008-11-30.
47. ^ Facebook Top Social Network Majority Of Asia Pacific Markets
48. ^ ^{a b} "Why you should beware of Facebook". The Age. 2008-01-20. http://www.theage.com.au/news/general/beware-facebook/2008/01/18/1200620184398.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap2. Retrieved 2008-04-30.
49. ^ Teller, Sam (2006-04-25). "Investors Add $25M to Facebook’s Coffers". The Harvard Crimson. Archived from the original on 2006-04-25. http://web.archive.org/web/20070818200839/http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=503336. Retrieved 2008-03-08.
50. ^ "Statement of Cash Flows". 02138. http://www.02138mag.com/asset/1138.html. Retrieved 2008-04-30.
51. ^ "News Corp in $580 m internet buy". BBC News. 2005-07-19. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/4695495.stm. Retrieved 2008-03-07.
52. ^ Zuckerberg, Mark (2006-09-08). "Free Flow of Information on the Internet discussions". Facebook. http://facebook.com/topic.php?uid=2208601394&topic=1841&start=500#post5339. Retrieved 2006-09-13.
53. ^ Rosenbush, Steve (2006-03-28). "Facebook's on the Block". BusinessWeek. http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/mar2006/tc20060327_215976.htm. Retrieved 2006-04-03.
54. ^ Delaney, Kevin (2006-09-21). "Facebook, Riding a Web Trend, Flirts With a Big-Money Deal". Dow Jones. p. 1.
55. ^ Sullivan, Brian (2006-12-15). "Facebook, Courted By Yahoo, Won't Sell, Director Says (Update3)". Bloomberg L.P.. http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601204&sid=aqwoCAVu._zA. Retrieved 2008-04-30.
56. ^ Sakuma, Paul (2007-06-17). "The Future of Facebook". Time. http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1644040,00.html. Retrieved 2008-03-05.
57. ^ Swartz, Jon (2007-10-02). "Tech giants poke around Facebook". USA Today. http://www.usatoday.com/tech/techinvestor/corporatenews/2007-10-02-facebook-suitors_N.htm. Retrieved 2008-04-30.
58. ^ Delaney, Kevin (2007-09-25). "Microsoft Fires Volley At Google in Ad Battle". The Wall Street Journal. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119065193646437586.html?mod=hps_us_whats_news. Retrieved 2008-03-05.
59. ^ "Facebook and Microsoft Expand Strategic Alliance". Microsoft. 2007-10-24. http://www.microsoft.com/Presspass/press/2007/oct07/10-24FacebookPR.mspx. Retrieved 2007-11-08.
60. ^ ^{a b} "Facebook Stock For Sale". BusinessWeek. http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/08_33/b4096000952343.htm?chan=rss_topEmailedStories_ssi_5. Retrieved 2008-08-06.
61. ^ "Li Ka-shing invests 60 million dollars in Facebook: report". Tehran Times. 2007-12-03. http://www.tehrantimes.com/index_View.asp?code=158391. Retrieved 2008-04-30.
62. ^ Peter Kafka (October 10, 2008). "Zuckerberg: Facebook Will Have A Business Plan In Three Years". Silicon Alley Insider. http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/10/zuckerberg-facebook-will-have-a-business-plan-in-three-years.
63. ^ Facebook Acquires FriendFeed Techcrunch
64. ^ Paul Buchheit on Gmail, AdSense and More Google Blogoscoped
65. ^ Don't Be Evil, a Trigger for Ethical Questions Google Operating System Blog
66. ^ Small Talk with Mr. Paul Buchheit – Creator of Gmail, Adsense & FriendFeed! CrazyEngineers
67. ^ "Facebook 'cash flow positive,' signs 300M users". Cbc.ca. 2009-09-16. http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2009/09/16/tech-facebook-300-million-users.html. Retrieved 2010-03-23.
68. ^ Arrington, Michael (2010-02-19). "Facebook acquires contact-importing company Octazen". Techcrunch.com. http://techcrunch.com/2010/02/19/octazen-what-the-heck-did-facebook-just-buy-exactly-and-why/. Retrieved 2010-03-23.
69. ^ "Facebook buys photo service Divvyshot". 2 April 2010. http://techcrunch.com/2010/04/02/facebook-buys-up-divvyshot-to-make-facebook-photos-even-better/. Retrieved 5 April 2010.
