Facebook was launched by Mark Zuckerberg, then aged 19, in February 2004. The website was known as thefacebook.com for the next year, until in August 2005 when it was called Facebook. It is one of the biggest social networking websites generating 250 million users by 2009 and five hundred million users at present.
Facebook has since continued to generate popularity encouraging the website to build an even more accommodating and rewarding service to their members. Started of a media for students at Harvard University to get to know each other, Facebook was opened for the general Internet Public by the end of 2005. With the obtained success and such big potential, the website had attracted major investors to contribute to this achievement and the coming development. In 2007 Microsoft invested 246 million dollars to the company, which was worth 1.6 % of the share, and was an incredible amount on top of the initial 40 million dollars investments from a number of other contributors. In addition, capturing further interests from profit seeking organizations, Facebook also offers advertising opportunities for businesses to market their products. They provide flexibility in terms of advertising budgets and supports for the actual ads displayed on the website.
In order to be signed-up, Facebook requires potential members to have an e-mail ID and they need to be registered with recognized institutions (schools, universities, etc). Facebook’s members have been concentrated in amongst high schools and university students, with 8 million users in the United States alone and carrying on its global expansion in seven English speaking countries.
So what can a member do on Facebook?
Originally served a purpose to connect students, Facebook provides further services that include photo upload and even advertising. Members can post photos, comments, events, and market products. The networking begins as soon as posted photos or comments received responses, or also called followed, by fellow members. We could easily understand the attractiveness that comes out from this networking. Friends and families could stay in touch no matter the distance. This gets even better when posted photos allow friends and families to exchange visual updates. It almost made up for the fact that they are parted by long distance.
Following the website’s popularity, it had been suggested that networking on Facebook, or other similar websites, carry some good and bad points. As stated earlier, this type of Networking allows friends and family separated by distance to stay in touch. Equally valuable, would be the elimination of any emotional tendencies such as shyness or uneasiness amongst crowds, when social networking by means of the Internet. This attribute allows individuals to make more friends. It also gathers individuals with common interest to share experiences, that could also mean interaction with those one would otherwise not encounter. It was then stated that such networking actually interrupt with social development particularly when introduced in a young age. It was pointed out that communicating via the Internet did not require any excellence in social skills.