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Facebook is an online social media and networking service founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg along with his fellow Harvard college roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Chris Huges and Dustin Moskovitz. Facebook was initially made available for Harvard University students and later it was expanded for other colleges, schools and universities. It was made available to everyone above the age of 13 in the year 2006. According to the company's website, Facebook's mission is to give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected. While attending the Harvard University as a second year student Zuckerberg wrote a program called 'Facemash' that used compiled photos that was gained by Zuckerberg by hacking into Harvard's computer network and copying the images. He then placed two photos at a time and asked the users to choose the 'hotter' person. The site was then forwarded to several other campuses and servers. However, the site was shut down by Harvard University and Zuckerberg had to face expulsion. After returning to the university, Zuckerberg in the next semester got inspired by an editorial in The Harvard Crimson about the Facemash incident and then Zuckerberg launched "Thefacebook" website on 4th February 2004 and it was located at the facebook.com. Membership of Thefacebook was initially for the students of Harvard College and it later was opened to other universities like the University of Columbia, Stanford and Yale and later it was opened for most of the universities in Canada and United States. Zuckerberg's informal advisor Sean Parker became the company's president in mid 2004 and in 2005 Thefacebook dropped 'the' from its name after purchasing the domain name facebook.com for US$200,000. The company moved to Palo Alto in California in June 2004 and the next month the company received its first investment from Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal. Later in May 2005, Facebook received investment of $12.7 million from Accel Partners and $1 million from Jim Breyer. Facebook then launched a a high-school version in September 2005 and was also made available to the employees of Apple Inc. and Microsoft. Gaining steady popularity, the forum was opened to general public on September 26, 2006. Anybody above the age of 13 with a valid email id could open a Facebook account. Facebook gained popularity in no time and by January 2009 a study by ompete.com ranked Facebook as the most used networking service on the basis of monthly active users. The company continued to gain traffic and by July 2010, the company announced that it has crossed the 500 million users mark to become the largest online social network in the world at the time. By November 2010, Facebook's value was marked at $41 billion based on SecondMarket Inc. study. This made Facebook the third largest American web company. Facebook filed for an Initial Public Offering on 1st February 2012 and negotiated a share price of US$38. This valued the company at $104 billion, the largest valuation for a newly listed public company. As of September 2016, Facebook's headquarter is located at 1 Hacker Way, Menlo Park, California and as of June 30 2016, Facebook has 14,495 employees working. The company has on average 1.13 billion daily active users, and a total of 1.71 billion monthly. With over 84.5% of daily active users outside the US and Canada, the social media behemoth is easily one of the largest influence on the internet today. Facebook also owns WhatsApp and Instagram that has 1 billion and 500 million monthly users respectively. Facebook has been able to create a social impact on human life. Facebook allows people to connect to different people worldwide and enabling them to continuously can stay in touch with their relatives and friends. It also helps in uniting people with common interest and they can create their own open or closed private groups. Facebook also has been able to change the way people communicate. People now use images and videos to communicate and his friends or colleagues can respond to their posts through 'likes' or various other emoticons that were recently introduced by Facebook. Facebook also has been able to create a political impact and majority of the major political parties around the globe have their presence on Facebook. However, Facebook also has been a subject to many criticisms around the globe. According to a report released by Geenpeace on 21st April 2011, Facebook was the most reliant on coal for electricity for its data center and it consumes up to 2% of all global electricity and the amount was projected to increase in the future. Facebook was condemned in India for its Free Basics offer in collaboration with Reliance Communications. Issue of privacy and security bug also has been a major reasons creating negative image of Facebook. Facebook has been blocked temporarily or permanently in many countries. The government of Bangladesh has been blocking Facebook, WhatsApp and many other social media apps since 18th November 2015. To boot, it has been the center of many billion dollar lawsuits. Irrespective of all this, the social networking site continue to grow and is easily one of the largest influence today.

Facebook faces lawsuit over data breach affecting nearly 30 million users
IANS | June 25, 2019 1:15 PM IST
In a setback, a US court has rejected Facebook's claims to block a lawsuit against it in a data brea...