70. ^ "Edit Your Profile". Facebook. http://www.facebook.com/sitetour/profile.php. Retrieved 2008-03-07.
71. ^ "Search Privacy". Facebook. http://www.facebook.com/privacy/?view=search. Retrieved 2009-06-13.
72. ^ Barton, Zoe (2006-04-28). "Facebook goes corporate". ZDNet. http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9588_22-6066533.html. Retrieved 2008-03-09.
73. ^ "Facebook Principles". Facebook. http://www.facebook.com/policy.php?ref=pf. Retrieved 2009-01-14.
74. ^ "Product Overview FAQ: Facebook Ads". Facebook. http://www.facebook.com/press/faq.php#Facebook+Ads. Retrieved 2008-03-10.
75. ^ Story, Louise (2008-03-10). "To Aim Ads, Web Is Keeping Closer Eye on You". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/10/technology/10privacy.html. Retrieved 2008-03-09.
76. ^ ^{a b} "Facebook slims down to Facebook Lite". BBC. 11 September 2009. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8249835.stm. Retrieved 12 September 2009.
77. ^ August 12, 2009 Ben Parr View commentsComments (2009-08-12). "Facebook Lite: The Early Details and Screenshots". Mashable.com. http://mashable.com/2009/08/12/facebook-lite-screenshots/. Retrieved 2010-03-23.
78. ^ Stone, Brad (2007-05-25). "Facebook Expands Into MySpace’s Territory". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/25/technology/25social.html. Retrieved 2008-03-08.
79. ^ Sullivan, Mark (2007-07-24). "Is Facebook the New MySpace?". PC World. http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,134635-c,categories/article.html. Retrieved 2008-04-30.
80. ^ ^{a b} Der, Kevin. "Facebook is off-the-wall". Facebook. http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=3532972130. Retrieved 2007-07-30.
81. ^ "Inbox, Messages and Pokes". Facebook. http://www.facebook.com/help.php?page=20. Retrieved 2008-03-09.
82. ^ "The Facebook Gifts". Facebook. http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=2406207130. Retrieved 2008-03-05.
83. ^ "Facebook is... reconsidering the word "is"". News Limited. http://www.news.com.au/technology/story/0,25642,22822400-5014108,00.html. Retrieved 2008-03-08.
84. ^ Sanghvi, Ruchi (2006-09-06). "Facebook Gets a Facelift". Facebook. http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=2207967130. Retrieved 2008-02-11.
85. ^ "Facebook: Celebrate Your Birthday Every Day". http://blog.colnect.com/2010/03/facebook-celebrate-your-birthday-every.html. Retrieved 2010-03-09.
86. ^ Lacy, Sarah (2006-09-08). "Facebook Learns from Its Fumble". BusinessWeek. http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/sep2006/tc20060908_536553.htm?campaign_id=rss_tech. Retrieved 2008-06-28.
87. ^ Gonsalves, Antone (2006-09-08). "Facebook Founder Apologizes In Privacy Flap; Users Given More Control". InformationWeek. http://www.informationweek.com/news/internet/ebusiness/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=192700574. Retrieved 2008-06-28.
88. ^ "US Patent No. 7669123". http://themelis-cuiper.com/22/us-patent-no-7669123.html. Retrieved 2010-03-09.
89. ^ Arrington, Michael (2007-05-24). "Facebook Launches Facebook Platform; They are the Anti-MySpace". TechCrunch. http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/05/24/facebook-launches-facebook-platform-they-are-the-anti-myspace/. Retrieved 2008-06-28.
90. ^ "Share More Memories with Larger Photo Albums". http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=87157517130. Retrieved 2010-01-04.
91. ^ "Upload: 60 or 200 photos in the same album?". http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?uid=2305272732&topic=7363. Retrieved 2009-01-25.
92. ^ "How can I add more than 60 photos to an album?". http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?uid=2305272732&topic=4947. Retrieved 2009-01-25.
93. ^ "Example of album from a regular user with a 200-photo limit". http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2003726&l=5f3c8&id=1352160452. Retrieved 2009-01-25.
94. ^ "Photos". Facebook. http://www.facebook.com/help.php?page=7. Retrieved 2008-03-15.
95. ^ Eugene (2008-05-14). "Facebook Chat". Facebook. http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=14218138919&id=9445547199&index=0. Retrieved 2008-06-02.
