Facebook, the world’s most popular and largest social networking site, turned eight on February 4, 2012. Facebook has an estimated 845 million active users, and the social networking giant continues to grow, since its launch on February 4, 2004 and is most likely to cross the 1 billion users mark by August this year.

Facebook, initially built the service exclusively for Harvard students, has become a household name all over the world. Here is a quick peek at Facebook’s own Timeline – the journey from a dorm room to Nasdaq.

2004

• February 2004: Founded under the name thefacebook.com at Harvard University
• September 2004: Introduced the Facebook Wall, a forum for users to post quick witty messages to their friends. Lawsuit filed against Facebook claiming that Zuckerberg stole the idea for Facebook from a company co-founded by twins Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss and a third person at Harvard.
• 2004: Began to expand to colleges and university around the country, and recorded $382,000 in revenue.

2005

• May 2005: Grew to support more than 800 college networks.
• August 2005: “Thefacebook.com” officially becomes “Facebook.com,” after the Facebook domain is purchased for a whopping $200,000.
• September 2005: High school students are given the ability to join Facebook. Added international school networks and introduced Photos.
• December 2005: Facebook cross the one million users mark.
• 2005: Recorded $9 million in revenue.

2006

• April 2006: Launched Facebook Mobile.
• May 2006: Expanded Facebook’s availability to workplace networks, allowing people with corporate email address to join.
• July 2006: Mark Zuckerberg turns down an $800 million offer from Yahoo to acquire Facebook.
• September 2006: Facebook begins to let anyone over 13 years of age to join. Introduce News Feeds.
• November 2006: Launched Share feature on over 20 partner sites.
• 2006: Recorded $48 million in revenue.

2007

• February 2007: Facebook launches Facebook gifts, a virtual memento for a low cost of $1.
• May 2007: Facebook officially launches Facebook Platform, setting a stage for third-party developers to come in and build apps and games within Facebook’s network, and Facebook Pages.
• October 2007: Facebook agrees to sell a 1.6 percent stake to Microsoft for $240 million.
• November 2007: Launches ad platform “Beacon”, which post updates on users profile when users interact with partner sites. Users responded with a class-action lawsuit, prompting Facebook to shut the feature down in late 2009.
• 2007: Recorded $153 million in revenue

2008

• April 2008: Introduced Facebook Chat.
• July 2008: Facebook launches it first official mobile app, “Facebook for iPhone.”
• September 2008: Facebook officially switches all users over to the then “new profile,” or Facebook 3.0 – A Facebook profile like the one we had before Timeline, but with tabs for our wall, info, photos, and other apps….ah..you remember now… There were many users back then too, who were unhappy with the switch.
• December 2008: Launched Facebook Connect, the next iteration of the Facebook platform.
• 2008: Expanded to 23 languages offered including French, German, and Spanish.
• 2008: Recorded $272 million in revenue.

2009

• February 2009: Introduced the Like button, a lazy way for users to show their appreciation for things they care about both on and off Facebook.
• May 2009: Launched Facebook Payments.
• June 2009: Surpassed MySpace as the leading social network in the US.
• July 2009: Facebook crosses the 250 million active users mark.
• 2009: Recorded $777 million in revenue.

2010

• April 2010: Introduced Open Graph API and social plugins – a set of easy-to-use modules allowing anyone to integrate with the Facebook Platform.
• July 2010: Facebook’s active user base crosses the 500 million mark.
• August 2010: Facebook launches “Places,” a location-based service, allowing users to share where they are with their friends…..and strangers.
• October 2010: Launched Groups, a shared space for users to discuss common interests. “The Social Network,” a movie about Facebook, hit the theaters and went on to win 3 Academy awards.
• November 2010: Launches the new message system, where all of a user’s conversation history of messages, SMS, IM with a individual are combined into one communication string. Facebook users gets an @facebook.com email address.
• 2010: Recorded $1,974 million in revenue.

2011

• June 2011: The Winklevoss twins end their legal battle over the idea behind Facebook.
• July 2011: Facebook teams up with Skype and adds video chatting.
• September 2011: Introduced Timeline, an enhanced and updated version of the Facebook Profile. Launched the next iteration of Open Graph.
• 2011: Recorded $3,711 million in revenue.

2012

• January 2012: Facebook begins making Timeline mandatory.
• February 2012: Facebook files for its much-anticipated IPO, giving the company a valuation of nearly $100 billion.

As the year 2010 finally crawls to an end, you will literally find yourself wading in heaps of materials ranging from chronological events of the year to top list of various things.

Coming to social networking sites, we are not going to talk about the obvious “who’s the top social networking site?” but have a look at an interesting comparison between the two most popular social networking site – Facebook vs. Twitter.

