Inventory Systems Information

Facebook is a social network service and website launched in February 2004 that is operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc. As of January 2011[update], it has more than 600 million active users (Eldon, 2008). The site allows users may create a personal profile, add other users as friends and exchange messages, including automatic notifications when they update their profile. Additionally, users may join common interest user groups, organized by workplace, school, or college, or other characteristics. Facebook allows anyone, at least 13 years old, to become a registered user of the website.

Facebook was founded by college students and was initially intended to be used soley by Harvard University students, but was expanded to other local colleges in the Boston area, including the Ivy League and Stanford University. Gradually, it added support for students at various other universities before allowing high school students, and, finally, to anyone aged 13 and over.

A January 2009, a Compete.com study ranked Facebook as the most used social network service by worldwide monthly active users, followed by MySpace. Entertainment Weekly put Facebook on its end-of-the-decade "best-of" list, saying, "How on earth did we stalk our exes, remember our co-workers' birthdays, bug our friends, and play a rousing game of Scrabulous before Facebook?"(Entertainment Weekly, 2009). Quantcast estimates Facebook has 135.1 million monthly unique U.S. visitors in October 2010 (Quantcast.com, 2010). According to Social Media Today as of April 2010, it is estimated that 41.6% of the U.S. population has a Facebook account. (SocialMediaToday.com, 2011)

Users can create profiles with photos, lists of personal interests, contact information, and other personal information. Users can communicate with friends and other users through private or public messages and a chat feature. They can also create and join interest groups and "like pages" (formerly called "fan pages",...