Facebook is an online social networking service that started off as a way to help students get to know each other in college. Mark Zuckerberg founded Facebook in February 2004, with is college roommates at Harvard University. Initially the website was limited to only to Harvard students and then expanded to other colleges in Boston. Overtime, it began to support students of all colleges and today any user of 13 years of age and older are allowed to become a member. Facebook has over 1 billion active viewers as of September 2012. Once registered, users create a personal profile where they can add friends of people they know. Users can then join common-interest groups that are organized by school, workplace, or other characteristics.

When creating a profile, users are able to add photos, add contact information, create lists of personal interests, and much more. When communicating with friends it can be done through public or private messages. Users can also create “Fan Pages” that other users can view and “like” which are maintained by organizations as a way of advertising. One main feature of Facebook is “news feed” which appears on the users’ home page. This is where highlights of information will appear when friends post something new or make changes to their profile. The photos application is one of the most popular on Facebook allowing users to upload photo albums and an unlimited number of pictures. There are privacy settings that can be set of each individual album. By setting this up, you can limit the users who can view your album. The tag feature is very helpful in that you “tag” other users in a photo to create a direct link to their profile. This will also send the users a notification informing them that they were tagged in that photo. Other ways of communicating through Facebook is by voice calling and video calling. Users have the ability to provide a “Subscribe” button on their page. With this feature there is no need to add another user as a friend; however you can still be subscribed to their public postings. In 2012, Facebook introduced a system to verify the identity of accounts. However, unlike Twitter, it will not display a symbol of verification but is given a higher priority in “Subscription Suggestions”. At the end of 2012 the subscribe button was re-labeled as “Follow” to make it sound similar to other social networks.