Social network A Social network is a theoretical construct useful in the social sciences to study relationships between individuals, groups, organizations, or even entire societies (social units, see differentiation). The term is used to describe a social structure determined by such interactions. The ties (sometimes called edges, links, or connections) in the structure are called "nodes". The nodes through which any given social unit connects represent the convergence of the various social contacts of that unit. Many kinds of relationships may form the "network" between such nodes, but interpersonal "bridges" are a defining characteristic of social networks. Social network approaches are useful for modeling and explaining many social phenomena Type Founded: Founder(s): Headquarters Area served: Key people: COO: CFO: Chairman: Public Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States (2004) Mark Zuckerberg, Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz ,Chris Hughes Menlo Park, California, U.S. Worldwide Mark Zuckerberg (CEO) Sheryl Sandberg David Ebersman Donald Graham Industry: Revenue: Employees: Website: Internet US$ 3.71 billion (2011), up from $1.97b (2010) 3000+ (2011 Facebook.com IPv6 support: www.v6.facebook.com Alexa rank: 2 (February 2012) Type of site: Social networking service Advertising: Users: Launched: Banner ads, referral marketing, casual games 845 million (active December 31, 2011) February 4, 2004 Facebook is a social networking service and website launched in February 2004, operated and privately owned by Facebook Inc. As of February 2012, Facebook has more than 845 million active users. Users must register before using the site, after which they 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, and categorize their friends into lists such as "People From Work" or "Close Friends". The name of the service stems from the colloquial name for the book given to students at the start of the academic year by some university administrations in the United States to help students get to know each other. Facebook allows any users who declare themselves to be at least 13 years old to become registered users of the site. Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg with his college roommates and fellow students Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes.The Web site'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 gradually added support for students at various other universities before opening to high school students, and eventually to anyone aged 13 and over. However, based on ConsumersReports.org in May 2011, there are 7.5 million children under 13 with accounts, violating the site's terms of service A January 2009 Compete.com study ranked Facebook as the most used social networking service by worldwide monthly active users. 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?" Quantcast estimates Facebook has 138.9 million monthly unique U.S. visitors in May 2011. According to Social Media Today, in April 2010 an estimated 41.6% of the U.S. population had a Facebook account.Nevertheless, Facebook's market growth started to stall in some regions, with the site losing 7 million active users in the United States and Canada in May 2011. Facebook filed for an initial public offering on February 1, 2012. History of Facebook Mark Zuckerberg created Facebook in his Harvard dorm room. In early 2000s, Adam D'Angelo, then a Caltech student who had been Mark Zuckerberg's best friend in high school, had developed the experimental, rudimentary social networking website Buddy Zoo, that was used by hundreds of thousands of people before D'Angelo shut it down. That summer, Zuckerberg and friends who were also computer science students worked coding for the summer in Boston and discussed the implication of D'Angelo's website's success with regard to the future of social networking on the Internet. In the fall, Zuckerberg, returning for his sophomore year at Harvard, wrote CourseMatch, a briefly popular site that helped Harvard students figure out what courses their friends were taking; and then, on October 28, 2003, he wrote Facemash, a site that, according to the Harvard Crimson, represented a Harvard University version of Hot or Not. That night, Zuckerberg made the following blog entries: I'm a little intoxicated, not gonna lie. So what if it's not even 10 pm 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.That the initial site mirrored people’s physical community—with their real identities— represented the key aspects of what later became Facebook "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... 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. 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.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. On Oct 25, 2010, entrepreneur and banker Rahul Jain auctioned off FaceMash.com to an unknown buyer for $30,201. Mark Zuckerberg wrote Facemash, the predecessor to Facebook, on October 28, 2003, while attending Harvard as a sophomore. According to The Harvard Crimson, the site was comparable to Hot or Not, and "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". Mark Zuckerberg co-created Facebook in his Harvard dorm room. 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 "facebook" (a directory with photos and basic information), though individual houses had been issuing their own paper facebooks since the mid-1980s. Facemash attracted 450 visitors and 22,000 photo-views in its first four hours online.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. Ultimately, the charges were dropped. 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 Web site, with one image per page along with a comment section. He opened the site up to his classmates, and people started sharing their notes. The following semester, Zuckerberg began writing code for a new Web site in January 2004. He was inspired, he said, by an editorial in The Harvard Crimson about the Facemash incident. On February 4, 2004, Zuckerberg launched "Thefacebook", originally located at thefacebook.com.