After registering to use the site, users can create a User profile, add other users as "friends",
exchange messages, post status updates and photos, share videos and
receive notifications when others update their profiles. Additionally,
users may join common-interest user groups, organized by workplace,
school or college, or other characteristics, and categorize their
friends into lists such as "People From Work" or "Close Friends".
Facebook had over 1.3 billion active users as of June 2014.
Due to the large volume of data collected about users, the service's
privacy policies have faced scrutiny, among other criticisms. Facebook,
Inc. held its initial public offering
in February 2012 and began selling stock to the public three months
later, reaching a peak market capitalization of $104 billion.
On
January 15, 2013, Facebook announced Facebook Graph Search, which
provides users with a "precise answer," rather than a link to an answer
by leveraging the data present on its site.Facebook emphasized that the
feature would be "privacy-aware,"
returning only results from content already shared with the user.
The company became the subject of a lawsuit by Rembrandt Social Media in
February 2013, for patents involving the "Like" button.On
April 3, 2013, Facebook unveiled Facebook Home, a user-interface layer
for Android devices offering greater integration with the site. HTC
announced the HTC First, a smartphone with Home pre-loaded.
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.
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.
Following a campaign by 100 advocacy groups, Facebook agreed to
update its policy on hate speech. The campaign highlighted content
promoting domestic and sexual violence against women, and used over
57,000 tweets and more than 4,900 emails that caused withdrawal of
advertising from the site by 15 companies, including Nissan UK, House of
Burlesque and Nationwide UK. The social media website initially
responded by stating that "while it may be vulgar and offensive,
distasteful content on its own does not violate our policies".
It decided to take action on May 29, 2013, after it "become clear that
our systems to identify and remove hate speech have failed to work as
effectively as we would like, particularly around issues of gender-based
hate."
On
June 12, 2013, Facebook announced on its newsroom that it was
introducing clickable hashtags to help users follow trending
discussions, or search what others are talking about on a topic. A July 2013 Wall Street Journal
article identified the Facebook IPO as the cause of a change in the
U.S.' national economic statistics, as the local government area of the
company's headquarters, San Mateo County,
California, became the top wage-earning county in the country after the
fourth quarter of 2012. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that
the average weekly wage in the county was US$3,240,
107% higher than the previous year. It noted the wages were "the
equivalent of $168,000 a year, and more than 50% higher than the
next-highest county, New York County (better known as Manhattan), at $2,107 a week, or roughly $110,000 a year."
Russian
internet firm Mail.Ru sold its Facebook shares for US$525
million on September 5, 2013, following its initial $200 million
investment in 2009. Partly owned by Russia's richest man, Alisher
Usmanovhe, the firm owned a total of 14.2 million remaining shares prior
to the sale. In the same month, the Chinese government announced that
it will lift the ban on Facebook in the Shanghai Free Trade Zone
"to welcome foreign companies to invest and to let foreigners live and
work happily in the free-trade zone." Facebook was first blocked in
China in 2009.
Facebook
was announced as a member of The Alliance for Affordable Internet
(A4AI) in October 2013, when the A4AI was launched. The A4AI is a
coalition of public and private organisations that includes Google,
Intel and Microsoft. Led by Sir Tim Berners-Lee,
the A4AI seeks to make Internet access more affordable so that access
is broadened in the developing world, where only 31% of people are
online. Google will help to decrease Internet access prices so that they
fall below the UN Broadband Commission's worldwide target of 5% of
monthly income.
A
Reuters report, published on December 11, 2013, stated that Standard
& Poor's announced the placement of Facebook on its S&P 500
index "after the close of trading on December 20." Facebook announced Q4
2013 earnings of $523 million (20 cents per share), an increase of $64
million from the previous year, as well as 945 million mobile users.
By January 2014, Facebook's market capitalization had risen to over $134
billion.At the end of January 2014, 1.23 billion users were active on
the website every month.
The company celebrated its 10th anniversary during the week of February
3, 2014. In each of the first three months of 2014, over one billion
users logged into their Facebook account on a mobile device.
In February 2014, Facebook announced that it would be buying mobile
messaging company Whatsapp for US$19 billion in cash and stock.
In June 2014, Facebook announced the acquisition of Pryte, a Finnish
mobile data-plan firm that aims to make it easier for mobile phone users
in underdeveloped parts of the world to use wireless Internet apps.
At the start of July 2014, Facebook announced the acquisition of LiveRail,
a San Francisco, California-based online video advertising company.
LiveRail's technology facilitates the sale of video inventory across
different devices. The terms of the deal were undisclosed, but TechCrunch
reported that Facebook paid between US$400 million and $500 million.As
part of the company's second quarter results, Facebook announced in
late July 2014 that mobile accounted for 62% of its advertising revenue,
which is an increase of 21% from the previous year.
Alongside other American technology figures like Jeff Bezos and Tim Cook,
Zuckerberg hosted visiting Chinese politician Lu Wei, known as the
"Internet czar" for his influence in the enforcement of China's online
policy, at Facebook's headquarters on December 8, 2014. The meeting
occurred after Zuckerberg participated in a Q&A session at Tsinghua
University in Beijing, China, on October 23, 2014, where he attempted to
converse in Mandarin—although Facebook is banned in China, Zuckerberg
is highly regarded among the people and was at the university to help
fuel the nation's burgeoning entrepreneur sector.
A book of Chinese president Xi Xinping found on Zuckerberg's office
desk attracted a great deal of attention in the media, after the
Facebook founder explained to Lu, "I want them [Facebook staff] to
understand socialism with Chinese characteristics.
Zuckerberg fielded questions during a live Q&A session at the
company's headquarters in Menlo Park on December 11, 2014. The question
of whether the platform would adopt a dislike button was raised again,
and Zuckerberg said, "We're [Facebook] thinking about it [dislike
button] ... It's an interesting question," and said that he likes the
idea of Facebook users being able to express a greater variety of
emotions
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