Facebook faces lawsuit over data breach affecting nearly 30 million users
indiacom
2019-06-25T02:15:03+00:00
2019-06-25T02:30:05+00:00
Facebook
India.com
WhatsApp: 5 lesser known features that you should know about
Staff | June 25, 2019 12:00 PM IST
WhatsApp adds plenty of features on a regular basis. So, it sometimes gets difficult to keep track o...
WhatsApp: 5 lesser known features that you should know about
indiacom
2019-06-25T01:00:03+00:00
2019-06-25T01:00:03+00:00
Facebook
India.com
Would you shun social media giant Facebook if given lifetime data protection?
IANS | June 24, 2019 6:50 PM IST
Would you give up your digital life if all your personal information - passwords, posts, pictures, v...
Would you shun social media giant Facebook if given lifetime data protection?
indiacom
2019-06-24T07:50:03+00:00
2019-06-24T07:52:02+00:00
Facebook
India.com
Mark Zuckerberg Ahead of Tim Cook, Behind Sundar Pichai in Top CEOs Index
IANS | June 20, 2019 12:17 AM IST
Social media giant Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has dropped from his 2018 rank of number 16 to numbe...
Mark Zuckerberg Ahead of Tim Cook, Behind Sundar Pichai in Top CEOs Index
indiacom
2019-06-19T13:17:52+00:00
2019-06-19T13:17:52+00:00
Facebook
India.com
Shooting Film With Mobile Camera Makes Storytelling Exciting: Kiran Rao
IANS | June 18, 2019 11:53 PM IST
Filmmaker Kiran Rao, who has directed two 10-second short films for Facebook India, says shooting a ...
Shooting Film With Mobile Camera Makes Storytelling Exciting: Kiran Rao
indiacom
2019-06-18T12:53:42+00:00
2019-06-18T12:53:42+00:00
Facebook
India.com
Facebook Announces Its Digital Currency 'Libra' Will be Coming in 2020
IANS | June 18, 2019 4:46 PM IST
As the chorus grows to break up Facebook and regulators scramble to fix it over privacy violations, ...
Facebook Announces Its Digital Currency 'Libra' Will be Coming in 2020
indiacom
2019-06-18T05:46:30+00:00
2019-06-18T05:46:30+00:00
Facebook
India.com
Messaging App Instagram Testing New Way of Recovering Hacked Accounts
IANS | June 17, 2019 9:50 PM IST
To offer more assurance in recovering hacked accounts, Facebook-owned messaging app Instagram is tes...
Messaging App Instagram Testing New Way of Recovering Hacked Accounts
indiacom
2019-06-17T10:50:50+00:00
2019-06-17T10:50:50+00:00
Facebook
India.com
WhatsApp to Take Legal Action Against Unauthorised Usage of App
IANS | June 14, 2019 12:21 AM IST
To improve the health of its platform, Facebook-owned messaging app WhatsApp has decided to take leg...
WhatsApp to Take Legal Action Against Unauthorised Usage of App
indiacom
2019-06-13T13:21:50+00:00
2019-06-13T13:21:50+00:00
Facebook
India.com
Facebook Announces Investment in Indian Start-up Meesho
IANS | June 14, 2019 12:13 AM IST
In its first-ever equity investment in an Indian start-up, Facebook on Thursday announced an investm...
Facebook Announces Investment in Indian Start-up Meesho
indiacom
2019-06-13T13:13:38+00:00
2019-06-13T13:13:38+00:00
Facebook
India.com
Facebook COO Sandberg Spells Out Roadmap to Deal With Concerns Like Bad Content
IANS | June 13, 2019 2:35 PM IST
Menlo Park (California): Grappling with the best and the worst of humanity, a quarterly transparency...
Facebook COO Sandberg Spells Out Roadmap to Deal With Concerns Like Bad Content
indiacom
2019-06-13T03:35:43+00:00
2019-06-13T03:42:26+00:00
Facebook
India.com
Instagram to Let Mark Zuckerberg's Tampered Viral Video Stay on App
IANS | June 12, 2019 8:10 PM IST
Facebook-owned photo-messaging app Instagram is investigating a tampered viral video of Facebook CEO...