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. The three complained to the Harvard Crimson, and the newspaper began an investigation. The three later filed a lawsuit against Zuckerberg, subsequently settling.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. Eduardo Saverin (business aspects), Dustin Moskovitz (programmer), Andrew McCollum (graphic artist), and Chris Hughes soon joined Zuckerberg to help promote the Web site. In March 2004, Facebook expanded to Stanford, Columbia, and Yale. It soon opened to the other Ivy League schools, Boston University, New York University, MIT, and gradually most universities in Canada and the United States.Facebook was incorporated in mid-2004, and the entrepreneur Sean Parker, who had been informally advising Zuckerberg, became the company's president.In June 2004, Facebook moved its base of operations to Palo Alto, California. It received its first investment later that month from PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel. The company dropped The from its name after purchasing the domain name facebook.com in 2005 for $200,000. Facebook launched a high-school version in September 2005, which Zuckerberg called the next logical step.At that time, high-school networks required an invitation to join. Facebook later expanded membership eligibility to employees of several companies, including Apple Inc. and Microsoft. Facebook was then opened on September 26, 2006, to everyone of age 13 and older with a valid email address. 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. Microsoft's purchase included rights to place international ads on Facebook. In October 2008, Facebook announced that it would set up its international headquarters in Dublin, Ireland. In September 2009, Facebook said that it had turned cash-flow positive for the first time. In November 2010, based on SecondMarket Inc., an exchange for shares of privately held companies, Facebook's value was $41 billion (slightly surpassing eBay's) and it became the third largest U.S. Web company after Google and Amazon.Facebook has been identified as a possible candidate for an IPO by 2013.The Wall Street Journal has reported that Facebook is looking to raise as much as $10 billion in its IPO and that it plans to file paperwork as early as February 3. Traffic to Facebook increased steadily after 2009. More people visited Facebook than Google for the week ending March 13, 2010. In March 2011 it was reported that Facebook removes approximately 20,000 profiles from the site every day for various infractions, including spam, inappropriate content and underage use, as part of its efforts to boost cyber security. In early 2011, Facebook announced plans to move to its new headquarters, the former Sun Microsystems campus in Menlo Park, California Release of statistics by DoubleClick showed that Facebook reached one trillion pageviews in the month of June 2011, making it the most visited Web site in the world. It should however be noted that Google and some of its selected Web sites are not counted in the DoubleClick rankings. According to the Nielsen Media Research study, released in December 2011, Facebook is the second most accessed website in the US. Company Entrance to Facebook's previous headquarters in the Stanford Research Park, Palo Alto, California Ownership The ownership percentages of the company are as follows. Mark Zuckerberg: 28.4%,Accel Partners: 10%, Digital Sky Technologies: 10%, Dustin Moskovitz: 6%, Eduardo Saverin: 5%, Sean Parker: 4%, Peter Thiel: 3%, Greylock Partners and Meritech Capital Partners: between 1 to 2% each, Microsoft: 1.3%, Li Ka-shing: 0.75%, the Interpublic Group: less than 0.5%. A small group of current and former employees and celebrities own less than 1% each, including Matt Cohler, Jeff Rothschild, Adam D'Angelo, Chris Hughes, and Owen Van Natta, while Reid Hoffman and Mark Pincus have sizable holdings of the company. The remaining 30% or so are owned by employees, an undisclosed number of celebrities, and outside investors. Adam D'Angelo, chief technology officer and friend of Zuckerberg, resigned in May 2008. Reports claimed that he and Zuckerberg began quarreling, and that he was no longer interested in partial ownership of the company. Management Key management personnel comprise Chris Cox (VP of Product), Sheryl Sandberg (COO), and Donald E. Graham (Chairman). As of April 2011, Facebook has over 2,000 employees, and offices in 15 countries. Other managers include chief financial officer David Ebersman and public relations head Elliot Schrage. Revenue Most of Facebook's revenue comes from advertising. Microsoft is Facebook's exclusive partner for serving banner advertising,and therefore Facebook serves only advertisements that exist in Microsoft's advertisement inventory. Revenue YEAR Revenue estimated, in millions US$ 2006 2007 $52[67] $150[68] 2008 2009 2010 2011 $280[69] $775[70] $2,000[71] $4,270[72] Facebook generally has a lower clickthrough rate (CTR) for advertisements than most major Web sites. According to BusinessWeek.com, banner advertisements on Facebook have generally received one-fifth the number of clicks compared to those on the Web as a whole, although specific comparisons can reveal a much larger disparity. For example, while Google users click on the first advertisement for search results an average of 8% of the time (80,000 clicks for every one million searches), Facebook's users click on advertisements an average of 0.04% of the time (400 clicks for every one million pages). Sarah Smith, who was Facebook's Online Sales Operations Manager, reports that successful advertising campaigns on the site can have clickthrough rates as low as 0.05% to 0.04%, and that CTR for ads tend