What is Facebook ?

1. Facebook (formerly [thefacebook]) is an online social
networking service headquartered in Menlo Park,
California. Its name comes from a colloquialism for
the directory given to students at some American
universities.[7] Facebook was founded on February 4,
2004, by Mark Zuckerberg with his college
roommates and fellow Harvard
University students Eduardo Saverin, Andrew
McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes.[8] 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, although proof is not required
History

2. Service available to the general public
• On September 26, 2006, Facebook was opened to everyone at least 13
years old with a valid email address.
• In late 2007, Facebook had 100,000 business pages (pages which allowed
companies to promote themselves and attract customers). These started
as group pages, but a new concept called company pages was planned.
Pages began rolling out for businesses in May 2009.
• 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 adverts on the social networking site. 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 Second
Market Inc. (an exchange for privately held companies' shares), Facebook's
value was $41 billion; it slightly surpassed eBay's to become the third
largest American web company after Google and

3. After going
public
• In July 2012, Facebook added a same-sex marriage icon to its
timeline feature.[73] On August 23, 2012, Facebook released an
update to its iOS app (version 5.0), which changed how data was
collected and displayed to make it faster. On January 15, 2013,
Facebook announced Graph Search, which provides users with a
"precise answer" rather than a link to an answer by leveraging
the data present on its site.[74] Facebook emphasized that the
feature would be "privacy-aware," returning only results from
content already shared with the user.[75] The company is the
subject of a lawsuit by Rembrandt Social Media for patents
involving the "Like" button.[76] On April 3, 2013, Facebook
unveiledHome, a user-interface layer for Android devices offering
greater integration with the site. HTC announced the HTC First,
a smartphone with Home pre-loaded.[77] On April 15, 2013,
Facebook announced an alliance across 19 states with the
National Association of Attorneys General to provide teenagers
and parents with information on tools to manage social
networking profiles.[78] On April 19, 2013, Facebook officially
modified its logo to remove the faint blue line at the bottom of
the "F" icon. The letter F moved closer to the edge of the box.[

4. Revenue
• Most of Facebook's revenue comes from
advertising.[108][109] 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,[110] although specific comparisons
can reveal a much larger disparity. For example,
whileGoogle users click on the first
advertisement for search results an average of
8% of the time (80,000 clicks for every one
million searches),[111]Facebook's users click on
advertisements an average of 0.04% of the time
(400 clicks for every one million pages).[112]
• Sarah Smith, who was Facebook's Online Sales
Operations Manager until 2012,[113] reported
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.[114] 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
sites.[citation needed]
The cause of Facebook's low CTR has been
attributed to younger users enabling ad
blocking software and their adeptness at
ignoring advertising messages, as well as the
site's primary purpose being social
communication rather than content
viewing.[115] According to digital
consultancy iStrategy Labs in mid-January
2014, three million fewer users aged between
13 and 17 years were present on Facebook's
Social Advertising platform compared to
2011.[116] However, Time Writer and
Reporter Christopher Matthews stated in the
wake of the iStrategy Labs results:

5. Revenues
(estimated, in millions US$)
Year Revenue Growth
2006 $52 —
2007 $150 188%
2008 $280 87%
2009 $775 177%
2010 $2,000 158%
2011 $3,711 86%
2012 $5,089 37%
2013 $7,872 55%

6. Mergers and
acquisitions
On November 15, 2010,
Facebook announced it had
acquired the domain name
fb.com from the American
Farm Bureau Federation for
an undisclosed amount. On
January 11, 2011, the Farm
Bureau disclosed
$8.5 million in "domain
sales income", making the
acquisition of FB.com one of
the ten highest domain sales
in history.

7. Offices
In early 2011, Facebook announced
plans to move to its new headquarters,
the former Sun Microsystems campus
in Menlo Park.
All users outside of the US and Canada
have a contract with Facebook's Irish
subsidiary "Facebook Ireland Limited".
This allows Facebook to avoid US taxes
for all users in Europe, Asia, Australia,
Africa and South America. Facebook is
making use of the Double Irish
arrangement which allows it to pay just
about 2-3% corporation tax on all
international revenue.
In 2010, Facebook opened its fourth
office, in Hyderabad and the first
in Asia.

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