96. ^ Facebook (2008-04-06). "April 6, 2008 Press Release". Press release. http://www.facebook.com/press/releases.php?p=27681. Retrieved 2008-04-11.
97. ^ "Give gifts on Facebook!". Facebook. http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=2234372130. Retrieved 2008-03-15.
98. ^ "Gifts". Facebook. http://www.facebook.com/help.php?page=16. Retrieved 2008-03-15.
99. ^ "The Marketplace Is Open...". Facebook. http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=2383962130. Retrieved 2008-03-15.
100. ^ McCarthy, Caroline (2007-05-13). "Hands-on with Facebook Marketplace". CNET. http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9718779-7.html. Retrieved 2008-03-15.
101. ^ "Facebook Facelift Targets Aging Users and New Competitors". New York Times. July 21, 2008.
102. ^ "Moving to the new Facebook". Facebook. http://blog.new.facebook.com/blog.php?post=30074837130. Retrieved 2008-09-12.
103. ^ Facebook Testing Even Simpler Sign Up; Closing The Gap With MySpace In The U.S., TechCrunch. Published December 11, 2008.
104. ^ DiPersia, Blaise (2009-06-09). "Coming Soon: Facebook Usernames". http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=90316352130. Retrieved 2009-06-13.
105. ^ ^{a b} Kirkpatrick, David (2007-05-29). "Facebook's plan to hook up the world". CNN. http://money.cnn.com/2007/05/24/technology/facebook.fortune/. Retrieved 2008-03-05.
106. ^ ^{a b} "Facebook Platform Launches". Facebook. 2007-05-27. http://developers.facebook.com/news.php?blog=1&story=21. Retrieved 2007-09-03.
107. ^ George-Cosh, David (2007-07-05). "Facebook users embracing the Marketplace". Globe and Mail. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20070705.wgtfacebook05/BNStory/Technology/. Retrieved 2008-05-03.
108. ^ Schwankert, Steven (2007-05-25). "Facebook Launches Video System". PC World. http://www.pcworld.com/article/132245-1/article.html?tk=nl_dnxnws. Retrieved 2008-05-03.
109. ^ "Chess". Facebook. http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=2427617054&ref=s. Retrieved 2008-03-15.
110. ^ "Mountain View startup Meebo aims to revolutionize instant messaging". San Francisco Chronicle. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/11/20/BU5LTFF6N.DTL&type=business. Retrieved 2008-03-15.
111. ^ Rampell, Catherine (2007-11-03). "Widgets Become Coins of the Social Realm". The Washington Post: p. D01. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/02/AR2007110201894_pf.html. Retrieved 2008-05-07.
112. ^ Ustinova, Anastasia (2008-07-23). "Developers compete at Facebook conference". San Francisco Chronicle. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/07/23/BU7C11TAES.DTL. Retrieved 2008-08-14.
113. ^ "Facebook Expands Power of Platform Across the Web and Around the World". Facebook. 2008-07-23. http://www.facebook.com/press/releases.php?p=48242. Retrieved 2008-08-14.
114. ^ "Facebook cracks down on developer spam". The Washington Post. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/29/AR2007082900041_pf.html. Retrieved 2008-03-15.
115. ^ "Microsoft E3 Announcement". Xbox.com. 2009-06-01. http://www.xbox.com/en-US/community/events/e3/facebook.htm. Retrieved 2010-03-23.
116. ^ "Sony to Offer Richer Online Social Experience to PS3 Owners With Facebook Integration". ign.com. 2009-11-18. http://ps3.ign.com/articles/104/1046814p1.html. Retrieved 2010-05-06.
117. ^ ^{a b} "Facebook for iPhone | Facebook". Blog.facebook.com. http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=22389032130. Retrieved 2009-12-13.
118. ^ "Hoffman, Harrison" (2008-09-30). "Facebook delivers version 2.0 of its iPhone App"". http://news.cnet.com/8301-13515_3-10054221-26.html?tag=mncol. Retrieved 2009-08-28.
119. ^ "Dolcourt, Jessica" (2008-08-27). "Facebook 3.0 for iPhone pours on the features"". http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10319772-2.html?tag=mncol. Retrieved 2009-08-28.
120. ^ "Facebook for Nokia N97 and Nokia 5800". 2009-07-08. http://www.themobileblog.in/2009/07/08/facebook-for-nokia-n97-and-nokia-5800/. Retrieved 2009-08-28.
