What you should know about Facebook

Facebook launched in just 2004 and its astounding success has made social networking and social media an integral part of our internet vocabulary and even, our every day life, for some. Social networking websites were not new when Facebook launched but its popularity has eclipsed all of them. Facebook now boasts about 500 million users, up from 200 million users only 2 years ago, and the data tracker Hitwise said that it is currently the most visited site in the United States.



David Kirkpatrick, author of “The Facebook Effect”, attributes the website’s success to a mixture of luck, strategy, and ambition. Kirkpatrick said Facebook’s founder, Mark Zuckerberg, “had all three in spades”. Facebook was initially available only to a select group of colleges, and it controlled when and where it was rolled out so that it did not grow too quickly. Initially, people were allowed to use only their real names, and this also contributed to its popularity, said Kirkpatrick. “There was an appetite on the Internet to be yourself and connect to your real friends”.
However, there are some things you should know about Facebook and number one is this: you are being followed. Facebook acknowledges as much in its policy statements, but few people are aware of this fact, or do not understand it. When a user logs onto Facebook, it tracks all of the websites that user visits while they are logged on.

“Facebook can essentially track you around the Web”, explained Nicole Ozer, policy director at the ACLU of Northern California. Privacy groups wrote a letter to Facebook expressing concern, and it said it keeps Web surfing data for only 90 days.