Instagram to Let Mark Zuckerberg's Tampered Viral Video Stay on App
indiacom
2019-06-12T09:10:20+00:00
2019-06-12T09:10:20+00:00
Facebook
India.com
Facebook Will Pay to Track Phone Usage Pattern in India, US
IANS | June 12, 2019 6:00 PM IST
San Francisco: After facing flak for using unethical and discreet ways of collecting user-informatio...
Facebook Will Pay to Track Phone Usage Pattern in India, US
indiacom
2019-06-12T07:00:13+00:00
2019-06-12T07:00:13+00:00
Facebook
India.com
Facebook Honours Manipuri Youth For Spotting WhatsApp Bug
IANS | June 11, 2019 10:00 PM IST
Imphal: Facebook has honoured a 22-year-old engineer from Manipur for detecting a bug on the instant...
Facebook Honours Manipuri Youth For Spotting WhatsApp Bug
indiacom
2019-06-11T11:00:40+00:00
2019-06-11T11:00:40+00:00
Facebook
India.com
Facebook-Owned Instagram Suffers Another Global Outage, Reason Unknown
IANS | June 5, 2019 12:29 AM IST
Facebook-owned photo messaging app Instagram suffered a major global outage that hindered app logins...
Facebook-Owned Instagram Suffers Another Global Outage, Reason Unknown
indiacom
2019-06-04T13:29:37+00:00
2019-06-04T13:29:37+00:00
Facebook
India.com
Facebook Launches Its First Interactive Game Show 'Confetti' in India
IANS | June 4, 2019 7:26 PM IST
Social networking giant Facebook on Tuesday announced its first interactive game show, titled "Confe...
Facebook Launches Its First Interactive Game Show 'Confetti' in India
indiacom
2019-06-04T08:26:16+00:00
2019-06-04T08:26:16+00:00
Facebook
India.com
Apple Removes Pictures, Posts And Videos From iTunes' Instagram, FB Pages
IANS | June 3, 2019 11:11 PM IST
Apple has removed all the pictures, posts and videos from the iTunes' Instagram and Facebook pages, ...
Apple Removes Pictures, Posts And Videos From iTunes' Instagram, FB Pages
indiacom
2019-06-03T12:11:21+00:00
2019-06-03T12:11:21+00:00
Facebook
India.com
NBA Finals to be Livestreamed on Social Media in India
IANS | May 31, 2019 4:00 PM IST
The National Basketball Association (NBA) has announced that the NBA Finals 2019 will be livestreame...
NBA Finals to be Livestreamed on Social Media in India
indiacom
2019-05-31T05:00:54+00:00
2019-05-31T05:00:54+00:00
Facebook
India.com
WhatsApp Confirms Intrusion of Ads in Status by 2020
IANS | May 25, 2019 2:58 PM IST
San Francisco: Ads are coming to WhatsApp, finally, and the intrusion into the popular ad-free mobil...
WhatsApp Confirms Intrusion of Ads in Status by 2020
indiacom
2019-05-25T03:58:38+00:00
2019-05-25T03:58:38+00:00
Facebook
India.com
Facebook Removes Over 3 Billion Fake Accounts in October 2018 to March 2019 Period
IANS | May 24, 2019 3:43 PM IST
San Francisco: Facebook has removed more than three billion fake accounts in the October 2018-March ...
Facebook Removes Over 3 Billion Fake Accounts in October 2018 to March 2019 Period
indiacom
2019-05-24T04:43:48+00:00
2019-05-24T04:43:48+00:00
Facebook
India.com
Database of Millions of Instagram Accounts Exposed, Probe on
IANS | May 21, 2019 5:14 PM IST
New Delhi: After Facebook that is battling several data breaches, its photo-sharing service Instagra...
Database of Millions of Instagram Accounts Exposed, Probe on
indiacom
2019-05-21T06:14:37+00:00
2019-05-21T06:14:37+00:00
Facebook
India.com