to fall within two weeks. By comparison, the CTR for competing social network MySpace is about 0.1%, about 2.5 times better than Facebook's rate but still low compared to many other Web sites. According to BizReport.com, Facebook's low CTR is because Facebook users are more technologically savvy and therefore use ad blocking software to hide advertisements, users are younger and therefore better at ignoring advertising messages, users spend their time communicating with friends and therefore have their attention diverted away from advertisements. On pages for brands and products, however, some companies have reported CTR as high as 6.49% for Wall posts. A study found that, for video advertisements on Facebook, over 40% of users who viewed the videos viewed the entire video, while the industry average was 25% for in-banner video ads. Facebook - Users by Age. According to comScore, Facebook is the leading social networking site based on monthly unique visitors, having overtaken main competitor MySpace in April 2008. ComScore reports that Facebook attracted 130 million unique visitors in May 2010, an increase of 8.6 million people.According to Alexa, the Web site's ranking among all Web sites increased from 60th to 7th in worldwide traffic, from September 2006 to September 2007, and is currently 2nd. Quantcast ranks the Web site 2nd in the U.S. in traffic,and Compete.com ranks it 2nd in the U.S.The Web site is the most popular for uploading photos, with 50 billion uploaded cumulatively. 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. Facebook is the most popular social networking site in several English-speaking countries, including Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States. In regional Internet markets, Facebook penetration is highest in North America (69 percent), followed by Middle EastAfrica (67 percent), Latin America (58 percent), Europe (57 percent), and Asia-Pacific (17 percent). The Web site has won awards such as placement into the "Top 100 Classic Websites" by PC Magazine in 2007, and winning the "People's Voice Award" from the Webby Awards in 2008. 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. 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" for the third year in a row and was recognized as one of the "Hottest Silicon Valley Companies" by Lead411.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 privatesector companies in terms of customer satisfaction, alongside industries such as the IRS e-file system, airlines, and cable companies. The reasons why Facebook scored so poorly include privacy problems, frequent changes to the Web site's interface, the results returned by the News Feed, and spam. 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. In March 2009, the New Zealand High Court associate justice David Gendall allowed for the serving of legal papers on Craig Axe by the company Axe Market Garden via Facebook. 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. 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. In 2008, Collins English Dictionary declared "Facebook" as its new Word of the Year. In December 2009, the New Oxford American Dictionary declared its 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.'" In early 2010, Openbook was established, an avowed parody (and privacy advocacy) Web site 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". In January 2012 just before Facebook was scheduled to file an S-1 with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for an IPO, according to socialbakers.com, countries with the most Facebook users were: United States with 152.5 million members, India with 43.5 million members Indonesia with 43.1 million members Brazil with 37.9 million members Mexico with 32.0 million members All of them above totally 309 million members or about 38.6 percent of 800 million Facebook's worldwide members. Features of Facebook Open source contributions Facebook is both a consumer and contributor of free and open source software.[80] Facebook's contributions include: HipHop for PHP,[81] Fair scheduler in Apache Hadoop, [82] Apache Hive, Apache Cassandra,[83] and the Open Compute Project.[84] Facebook also contributes to other opensource projects such as Oracle's MySQL database engine. 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
[email protected]. 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. Website Main articles: Facebook features and Facebook Platform This section may be too long to read and navigate comfortably. Please consider moving more of the content into sub-articles and using this article for a summary of the key points of the subject. (December 2011) ✔ Facebook "Timeline" profile shown in November 2011 ✔ Facebook profile shown in 2007 ✔ Profile shown on Thefacebook in 2005 ✔ Facebook mobile graphical user interface ✔ Facebook mobile graphical user interface Users can create profiles with photos, lists of personal interests, contact information, and other personal information. Users can communicate with friends and other users through private or public messages and a chat feature. They can also create and join interest groups and "like pages" (called "fan pages" until April 19, 2010), some of which are maintained by organizations as a means of advertising.[ 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 Web site 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 Advantages Of Facebook 1. Facebook is social software. Which is the reason why Facebook and Myspace are appealing to adolescence and university students. These students all the time correspond or communicate explicitly concerning their lives, estimation or opinion, interests, and academics. Though the majority of us working with adults are awkward sharing ideas or information in open surroundings, the social feature of Facebook creates fun and its rapidity of learning knowledge 2. The building of Facebook appears over time. Clients or users can make groups and conversation or discussion topics. This assemblage or group can cultivate, or be gone alone to pass away, depending on the clients or users and their involvement. 