Tag: facebook
COLUMN: Facebook – will it still be around in five years?
Facebook’s now been around for five years, but will it still be around in five years’ time? There’s a long and a short answer to that question. The short answer is yes. A website, operating at www.facebook.com, will still be going in five years. That, assuming the internet survives the next five years, is a given.
But will it still be the cultural force that it is today – 150 million users worldwide, twice the size of its nearest competitor, leading to academic misconduct, arrests, multiple lawsuits, house-trashings and viruses? I suspect the answer might be no. Click over the jump to find out why.
Gallery: Facebook is five today. See how it's evolved
On Friday 4th February 2005, Facebook was born. Initially designed as a way for students to connect online, the past five years has seen it grow into a huge social network with a huge variety of people connecting with friends, relatives and complete strangers on a daily basis.
In his blog post, Facebook’s founder, Mark Zuckerberg, wrote:
While we at Facebook make products that enable people to share information efficiently, Facebook is mostly the product of the people who use it. Without you and the connections you make to others, the products we create wouldn’t have much meaning. So we feel fortunate to have all of you with us. To express our appreciation, we’ve created a “Thank You” gift, which will be available tomorrow in the Facebook Gift Shop for you to to give freely to others. In the spirit of celebrating connections between people, we encourage you to use this gift to give thanks to your friends, colleagues and family members with whom you are connected on Facebook.
Take a wander through the past five years and see how Facebook has evolved…
Facebook finds the way to start the cash flowing in – their survey says…
I’m not sure I should feel as outraged as part of me wants to with more news of Facebook’s embracing of the commercial sector like a big cold kiss.
The social networking galacticon’s plan is to allow companies to survey Facebook users by dropping polls into our feeds. Of course, it’s up to you if you want to take them or not and, if they’re dressed up well, I should imagine…
Facebook now double the size of MySpace worldwide
“The times, they are a-changin'”, as Bob Dylan once said. We’ve had plenty of ‘X overtakes Y’ news lately, and the latest is that Facebook is now double the size of MySpace worldwide. It represents a powerful victory for usability and good design over the infamous “MySpace page”, which became synonymous with the web’s – how shall I put this – more ‘homely’ side.
I just logged in to MySpace for the first time in about six months, and had to enter *three* different captchas before I could even log in. I guess that means they’re taking the spammer threat seriously, but my god, what a barrier to logging in…
INQ1 heading to more networks
The INQ1, which I loved just before Christmas, looks like it’s getting a release on other networks, as opposed to Three, which currently has it exclusively. INQ is in talks with “at least two major operators” about launching the ‘Facebook phone’ to a wider public.
INQ head honcho Frank Meehan said:
“Talks with operators are going very well, and we definitely expect it to be available on other networks this year. We’re privately owned and well funded though, so we’re not in too much of a rush. The important thing is to get the right business”.
Promisingly, there’s also more INQ phones planned, including one with a QWERTY keyboard, and one with a touchscreen. They’ll likely show up in the latter half of 2009.
(via Trusted Reviews)
Related posts: INQ1 Facebook phone available from 3 as of today | SHINY VIDEO REVIEW: INQ1 Facebook phone from 3
Facebook bans Burger King ad campaign
A week or so ago, Burger King announced an advertising campaign where deleting ten friends would get you a voucher for a free whopper. It spread quite quickly, and 233,906 friends were removed by 82,771 people in less than a week.
Facebook, unsurprisingly, isn’t too happy – it knows its value lies in those friend links. As a result, it’s banned the campaign, citing privacy reasons. Turns out that Facebook isn’t keen on apps notifying users when they’ve been ‘cut’ by another friend. Full statement over the jump.
Facebook hits another milestone – 150 million users
This afternoon, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg posted on the site’s blog that the social networking behemoth has passed 150 million users, and half of those check the site every single day. That’s crazy, and made even more crazy by Zuckerberg pointing that if Facebook were a country, it would be the eighth most populated in the world, just ahead of Japan, Russia and Nigeria.
Other than that announcement, there might be a clue in Zuckerberg’s closing paragraph, where he says: “we look forward to offering even more ways for you to connect with the people who matter most”. Facebook Connect hasn’t been explosive in its popularity, so perhaps the company has something different in the works…
Related posts: Facebook Connect to help claim more internet real estate | Facebook is… the nation’s most popular thing-to-do on Christmas Day
Facebook is… the nation's most popular thing-to-do on Christmas Day
Astonishing figures from web stat counter Hitwise estimate that one in 22 of all internet data requests was for a Facebook page on Christmas Day, as everyone used their new netbooks to change their status to read “…is stuffed, drunk and nauseous.”
That’s up 69% from the traffic Facebook managed to harvest at Christmas of 2007, giving the popularity-boasting friends/dating portal a 4.65% share of the ENTIRE INTERNET and making it the…
Facebook Furore of the Week: Mothers getting bras into a twist over breastfeeding photo ban
Who says we’re not in touch with women’s issues here on Tech Digest?
Over 80,000 users have joined a Facebook group called “Hey Facebook, Breastfeeding is not Obscene,” after the site started deleting innocent photos of women breastfeeding their newly hatched, soft-headed, screaming, purple-faced spawn. Here’s how Facebook defines an offensive nipple photo…
“Photos containing a fully exposed breast – as defined by showing the nipple or areola – do violate those terms on obscene, pornographic or sexually explicit material and may be removed”…
Facebook hits 140 million active users
The social networking behemoth rumbles on. As of yesterday, Facebook has over 140 million active users. The site is growing at a rate of 600,000 users a day. That’s a whole lot of poking.
Extrapolating the trend, you find that by March the company could hit 200 million active users. Interestingly, 70% of the growth is coming from outside the States, meaning that the market in the USA (and likely the UK, too) has possibly matured and is no longer growing as fast.
