Facebook - The Complete Biography

August 25, 2006

Sid Yadav

Anin-depth profile of Facebook, written by Mashable contributor Sid Yadavand edited by Pete Cashmore. Image credit: Bryan Veloso.

Facebook is the second largest social network on the web, behind only MySpacein terms of traffic. Primarily focused on high school to collegestudents, Facebook has been gaining market share, and moresignificantly a supportive user base. Since their launch in February2004, they’ve been able to obtain over 8 million users in the U.S.alone and expand worldwide to 7 other English-speaking countries, withmore 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

Originallycalled thefacebook, Facebook was founded by former-Harvard student MarkZuckerberg (while at Harvard) who ran it as one of his hobby projectswith some financial help from Eduardo Saverin. Within months, Facebookand its core idea spread across the dorm rooms of Harvard where it wasvery well received. Soon enough, it was extended to neighbors Stanfordand Yale where, like Harvard, it was widely endorsed.

Beforehe knew it, Mark Zuckerberg was joined by two other fellowHarvard-students - Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes - to help him growthe site to the next level. Only months later when it was officially anational student network phenomenon, Zuckerberg and Moskovitz droppedout of Harvard to pursue their dreams and run Facebook full time. InAugust 2005, thefacebook was officially called Facebook and the domainfacebook.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 itsrelatively low user count. Currently, users must be members of one ofthe 30,000+ recognized schools, colleges, universities, organizations,and companies within the U.S, Canada, and other English-speakingnations. This generally involves having a valid e-mail ID with theassociated institution.

Surveys & Studies

Alarge number of surveys and studies have been conducted around Facebook- some with interesting results. For instance, according to an internalSeptember 2005 survey, approximately 85% of the students in thesupported colleges had a Facebook account, with 60% of them logging indaily. A survey conducted by Student Monitor revealed Facebook was the most “in” thingafter the iPod and tying with beer, and comScore Media Metrixdiscovered 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 analysisby Chris Roberts revealed that 76.2% never click on its ads. Perhapsthe most amazing statistic of all may be that Facebook is the 7th most trafficked site in the U.S.

Business & Funding

Given the situation other social networkson the web are facing, Facebook is in a good position financially.While it hasn’t managed to get acquired like its rival MySpace (despitesome rumors about an $800m deal with Viacom), it’s been quite lucky inmost aspects. For its initial funding, it received $500,000 from PeterTheil, co-founder of PayPal. A few months later, it was also able toget $13 million from Accel Partners, who are also investors in 15 otherWeb 2.0 startups, and $25 million from Greylock Partners, making theiroverall 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 dealwith Microsoft to provide and sell ads on their site in return for arevenue split. The deal followed an announcement from Facebook’s directcompetitor MySpace who signed a similar deal with Google. The youthfuldemographic that both the services attract is highly prized amongstadvertisers and should return a good amount of revenue for both theservices to stay alive - and profit. Another deal which made news inJuly 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

Inits early days, Facebook faced an extremely threatening lawsuit fromConnectU, a very similar social network which - like Facebook - sharesits roots back to Harvard, and as a result almost got shutdown. Thefounders of ConnectU alleged that Facebook’s founder Mark Zuckerbergstole source code while he was in their employment. Zuckerberg deniedthe 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 “ Facebookalso collects information about you from other sources, such asnewspapers and instant messaging services. This information is gatheredregardless of your use of the Web Site. ” Another theory is thatFacebook could also be a data-gathering project or if not, usedextensively 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 itsfeatures, highlights, and the things that got Facebook where it istoday.

Facebook Profiles

AsFacebook has evolved, so have its profile pages - new fields have beenadded and users can share more information than before.

Atypical 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 areself-explanatory but some are specific to Facebook.

Facebook Photos

Withover 1.5 million photos uploaded daily, one of Facebook’s most popularfeatures has been the ability to upload photos. Users can uploadunlimited photos from their cell phone or through its Java-based webinterface. Facebook is one of the few services to offer an unlimitedquota with their only restriction being a 60-photos-per-album limit -this is much appreciated by Facebook’s college demographic.

Theprocess of uploading photos is very simple. Users create albums whichthey can assign limitations to (e.g. visible to my friends only) andupload photos within them. The album is then put into their profile,and other users with right credentials have the ability to see andcomment on them. Facebook also gives the feature to share the photoswith 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 integratedinterface.

Facebook Groups

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

There are twokind of groups, a normal group and a secret group, which isn’t shown onthe profile. A normal group is just like any other, but users can alsocreate and invite others into secret groups. These can be used forcollaborating on university projects, and provide a way to have closeddiscussions. About 80% of the groups are ‘fun-related’ and companiescan even sponsor groups - as is the case with, for example, the Appleusers group.

Facebook Events

AnotherFacebook success is their ‘events’ feature, which provides the abilityto organize, be part of, and plan for events. This feature has beenextremely successful when it comes to organizing parties.

Alongwith organizing and joining events, users can also invite and recommendothers to an event. This feature, however, has raised some controversyas it is generally the start of underage drinking and dry campusviolations. Colleges and universities use the feature to catch planningof such events before hand and investigate those that are over. In anycase, it’s one of the most popular features of the service and evenbeats 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 letsprogrammers create widgets, mashups, tools and projects based aroundFacebook.

This is an important feature for Facebook since itmakes 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 enoughfor a decent web app to come through. What’s more, a selection ofapplications 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 aFacebook blog. All notes are displayed in the user’s profile, and othermembers can add comments.

Notes possesses an importantfeature, which is the ability to import and syndicate an external blog,although unlike Technorati, doesn’t allow you to claim one only toyourself (e.g. it’s possible to claim the New York Times syndicationfeed easily in one’s Notes). The service allows HTML to be included inthe posts, although JavaScript and Flash are disabled. You can attachphotos and also post via cell phone by sending your notes [e-mail]. Another interesting feature is tagging - tagging apost with a username will automatically send it to that specific user.The Notes feature has been well received.

The Future

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

Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook Profile

Uploading to Facebook Photos

Facebook Groups

Facebook Events

Facebook Notes

Facebook Developers