3. Facebook helps us to find new friends and also helps to find our old friends. I have heard stories of people who found their old classmates with the help of Facebook after some many afters. 4. Accessibility to chosen universities having a high level of security: Facebook provides a safe environment for university related data transferring. 5. It is easy and secure to use – Facebook has a clear and a simple template or theme. Which makes the user feel comfortable in using Facebook. The average time spent on Facebook is enough to prove this point, isn’t it? 6. It helps you to share your mind with your friends – You can update your status, share pictures, videos, music and more. 7. Facebook helps in eliminating the effect of distance between friends, parents, relatives etc. 8. It helps in business promotion through Ads and Fans page. Web masters create fans page at Facebook and people who like their website can become a fan of their page and get updates from their site. This helps web masters in promoting their sites. Have visited Geeks4share’s Fan page? If not, here you go. 9. Facebook entertains people through some Applications and Games, moreover staying connected with friends itself is an entertainment. Some people comes to Facebook only to play games. Funny right they have lots to know about Facebook! 10. You can discuss with your friends about your classes, if you didn’t attend them. So, you need not ring your friends up to ask what happened in class when your were on leave. 11. People, mainly students of age 15-20 use to gather as a group and starts to chat. 12. Using Facebook’s group chat feature, you can chat in group without meeting your friends. You can just create a group and add our friends who use to join you during chat, and then you can just chat in groups. 13. Facebook is a boredom killer! However after few months after you started using Facebook, even Facebook will seem to be boring. 14. Facebook’s all new subscribe features, allows you to subscribe to celebrities or whomever you wish so that you can get updates from them in your news feed, so you don’t have to be their friends to get updates from them. This features makes it quite similar to Twitter! 15. Facebook is mobile phone. Containing Facebook on your mobile maintains you up to date with posts, statuses, and deliberations. These aspects, similar to others are optional. Disadvantage of facebook Facebook addict Social networking site Facebook has been blamed for many social ills, the latest allegation being: it has led to a resurgence of the sexually transmitted disease syphilis. Telegraph has come up with a list of problems the site has been linked to: 1. Facebook leads 'children to suicide' Archbishop Vincent Nichols from the Catholic Church in England and Wales, claimed that Facebook reduced friendship to just a "commodity". Because of the "transient nature" of it, teenagers become more prone to suicide when their networks collapse. 2. Facebook 'killing off traditional sayings' The site has been blamed for the slow death of British sayings such as "a little birdie told me" and "hold your horses". In a survey on communication trend researchers found phrases commonly used by parents and grandparents were disappearing. 3. Facebook blamed for 'rickets surge' Facebook has been linked to the rise in the number of children suffering from rickets. Researchers wrote in the British Medical Journal that the social networking site, and computer games had led to the disease, caused by chronic vitamin D deficiencies. It occurs because of sitting for long periods out of natural sunlight and a poor diet. 4. Facebook 'turning Britons into introverts' A study from Mintel, the market research company, found more than half of adults who use sites such as Facebook admitted they spent more time chatting online than they did actually speaking to friends and family. 5. Facebook 'makes partners jealous' University of Guelph researchers found Facebook use led to increased jealousy in relationships, amid greater social exchanges with friends and previous partners. Lovers often get suspicious when their partners get hooked to the site. 6. More middle-aged people 'learning to love' Facebook Ofcom, the communications regulator, found more middle-aged people are logging on to social networking sites such as Facebook in ever larger numbers. The number of 35 to 54year-olds, using social networking sites, have increased by 25 per cent in just one year. 7. Facebook makes users 'feel unattractive' Some Facebook users avoid uploading photos because they think they are too fat, old or ugly. A survey found almost one in two people admitted to leaving out pictures from their "fat days" when uploading pictures to their online profile. 8.Threat of viruses! Facebook is filled with thousands of daily users from around the globe and there is no surprise if you discover a number of viruses storming through most of the pages. There is no surprise to believe that Facebook involves several hackers who actually steal other peoples account. Regular Facebook users can tell you how they notice suspicious activity occurring while they are not logged in. The reason how this occurs is because hackers cleverly send viruses to hundreds of members and succeed in stealing their own data. These hackers could cost you a lot of money to repair your computer depending on how badly damaged it may be. Always keep an updated Norton360 when using Facebook to filter out new viruses 9.Spam and scams! This problem wouldn’t be on Facebook alone. Other social networking sites like Myspace and Bebo are full of spam and scams! Many users receive emails nearly every day from anonymous users asking to date and chat on other websites. It continuously becomes frustrating to receive all these useless spam emails and no solution is being revised. Scam is an extra problem for the users. Unfortunately, some scammers trick members and scam them in so many ways to steal their accounts. A ordinary recognized trick could be through a phishing website which looks very similar to Facebook and fools people in believing that they are still on the official Facebook website. Once a member logs in using the email and password, scammers can now access his account and scam his friends, spreading further spam and malware through the website. Fake websites can also steal your bank information if consumers fall prey to their advertisements. If you have never come across a problem like this before, it is your responsibility to avoid such a threat and keep your information secure. 