121. ^ accessdate=2009-08-28 "BlackBerry – Facebook for BlackBerrySmartphones". http://www.na.blackberry.com/eng/devices/features/social/facebook.jsp#tab_tab_overview accessdate=2009-08-28.
122. ^ "Facebook: Science and the Social Graph". InfoQ.com. 2009-03-25. http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Facebook-Software-Stack. Retrieved 2009-12-12.
123. ^ Jonathan Heilige (January 21. 2010). "Breaking Ground on Our First Custom Data Center". Facebook. http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=262655797130. Retrieved 2010-01-22.
124. ^ Mike Rogoway (January 21. 2010). "Facebook picks Prineville for its first data center". The Oregonian. http://www.oregonlive.com/business/index.ssf/2010/01/facebook_picks_prineville_for.html. Retrieved 2010-01-22.
125. ^ David Holley (January 21. 2010). "Facebook said to be building in Prineville". Bend Bulletin. http://www.bendbulletin.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100121/NEWS0107/1210414. Retrieved 2010-01-22.
126. ^ "Caroline McCarthy, "Facebook outage draws more security questions", ''CNET News.com, ZDNet Asia'', August 2, 2007". Zdnetasia.com. 2007-08-02. http://www.zdnetasia.com/news/security/0,39044215,62030242,00.htm. Retrieved 2010-03-23.
127. ^ "David Hamilton, "Facebook Outage Hits Some Countries", ''Web Host Industry Review'', Jun. 26, 2008". Thewhir.com. http://www.thewhir.com/web-hosting-news/062608_Facebook_Outage_Hits_Some_Countries. Retrieved 2010-03-23.
128. ^ "K.C. Jones, "Facebook, MySpace More Reliable Than Peers ", ''Information Week'', Feb. 19, 2009". Informationweek.com. http://www.informationweek.com/news/internet/social_network/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=214501925&cid=nl_IWK_daily_H. Retrieved 2010-03-23.
129. ^ McCarthy, Caroline (2009-10-08). "Facebook's mounting customer service crisis | The Social - CNET News". News.cnet.com. http://news.cnet.com/8301-13577_3-10370788-36.html. Retrieved 2009-12-13.
130. ^ McCarthy, Caroline (2009-10-10). "Downed Facebook accounts still haven't returned | The Social - CNET News". News.cnet.com. http://news.cnet.com/8301-13577_3-10372417-36.html. Retrieved 2009-12-13.
131. ^ "Facebook Account Unavailable". Facebook Login. 2009-10-11. http://facebooklogin.net/news/facebookaccount-unavailable/. Retrieved 2009-12-13.
132. ^ "Facebook Outage Silences 150,000 Users". PC World. 2009-10-13. http://www.pcworld.com/article/173550/facebook_outage_silences_150000_users.html. Retrieved 2009-12-13.
133. ^ Gaudin, Sharon (2009-10-13). "Facebook deals with missing accounts, 150,000 angry users". Computerworld.com. http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9139311/Facebook_deals_with_missing_accounts_150_000_angry_users. Retrieved 2009-12-13.
134. ^ "FB.me for Facebook of course". 2009-12-14. http://dot-me.of-cour.se/2009/12/14/fb-me-for-facebook/. Retrieved 2009-12-14.
135. ^ "ABCnews.go.com". ABCnews.go.com. 2007-12-18. http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/Politics/story?id=3899006&page=1. Retrieved 2010-03-23.
136. ^ "Facebook.com". Facebook.com. http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?uid=6187779654&topic=3582. Retrieved 2010-03-23.
137. ^ Tahman Bradley (2007-12-12). "ABCnews.com". Blogs.abcnews.com. http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalradar/abc_wmur_and_facebook_debates/index.html. Retrieved 2010-03-23.
138. ^ "Facebook.com". Blog.facebook.com. http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=8183627130. Retrieved 2010-03-23.
139. ^ "ABCnews.go.com". ABCnews.go.com. http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/story?id=4091460&page=1. Retrieved 2010-03-23.
140. ^ Font size Print E-mail Share (2008-11-03). "CBSnews.com". CBSnews.com. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/11/04/politics/uwire/main4568563.shtml. Retrieved 2010-03-23.
