Facebook

Facebook is a social networking website, launched on February 4, 2004. It was founded by Mark Zuckerberg, a former Harvard student. Initially, membership was restricted to students of Harvard College. It was subsequently expanded to MIT, Boston University, Boston College, Northeastern University and all Ivy League schools within two months. Individual universities were added over the next year. Eventually, people with a university email address (e.g .edu, .ac.uk, etc.) from institutions worldwide were eligible to join. On February 27, 2006, high school students and employees of specific companies were eligible to join. After September 11, 2006, anyone 13 or older became eligible for membership.^[2][3] Users can choose to join one or more networks, such as a school, place of employment, geographic region, or social group.

The site has more than 64 million active users (including non-collegiate members) worldwide.^[4] From September 2006 to September 2007 the site's traffic ranking increased from 60th to 7th, according to Alexa.^[5] It is the most popular website for uploading photos, with 14 million uploaded daily.^[4]

The name of the site refers to the paper facebooks depicting members of the campus community that some U.S. colleges and preparatory schools give to incoming students, faculty, and staff as a way to get to know other people on campus.

Facebook has met with a certain amount of criticism and controversy in its short lifespan, mainly because of privacy concerns, but also due to the politics of its founders and some censorship issues.