9.Waste of life! Facebook can be very addictive for its members. Once you stay connected with friends, you will realize how often you login for another chat and discover what other members are doing. Some people know the drawbacks of Facebook but cannot help staying connected with old friends who they haven’t seen in years. All this will certainly make you addicted to Facebook and will stop you from deleting your account.Many hours may also pass and you could have done something more important than using Facebook. Several members of social networking sites actually use them throughout the day and night without any sense at all. 10.Ruining your professional life! You might be one of those millions of people who are unemployed and use Facebook to post offensive images of you and your friends. Though it is fun and provides humour for all your friends to see, it can be a major drawback when you apply for a job. Employers will want to know more about you and by searching on these social networking sites which contain your offensive content, employers may get distressed and could result in losing the job role that you applied for. There might have been a high chance of getting the job, but because of your social network page, your chances were ruined. The first site they would search would be on Facebook because it’s the most popular. More people are leaving other social networking sites for Facebook itself. Criticism of Facebook Facebook has met with controversies. It has been blocked intermittently in several countries including the People's Republic of China, Iran, Uzbekistan,Pakistan, Syria, and Bangladesh on different bases. For example, it was banned in many countries of the world on the basis of allowed content judged as anti-Islamic and containing religious discrimination. It has also been banned at many workplaces to prevent employees from using it during work hours.The privacy of Facebook users has also been an issue, and the safety of user accounts has been compromised several times. Facebook has settled a lawsuit regarding claims over source code and intellectual property. In May 2011 emails were sent to journalists and bloggers making critical allegations about Google's privacy policies; however it was later discovered that the anti-Google campaign, conducted by PR giant Burson-Marsteller, was paid for by Facebook in what CNN referred to as "a new level skullduggery" and which Daily Beast called a "clumsy smear". In July 2011 German authorities began to discuss the prohibition of events organized on Facebook. The decision is based on several cases of overcrowding by people not originally invited.In one instance, 1,600 "guests" attended the 16th birthday party for a Hamburg girl who accidentally posted the invitation for the event as public. After reports of overcrowding, more than a hundred police were deployed for crowd control. A policeman was injured and eleven participants were arrested for assault, property damage and resistance to authorities. In another unexpectedly overcrowded event, 41 young people were arrested and at least 16 injured In May 2011, HCL Technologies announced that approximately 50% of British employers had banned Facebook from the workplace. A 2011 study in the online journal First Monday, "Why Parents Help Their Children Lie to Facebook About Age: Unintended Consequences of the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act," examines how parents consistently enable children as young as 10 years old to sign up for accounts, directly violating Facebook's policy banning young visitors. This policy technically allows Facebook to avoid conflicts with the 1998 Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), requiring that minors aged 13 or younger gain explicit parental consent to access commercial websites. Of the more than 1,000 households surveyed for the study, more than three-quarters (76%) of parents reported that their child joined Facebook when she was younger than 13, the minimum age in the site's terms of service. The study notes that, in response to widespread reports of underage users, a Facebook executive has said that "Facebook removes 20,000 people a day, people who are underage." The study's authors also note, "Indeed, Facebook takes various measures both to restrict access to children and delete their accounts if they join." The findings of the study raise questions primarily about the shortcomings of federal law, but also implicitly continue to raise questions about whether or not Facebook does enough to publicize its terms of service with respect to minors. Only 53% of parents said they were aware that Facebook has a minimum signup age; 35% of these parents believe that the minimum age is a site recommendation (not a condition of site use), or thought the signup age was 16 or 18, and not 13. In November 2011, several Facebook users reported that their accounts were hacked and their profile pictures were replaced with pornographic images. For more than a week, users' news feeds were spammed with