141. ^ Techtree News Staff (2008-08-13). "Facebook: Largest, Fastest Growing Social Network". Techtree.com. ITNation. http://www.techtree.com/India/News/Facebook_Largest_Fastest_Growing_Social_Network/551-92134-643.html. Retrieved 2008-08-14.
142. ^ "Social Networking Explodes Worldwide as Sites Increase their Focus on Cultural Relevance". comScore. 2008-08-12. http://www.comscore.com/press/release.asp?press=2396. Retrieved 2008-08-14.
143. ^ "Related info for: facebook.com/". Alexa Internet. http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details/facebook.com?q=facebook. Retrieved 2008-03-08.
144. ^ "Facebook.com Web Site Audience Profile". Quantcast. http://www.quantcast.com/facebook.com. Retrieved 2008-08-14.
145. ^ "Snapshot of facebook.com". Compete.com. http://siteanalytics.compete.com/facebook.com/?metric=uv. Retrieved 2008-05-07.
146. ^ Sorensen, Chris (2008-03-07). "Has Facebook fatigue arrived?". Toronto Star. http://www.thestar.com/printArticle/310272. Retrieved 2008-06-28.
147. ^ Yum, Kenny (2007-05-18). "Facebook says 'Thanks, Canada'". National Post. http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/posted/archive/2007/05/18/facebook-says-thanks-canada.aspx. Retrieved 2008-04-30.
148. ^ Malkin, Bonnie (2007-09-26). "Facebook is UK's biggest networking site". The Daily Telegraph (London). http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/09/25/nface125.xml. Retrieved 2008-04-30.
149. ^ Caverly, Doug (16 June 2009). "comScore: Facebook Catches MySpace in U.S.". WebProNews. iEntry Network. http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2009/06/16/comscore-facebook-catches-myspace-in-us. Retrieved 24 September 2009.
150. ^ "Facebook grows as MySpace cuts back". Atlanta Business Chronicle. 17 June 2009. http://atlanta.bizjournals.com/atlanta/stories/2009/06/15/daily47.html. Retrieved 24 September 2009. "The Conference Board report on first quarter online users in the U.S. showed Facebook with an even larger lead, with 78 percent of social network participants, followed by MySpace (42 percent), LinkedIn (17 percent) and Twitter (10 percent)."
151. ^ Hasselback, Drew (17 June 2009). "Comscore says Facebook has surpassed MySpace for U.S. users". FP Posted. The National Post Company. http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fpposted/archive/2009/06/17/comscore-says-facebook-has-surpassed-myspace-for-u-s-users.aspx. Retrieved 24 September 2009. "Comscore says Facebook surpassed MySpace among U.S. users in May, while Nielsen figures that actually happened back in January."
152. ^ Wood, Cara (31 August 2009). "Keeping pace with mainstream social media". DMNews. Haymarket Media. http://www.dmnews.com/keeping-pace-with-mainstream-social-media/article/147429/. Retrieved 24 September 2009. "The giant in the space remains Facebook, which gets 87.7 million unique viewers per month, according to ComScore. MySpace, with nearly 70 million unique monthly visitors, has seen growth stagnate over the past year."
153. ^ "Social Networking". PC Magazine. 2007-08-13. http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2169354,00.asp. Retrieved 2008-05-09.
154. ^ "12th Annual Webby Awards Nominees". International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences. http://www.webbyawards.com/webbys/current.php?season=12. Retrieved 2008-05-06.
155. ^ "Survey: College Kids Like IPods Better Than Beer". Fox News. 2006-06-08. http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,198632,00.html. Retrieved 2008-03-10.
156. ^ Soraya Nadia McDonald (July 4, 2005). "Facebooking, the rage on college campuses". The Seattle Times. http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=20050704&slug=btfacebook04. Retrieved September 14, 2009.
157. ^ December 21, 2007 Kristen Nicole View commentsComments (2007-12-21). "Mashable.com". Mashable.com. http://mashable.com/2007/12/21/facebook-noun-verb-collins-english-dictionary/. Retrieved 2010-03-23.
158. ^ Norimitshu Onishi (April 19, 2010). "Debate on Internet’s Limits Grows in Indonesia". New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/20/world/asia/20indonet.html?ref=asia. Retrieved April 19, 2010.
159. ^ "The Age article on the world's first court documents to be served via Facebook". Theage.com.au. 2009-06-15. http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2008/12/16/1229189579001.html. Retrieved 2010-03-23.
