Facebook

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is about the social networking service. For the type of directory,
see face book.
Facebook, Inc.


Facebook's login/signup screen
Type Public
Traded as NASDAQ: FB
Founded February 4, 2004
(10 years ago)
Headquarters Menlo Park, California, US
Area served United States (200405)
Worldwide (2005present)
Founder(s)
Mark Zuckerberg
Eduardo Saverin
Andrew McCollum
Dustin Moskovitz
Chris Hughes
Key people Mark Zuckerberg
(Chairman and CEO)
Sheryl Sandberg
(COO)
Industry Internet
Revenue US$7.87 billion (2013)
[1]

Operating
income
US$2.80 billion (2013)
[1]

Net income US$1.50 billion (2013)
[1]

Total assets US$17.89 billion (2013)
[1]

Total equity US$15.47 billion (2013)
[1]

Employees 6,818 (March 2014)
[1]

Subsidiaries Instagram
WhatsApp
Oculus VR
Website facebook.com
Written in C++, PHP
[2]
and D language
[3]

Alexa rank 2 (April 2014)
[4]

Type of site Social networking service
Registration Required
Users 1.28 billion (monthly active, March
2014)
[5]

Available in Multilingual (70)
Current status Active
Facebook
History
Timeline
Acquisitions
Criticism
Features
Facebook is an online social networking service. Its name comes from
acolloquialism for the directory given to students at some American
universities.
[6]
Facebook was founded on February 4, 2004 by Mark
Zuckerberg with his college roommates and fellow Harvard
University studentsEduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin
Moskovitz and Chris Hughes.
[7]
The founders had initially limited the website's
membership to Harvard students, but later expanded it to colleges in the Boston
area, the Ivy League, and Stanford University. It gradually added support for
students at various other universities and later to their high-school students.
Facebook now allows anyone who claims to be at least 13 years old worldwide to
become a registered user of the website, even though proof isn't required.
[8]

Users must register before using the site, after which they may create apersonal
profile, add other users as friends, exchange messages, and receive 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". In September 2012, Facebook had over one billion
active users,
[9]
of which approximately 9% were fake.
[10]
In 2012, Facebook was
adding about half a petabyte of data every 24 hours, amounting to about 180
petabytes per year.
[11]