pornographic, violent and sexual contents. It has been reported that more than 200,000 accounts in Bangalore, India were hacked. Facebook has denied the claims, citing that "safety of the users was on the top of their priority list". There has been much user discontent over Facebook's mandatory changeover to the new Timeline profile. Some Facebook users reported discontent with having many Facebook status updates and photos from the past easily visible. Social & Ethical Issues of Information of facebook 1. Privacy of the IndividualPrivacy is defined as the state of being private or the condition of being concealed or hidden. In terms of Facebook, the privacy of the individual is how much information, personal or not is seen but other users than the creator or provider of that information. Social networking sites such as Facebook share information about the user over the internet, where it can be freely accessed by anyone. This is where issues of privacy to the individual arise. 2. Privacy of the IndividualAs of December last year, Facebook called its 350 million users to review their privacy settings at the launch of its new user control tools which allow the user to control their information easily depending on the content, reasons for sharing and who they are viewed by. The link to the article below is from Facebook’s official blog instructing users on how they can improve their privacy level settings.http://www.facebook.com/press/releases.php?p=133917 3. Security of Data & InformationThe security of data and information refers to how private the information on a Facebook page can be and if it can be accessed by others and the extent they can edit the information on that page.Below is a link to an article about Facebook’s master password which has the capability to access ANY Facebook account. Although this password is kept solely to the site’s engineers, it raises privacy questions with the possibility of the password being leaked.http://www.neowin.net/news/main/10/01/12/facebook-employee-interviewreveals-security-issues 4. Accuracy of Data & InformationWith the internet being a free environment, there are no set rules about who you can be or act as whilst on it. This also applies to users on Facebook, because who’s to say they are who they really are? Or that the information on their profiles is accurate? The only way of having a clue if the person is really who they claim themselves to be is by their mutual friends, if any and their photos or video, pending their privacy settings allow the user to view them.The link to the article describes a US teen who posed as a girl on Facebook and tricked more than 30 male classmates into sending him naked photos of themselves, then using the photos as blackmail.http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-world/us-teen-jailed-forfacebook-sex-scam-20100225-p4pv.html 5. Data QualityData quality refers to the level of trustworthiness that information is susceptible to. For example data quality affects the large amount of games and applications on Facebook, where the level of trust for the game or application is not known. For all the user could know it may be misleading and result in identity theft or fraud through the use of the user’s information. 6. Changing Nature of WorkBusiness’ and traders are shifting in the way they operate as they have now come to embrace technology such as the internet and are embracing its advances and innovations. Social networking sites such as Facebook which see more than 350 million people using the site proves to businesses that this can be seen as a great opportunity for marketing over the internet through ads to be displayed on Facebook. This hence changes the way market advertisers work, having to also adapt to using the internet as their tool. 7. Changing Nature of Workhttp://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news- technology/paypal-to-become-a-way-to-pay-for-facebook-ads-20100219oj88.htmlThe link refers to an article on the latest way that business’ can use Facebook for marketing. 8. Appropriate Information UseAppropriate information use refers to the correct usage of information and the adherence to privacy policy if any. Appropriate use of information on Facebook can refer to applications accessing the user’s information and correctly using it without distributing it to any external sources or companies. An example of how Facebook applications incorrectly use user information is located in the link to the article below. It outlines how application “mines” a user’s information and uses it to spam the user’s friends and networks spreading like wildfire and almost impossible to stop.http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/click_online/7375772.stm 9. Health & SafetyHealth and safety on the internet applies to the mental health of an individual rather than the physical. For example the use of social networking site Facebook is associated with issues of cyber bullying and peer pressure.The link to the article below describes students who have been suspended from school for the cyber bullying of their peers via Facebook and Facebook groups.http://news.ninemsn.com.au/national/1017586/students-suspended-forfacebook-bullying 10. Copyright LawsCopyright laws on Facebook refer to the copying of original pieces of music or art, just as MySpace music works, where bands can post their tracks and pieces online, arises the issue of copyright and how much of the available information can be reproduced. Although this wouldn’t really apply to Facebook itself but rather the user who posted the information on a Facebook page.Although Facebook does have options to claim intellectual property infringement if the material is not copyrighted and report copyrighted information.The link outlines Facebook’s copyright policy.http://www.facebook.com/legal/copyright.php 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.”