The nice infographics below that compares Facebook users to Twitter users was put together by Digital Surgeons.

As you can see, between Facebook and Twitter:

• There are some interesting similarities like:
• Majority users of both the sites are outside the United States
• About one third of users login using mobile devices.
• Gender breakdown is about the same with the fairer sex accounting for bigger portion of the pie.

And some key differences:

• While more Facebook users check their account regularly, it’s the Twitter users who are more religiously updating their status.
• Twitter users are more matured and educated than Facebook users.
• An important fact for businesses out there, even if Twitter users are less interested in following brands, they are more likely to purchase that specific brand.

Keeping those interesting facts aside, both the site have enjoyed tremendous popularity and growth and will most probably enjoy similar growth in the coming year.

But the bottom line is – One year from now, where do you see these two sites standing?

Mrs. Lilian Lowe (Source: Welshonline)

Lilian Lowe, 103-year-old great grandmother from Wales is the world’s oldest Facebooker.

She uses Facebook to keep in touch with her 7 grandchildren and 13 great-grandchildren, and she updates her status using her grandson’s iPad.

“I love it – it is very exciting. It’s a wonderful way of finding out about things,” Walesonline quotes Lowe.

“But I must say it’s a dreadful waste of time. I’m sure there are lots of other things I should be doing rather than playing on a computer.”

She has more than 30 Facebook friends, and her granddaughter Kaylee Lowee, 10, is said to be her most active friend.

Believed to be the oldest among more than 500 million Facebook users, Mrs. Lowe – dubbed supergan by her family – will turn 104 in two months and is hopeful to get her own iPad.

The previous title holder was 104-year-old Ivy Bean who died in her sleep in July.

For someone whose family didn’t had even a radio when she was about 12 years, heard about the sinking of the Titanic while in school, live through two world wars, and be facebooking at the end of the year 2010 through an iPad, she’s definitely a supergran and worth the title. Kudos!!

Yahoo Mail recently got a makeover and it is filled to the brim with new features and improvements. Among the many improvements, performance has been boosted to twice as much than before according to the company.

Here is a quick look at the features:

Performance: The Company claims that its mail is now twice as fast. Let’s take their word on it.

Improved Search: You can now filter out emails with different kinds of attachments including PDF files, photos, videos and music etc.

Social Integration: Yahoo Mail is already has already integrated Facebook and now a robust Twitter integration is also been made. You can now read and post status updates directly from the “What’s New” page. Apart from that, the update Yahoo Mail enables you to dock multiple SMS or conversations in one window allowing you to multi task easily like check mails while you easily  keep up with any conversations.

Apart from the performance boost and more social integration, the new Yahoo Mail, according to the company, offers better spam protection, unlimited storage, improved slideshows and video streaming that can be now viewed without leaving the message.

However, the new Yahoo Mail is in beta and is not yet integrated with the company’s classic mail service (this is the first time Yahoo plans to redesign its Mail service since 2005). Users will have to opt in to try out this new beta.

(Try the new Yahoo Mail beta here)

A recent study conducted by professor Paul Kirschner of Open University in Netherlands in the United States showed Facebook has negative affect on the grades of students.

The study was conducted on 219 students aged between 19 adn 54 at the American university. It was conducted to test the belief, multitasking allows people to do more in less time, in reality is otherwise.

The survey showed that students who revised for exams with their social networking account running scored much lower than their counterparts.

It was found that on average, grades of students who multi-tasked between Facebook and learning decreased by 20 % with a GPA of 3.06, While those students who stayed focused on their revision scored 3.82 on a scale of 0 to 4.

So, all you students out there, just remember that being obsessed with Facebook during studies can get you an “F” grade. Facebook itself starts with an “F”

David strikes Goliath again, with Facebook overtaking Google’s Orkut in India.

Orkut was leading social networking  scene in India, but marketing research company comScore reported says not anymore.

According to comScore, Facebook climbed to the number one spot in July 2010 with 179 percent growth in the last one last year, while Orkut registered a growth of 16 percent within the same time period.

An interesting fact shown by the report is the popularity of social networking sites in India. In July 2010, more than 33 million internet users age 15 and above visited social networking sites, representing 84 percent of the total internet audience in India.

“The social networking phenomenon continues to gain steam worldwide, and India represents one of the fastest growing markets at the moment,” says Will Hodgman, comScore executive vice president for the Asia-Pacific region. “Though Facebook has tripled its audience in the past year to pace the growth for the category, several other social networking sites have posted their own sizeable gains.”

In terms of unique users, Facebook took the top spot with 20.9 million users, orkut dropped to second with 19.6 million users, and Twitter with 3.3 million users took the fifth place.

