To allay concerns about privacy, Facebook enables users to choose their own privacy settings and choose who can see specific parts of their profile. The website is free to users, and generates revenue from advertising, such as banner ads.Facebook requires a user’s name and profile picture (if applicable) to be accessible by everyone. Users can control who sees other information they have shared, as well as who can find them in searches, through their privacy settings.
In response, 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 user-set categories of friends from seeing updates about certain types of activities, including profile changes, Wall posts, and newly added friends.
On February 23, 2010, Facebook was granted a patent[81] on certain aspects of its News Feed. The patent covers News Feeds in which links are provided so that one user can participate in the same activity of another user.[82] The patent may encourage Facebook to pursue action against websites that violate its patent, which may potentially include websites such as Twitter.[83]
One of the most popular applications on Facebook is the Photos application, where users can upload albums and photos.[84] 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.[85][86][87][88]
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.[89]
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.[92][93] On May 14, 2007, Facebook launched Marketplace, which lets users post free classified ads.[94] 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.[95]
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.[96] After initially giving users a choice to switch, Facebook began migrating all users to the new version beginning in September 2008.[97] On December 11, 2008, it was announced that Facebook was testing a simpler signup process.[98]
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.[99] Many new smartphones offer access to the Facebook services either through their web-browsers or applications. An official Facebook application is available for the iPhone OS, the Android OS, and the WebOS. Nokia and Research In Motion both provide Facebook applications for their own mobile devices. More than 150 million active users access Facebook through mobile devices across 200 mobile operators in 60 countries.On November 15, 2010, Facebook announced a new "Facebook Messages" service. In a media event that day, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said, "It's true that people will be able to have an @facebook.com email addresses, but it's not email." The launch of such a feature had been anticipated for some time before the announcement, with some calling it a "Gmail killer." The system, to be available to all of the website's users, combines text messaging, instant messaging, emails, and regular messages, and will include privacy settings similar to those of other Facebook services. Codenamed "Project Titan," Facebook Messages took 15 months to develop.[100][101]
Reception
According to comScore, Facebook is the leading social networking site based on monthly unique visitors, having overtaken main competitor MySpace in April 2008.[102] ComScore reports that Facebook attracted 130 million unique visitors in May 2010, an increase of 8.6 million people.[103] 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.[104] Quantcast ranks the website 2nd in the U.S. in traffic,[105] and Compete.com ranks it 2nd in the U.S.[106] The website is the most popular for uploading photos, with 50 billion uploaded cumulatively.[107] In 2010, Sophos's "Security Threat Report 2010" polled over 500 firms, 60% of which responded that they believed that Facebook was the social network that posed the biggest threat to security, well ahead of MySpace, Twitter, and LinkedIn.[47]Facebook is the most popular social networking site in several English-speaking countries, including Canada,[108] the United Kingdom,[109] and the United States.[110][111][112][113] In regional Internet markets, Facebook penetration is highest in North America (69 percent), followed by Middle East-Africa (67 percent), Latin America (58 percent), Europe (57 percent), and Asia-Pacific (17 percent).[114]
The website has won awards such as placement into the "Top 100 Classic Websites" by PC Magazine in 2007,[115] and winning the "People's Voice Award" from the Webby Awards in 2008.[116] 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.[117]
On March 2010, Judge Richard Seeborg issued an order approving the class settlement in Lane v. Facebook, Inc., the class action lawsuit arising out of Facebook's Beacon program.
In 2010, Facebook won the Crunchie “Best Overall Startup Or Product” the third year in a row[118] and was recognized as one of the "Hottest Silicon Valley Companies" by Lead411.[119] However, in a July 2010 survey performed by the American Customer Satisfaction Index, Facebook received a score of 64 out of 100, placing it in the bottom 5% of all private sector companies in terms of customer satisfaction, alongside industries such as the IRS e-file system, airlines, and cable companies. Reasons for why Facebook scored so poorly include privacy problems, frequent changes to the website's interface, the results returned by the News Feed, and spam.[120]
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.[121] 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.[122] Employers (such as Virgin Atlantic Airways) have also used Facebook as a means to keep tabs on their employees and have even been known to fire them over posts they have made.[123]
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.[124] In 2008, Collins English Dictionary declared "Facebook" as their new Word of the Year.[125] In December 2009, the New Oxford American Dictionary declared their word of the year to be the verb "unfriend", defined as "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.'"[126]
As of April 2010, according to The New York Times, countries with most Facebook users are the United States, the United Kingdom and Indonesia.[127] Indonesia has become the country with the second largest number of Facebook users, after the United States, with 24 million users, or 10% of Indonesia's population.[128] Also in early 2010, Openbook was established, an avowed parody website (and privacy advocacy website)[129] that enables text-based searches of those Wall posts that are available to "Everyone", i.e. to everyone on the Internet.
Writers for The Wall Street Journal found in 2010 that Facebook apps were transmitting identifying information to "dozens of advertising and Internet tracking companies". The apps used an HTTP referrer which exposed the user's identity and sometimes their friends'. Facebook said, "We have taken immediate action to disable all applications that violate our terms".[130]
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