160. ^ The Age article on NZ also using Facebook to issue court orders; "Facebook trap criminals in its web".
161. ^ Jason Cochran (November 6, 2008). "DWatch out! Bosses are saving money by firing employees over Facebook posts". http://www.walletpop.com/blog/2008/11/06/watch-out-bosses-are-saving-money-by-firing-employees-over-face/. Retrieved May 6, 2010.
162. ^ Michael Levenson (2008-06-27). "Facebook, ConnectU settle dispute:Case an intellectual property kerfuffle". Boston Globe. http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2008/06/27/facebook_connectu_settle_dispute/. Retrieved 2009-03-23.
163. ^ McGinn, Timothy J. (2004-09-13). "Lawsuit Threatens To Close Facebook". Harvard Crimson. Archived from the original on 2004-09-13. http://web.archive.org/web/20070815192011/http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=513007. Retrieved 2008-03-08.
164. ^ Maugeri, Alexander (2004-09-20). "TheFacebook.com faces lawsuit". The Daily Princetonian. http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/archives/2004/09/20/news/10767.shtml. Retrieved 2008-03-08.
165. ^ Tryhorn, Chris (2007-07-25). "Facebook in court over ownership". The Guardian (London). http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2007/jul/25/digitalmedia.usnews. Retrieved 2008-03-15.
166. ^ Jagadeesh, Namitha (2008-03-11). "Getting the start-up documentation right". The Wall Street Journal. http://www.livemint.com/2008/03/11000507/Getting-the-startup-documenta.html. Retrieved 2008-03-15.
167. ^ "Facebook Got Its $15 Billion Valuation — Now What?". http://www.wired.com/techbiz/startups/news/2007/10/facebook_future. Retrieved 2008-07-07.
168. ^ "Internal Facebook valuation points to strategic merit – Valuation is far below the $15 billion cited at time of Microsoft investment". Wall Street Journal. http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/internal-facebook-valuation-points-strategic/story.aspx?guid=E0ED3368-7496-4854-8440-6DB6FFDBA4A8&dist=SecEditorsPicks. Retrieved 2008-07-07.
169. ^ "Advertisers disappointed with Facebook's CTR". http://www.bizreport.com/2007/07/advertisers_disappointed_with_facebooks_ctr.html. Retrieved 2008-07-07.
170. ^ Dan Slater (June 27, 2008). "Facebook Wins ConnectU Appeal, Blames Fee Dispute". Wall Street Journal. http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2008/06/27/facebook-wins-connectu-appeal-blames-fee-dispute/. Retrieved 2009-03-23.
171. ^ Zusha Elinson (2009-02-10). "Quinn Spills Value of Facebook Deal". The Recorder. http://www.law.com/jsp/ca/PubArticleCA.jsp?id=1202428139731. Retrieved 2009-02-10.
172. ^ "Reuters.com, German site sued by Facebook says claims without merit". Reuters.com. http://www.reuters.com/article/internetNews/idUSN2034220420080720. Retrieved 2010-03-23.
173. ^ Wauters, Robin (2009-09-10). "TechCrunch.com, "Facebook and StudiVZ end legal dispute"". Uk.techcrunch.com. http://uk.techcrunch.com/2009/09/10/facebook-and-studivz-end-legal-dispute/. Retrieved 2010-03-23.
174. ^ Libel: Ex-friend's Facebook revenge costs £22,000 in damages at high court | UK news | The Guardian. Retrieved August 13, 2008.
175. ^ BBC NEWS | UK | Payout for false Facebook profile. Retrieved August 13, 2008.
176. ^ Businessman awarded £22,000 in landmark libel ruling over malicious fake Facebook profile| News | This is London. Retrieved August 13, 2008.
177. ^ Facebook Libel Case Won In High Court By Mathew Firsht Against His Former Friend Grant Raphael | Technology | Sky News. Retrieved August 13, 2008.
178. ^ Victim of fake Facebook profile wins thousands in damages – International Herald Tribune. Retrieved August 13, 2008.
179. ^ Businessman awarded £22,000 damages over fake Facebook site – Telegraph. Retrieved August 13, 2008.
180. ^ "Facebook wins lawsuit against Montreal spammer". CTV.ca. http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20081124/facebook_spam_081124/20081124?hub=TopStories. Retrieved 2008-11-24.