Twitter show the highest growth rate with an impressive growth of 239 percent from last year.

India now the world’s seventh largest market for social networking. In terms of unique visitors for social networking sites, United States retains top spot, followed by China, Germany, Russian Federation, Brazil, United Kingdom, India, France, Japan, and South Korea.

Note: This comScore data reports doesn’t include visitation from public computers such as internet cafes or access from mobile phones and PDAs.

American internet users are spending increasing amount of time on social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, while the amount of time spent on e-mail and traditional web portals have declined,according to a recent research report from Nielsen.

The result of the study says that web users, in June, devoted 23% of their online time to social networking sites, up from 16% a year ago. Online games ranked second, previously held by e-mail use, where people spend 10% of their time, powered by social games like Zynga’s Farmville.

Another major service to enjoy increase user time in June was streaming of videos and movies  with 3.9%, up from 3.5% a year ago.

This is no major surprise as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube together enjoys close to one billion users, or roughly 20 percent of the world’s population.

Time spent on E-mail dropped from 12% to 8.3%, while online time spent on traditional portals like Yahoo! also fell from 5.5% to4.4% in the last one year.

“You can start your daily online experience on Facebook and perform many essential communications functions,” Nielsen analyst Dave Martin said. “In the past, you might have to log into Yahoo Mail and then log into MSN Messenger and then maybe check the Yahoo home page for new, breaking news.”

Another interesting detail the report showed was; twice as many users over the age of 50 are using social networks than users under age 18, indicating the social network audience is getting more matured.

There are many ways a user can become a victim of online oversharing.

Leaving aside the social-network related crime, have you ever though that your post on Facebook and Twitter could raise your insurance premiums or get your insurance claims denied?

Experts on an insurance comparison website, confused.com, warned that people who use social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter could eventually face price hikes of as much as 10% in their home insurance premiums.

Darren Black, Head of Home Insurance, confused.com says, “criminals are becoming increasingly sophisticated in their information gathering even using Google Earth and Streetview to plan their burglaries with military precision.

“Insurance providers are starting to take into account when they are assessing claims and we may in future see insurers declining claims if they believe the customer was negligent.”

The website pleaserobme.com has recently highlighted the issue and dangers of online oversharing by listing empty homes, which have created quite a debate on the affects associated with it.

We have also heard about Nathalie Blanchard whose insurance benefits were reportedly pulled back by her insurance company in regard to her info and photos on Facebook.

So, it’s apt to say that not only informing others you are not home, but posting photos of extreme sports hobby or one that depicts your negligence etc might as well cost you dearly.

It is very advisable to be very careful about what you share online, which in the worst-case scenario might even endanger your life and those around you.

More than 3,500 registered sex offenders in New York have been kicked from social-networking sites, Facebook and MySpace. This is the first time that the new e-Stop (Electronic Security and Targeting of Online Predators) act of 2008 has actually been used.

Under the state’s e-STOP Act, registered offenders are required to register their emails and other online identifiers with the state so that their online activities can be monitored. Sex offenders have 10 days to notify the state after creating new online profiles or face prosecution for a new felony.

It will be good to see more and more of these pervs who prey on the naive and defenceless cyberspace kids be rounded up and put aside.

There has been a lot of incidents regarding social networking sites lately and also a few recent calls for Facebook to actively do some background-check of its users, which is obviously almost impossible. But it’s nice to see the New York law enforcers taking this proactive stance on the issue of online prevs.

This act will be more effective if the other States and countries adopts it. Also hoping that more social-networking sites come forward to help the law enforcers in their quest to protect the minors.

Source [ NY dailynews]

The older generations of the Internet users have witnessed the evolution of the Internet and World Wide Web from the mid 80s. The younger generation was lucky enough to take the full advantage of the next version of the Word Wide Web or Web 2.0 which is the next step over the first version of Web.

Web 2.0 has many significant differences over its predecessor. In the previous version of Word Wide Web, the website sponsors were in total control of the content. Most of the content were static and later became dynamic with the advancements of the technologies. With the introduction of Web 2.0 the end users of the web sites were given the authority over the content, so they are the authors, editors, and publisher of the information in the website. This way, the sponsors of the website reduces the overhead of maintaining the content while; many users are attracted to the website as it can be customized by the users.

After reading the above paragraph, doesn’t it cross your mind that this concept is best suited for social networking? Yes, social networking is a brain child of Web 2.0. Web 2.0 adopted many recent trends due to the advancements and demands of social networking. Therefore, social networking platforms such as Facebook became one of the first experiments of Web 2.0.

If you go to Facebook, all what you see is Web 2.0 features giving the end users more flexibility over the content they maintain.