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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.

Twitter strengthens political ads policy ahead of India elections
PTI | February 20, 2019 4:12 PM IST
Twitter Tuesday said it would now provide details including ad spends and impressions data of tweets...
Twitter strengthens political ads policy ahead of India elections
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Staff | February 20, 2019 11:34 AM IST
Earlier this month, WhatsApp introduced an important security feature for its users. With the integr...
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PTI | February 19, 2019 4:32 PM IST
Tech giant Google Tuesday said it has not found any evidence that search for 'toilet paper' on its s...
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Now Facebook and WhatsApp to be summoned in India by house panel: Report
Staff | February 18, 2019 1:16 PM IST
The parliamentary standing committee on information technology might summon Facebook and WhatsApp ne...
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WhatsApp testing a useful feature that may change your experience
Staff | February 18, 2019 11:10 AM IST
Similar to Snapchat, WhatsApp also introduced story-based Status functionality in order to stay ahea...
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Facebook
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IANS | February 17, 2019 6:48 PM IST
Facebook has enabled advertisers to promote anti-vaccine content to nearly nine lakh people interest...
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indiacom
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Facebook keeps a track of users that it considers a threat with its apps
Staff | February 15, 2019 6:30 PM IST
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Staff | February 15, 2019 4:24 PM IST
WhatsApp announced the launch of its WhatsApp Business app in 2018. The app is meant to help small b...
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Instagram testing Direct message feature for the web: Report
Staff | February 13, 2019 4:46 PM IST
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WhatsApp to add 'Group Invitation System' for iOS and Android users soon
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WhatsApp to soon release redesigned Settings layout for Android users
Staff | February 12, 2019 11:39 AM IST
WhatsApp will soon roll out a new update, offering Android users a new user interface (UI) for the S...
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2019-02-12T00:39:21+00:00
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Facebook expands fact-checking network in India, adds 5 more partners to spot fake news
PTI | February 12, 2019 11:28 AM IST
Facebook on Monday said it has expanded its third-party fact-checking programme in India, adding nam...
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Facebook
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House panel again summons Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey on February 25; won't hear 'juniors'
Staff | February 12, 2019 8:56 AM IST
The Parliamentary Committee on Information Technology (IT) on Monday yet again summoned Twitter's Gl...
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Facebook
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WhatsApp enables Face ID and Touch ID biometric authentication for iOS
Staff | February 11, 2019 11:12 AM IST
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2019-02-11T00:12:48+00:00
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Facebook
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India.com News Desk | February 9, 2019 1:06 PM IST
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indiacom
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Facebook
India.com
Germany blocks Facebook’s merger plan, here’s why
Staff | February 8, 2019 11:14 PM IST
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Facebook
India.com
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Staff | February 8, 2019 1:57 PM IST
In order to allure young hearts into joining its social network and boost user growth, Facebook has ...
Facebook drops plan of launching teen meme hub called LOL: Report
indiacom
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Facebook
India.com