Shane - The Uses of Facebook

Facebook was founded in 2004 by a Harvard sophomore named Mark Zucherberg. It was an idea that he applied for the use of Harvard students. Shortly after, however, it was made availible to all colleges and high schools. Designed as a way for people to easily connect with each other and share information and media, it quickly became head to head with MySpace, another social networking site. In the first stages of Facebook it was up to the school to make facebook availible to their students. Before students could access the site and create a profile, the school was required to "sign up" for the service. During my freshman year at Sacred Heart in 2004 is when Sacred Heart joined the growing network. There were plenty of rumors throughout the years that the school had purchased a program that could get past the security features students set up in order to monitor us. After e-mailing the Facebook team this rumor was put to rest. They responded saying while facebook was not intended as a monitoring tool, unfortunately it may be used as one. However, there is nothing availible for purchase that would allow anyone to gain access to anyones information past the security settings the user sets. Facebook seemed more attractive to many people because of its seemingly tighter security settings availible compared to MySpace. Recently, MySpace mimicked Facebook's security format. A major factor separating the two is their layout. Facebook has a standard format much like a form for its users to complete rather than MySpace which gives its users a blank canvas with the ability to add anything and everything including various music and video to automatically appear when anyone lands on the page. Facebook also integrates advertising right into each members web page; most often on the right side. This allows viewing a users information a marketing tool as well. Facebook, as a social networking site, has had tremendous success and it does not look like it is slowing down anytime soon, especially with Google recently purchasing some of its shares.

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