Chat
On April 5, 2008, Facebook pre-released Facebook Chat.[1][2] As of April 23, 2008, Facebook Chat was released to the entire Facebook user base. Users may chat with their Facebook friends on a one-to-one basis, or a user may chat with multiple friends simultaneously through the groups feature. Instant messaging clients that currently support Facebook Chat include Yahoo! Messenger version 11.0 and later, Skype version 5 or later, AOL Instant Messenger, eBuddy, Flock, Miranda IM, Trillian, Empathy, Pidgin, Adium, Nimbuzz, FIM (Windows Mobile / Windows Phone 7), Palringo (Windows Mobile), Meebo, Tokbox as well as QIP Infium with a Firefox plugin. Windows Live Messenger 2011 (Wave 4) can connect to Facebook as well. Facebook Chat can also be run on the desktop using Gabtastik, a dedicated web chat browser. Facebook Chat can also be run on the iPhone using Facebook Chat for iPhone app. Facebook also released the official app for iPad.[3] Facebook chat is also available to use for Blackberry users via the Blackberry Facebook app. On May 13, 2008, a Facebook developer announced that they are working on XMPP support, allowing hundreds of instant messaging clients to interoperate with the service;[4] this functionality became operational on February 10, 2010.[5]
As of August 2011, Facebook Chat supports video chat. Upon using the feature for the first time users must download a plug-in for their web browser.
[edit]Credits
Main article: Facebook Credits
Facebook Credits are a virtual currency you can use to buy gifts, and virtual goods in many games and applications on the Facebook platform. As of July 2010, users of Facebook can purchase Facebook credits in Australian Dollars, British Pound, Canadian Dollars, Chilean Peso, Colombian Peso, Danish Krone, Euro, Hong Kong Dollar, Japanese Yen, Norwegian Krone, Swedish Krona, Swiss Franc, Turkish Lira, US Dollars, and Venezuelan Bolivar. Facebook credits can be used sufaesr as on many popular games such as Happy Aquarium, Happy Island, Zoo Paradise, Happy Pets, Hello City, It Girl[6] FarmVille, and Mafia Wars.
[edit]Friend
Main article: Friending
"Friending" someone is the act of sending them a friend request on Facebook. Once the friend request is set, the two people are both Facebook friends until and unless the receiving party accepts the friend request. In addition to accepting the request, the user has the option of declining the friend request or hiding it using the "Not Now" feature. Deleting a friend request removes the request, but does allow the sender to resend it in the future. The "Not Now" feature hides the request but does not delete it, allowing the receiver to revisit the request at a later date.
It is also possible to remove a user from one's friends, which is referred to as "unfriending" by Facebook.[7] Many Facebook users also refer to the process as "de-friending".[8] "Unfriend" was New Oxford American Dictionary's word of the year in 2009.[9][10]
Facebook profiles may be set by a user to greatly restrict access to those users who are not "friends", for example, blocking access to photos of that person and contact information. After a person accepts a friend request, the new "friend" then has much greater access to that person's profile information.
[edit]Feature list
[edit]Listen with Friends
Listen with Friends allows Facebook users to listen to music at the same time as their friends and discuss the tunes using Facebook Chat. Users can also listen in as a group while one friend acts as a deejay. Up to 50 friends can listen to the same song at the same time, and chat about it. Every-time a user begins listening to music with a friend, a ‘story will be posted to her/his friends’ ticker and/or news feeds. Users will have control over who will be able to see when they are listening with a friend through their App Settings page after installing the compatible music app. [11]
[edit]Deals
On April 25, 2011, Facebook announced a pilot program called Deals, which offers online coupons and discounts from local businesses. Facebook initially released Deals as a “test” in five cities:Atlanta, Austin, Dallas, San Diego and San Francisco with the hope of expanding. This new offering is a direct competitor to other social commerce sites such as LivingSocial and Groupon for online coupons and deals-of-the-day. Facebook users will be able to use Facebook Credits to purchase vouchers that can be redeemed for real goods and services.[12][13] Facebook has since closed its deal program.
[edit]Easter eggs
The following are easter eggs that Facebook had at one time or another.
- At one time, entering the Konami Code followed by Enter at the home page caused a lensflare-style series of circles to display when clicking, typing, or scrolling.[14]
- Facebook chat supports some unusual emoticons.[citation needed]
- Asking "how is babby formed?" with the Questions feature released September 23, 2010 will Rickroll the user.
- A user can change his/her language to Leet Speak, Pirate language, and upside down English.
- Entering @[x:y] resolves a user's name, where x is a positive integer and y is 0 or 1. For example @[4:0] resolves to "Mark Zuckerberg".
[edit]Facebook Live
On August 13, 2010, Facebook launched a new service called "Facebook Live", a live streaming video channel that is intended to keep Facebook users updated to what is happening on the social networking site.[15] The service, powered by Livestream, will feature videos from Facebook staff members and celebrity interviews, but is not designed for Facebook users to showcase their own videos. All the content shown on Facebook Live will have some tie-in with Facebook products, features, or how people are using the site.[16] Facebook said this is not an opening to get them into the video distribution space. The first official guest was America Ferrera, the leading actress in the television series Ugly Betty. She discussed her new independent film The Dry Land, that was being promoted almost exclusively through social media channels..[16]
[edit]IPv6
According to a June 2010 report by Network World, Facebook said that it was offering "experimental, non-production" support for IPv6, the long-anticipated upgrade to the Internet's maincommunications protocol. The news about Facebook's IPv6 support was expected; Facebook told Network World in February 2010, that it planned to support native IPv6 user requests "by the midpoint of this year."[17]
In a presentation at the Google IPv6 Implementors Conference, Facebook's network engineers said it was "easy to make [the] site available on v6." Facebook said it deployed dual-stack IPv4 and IPv6 support on its routers, and that it made no changes to its hosts in order to support IPv6. Facebook also said it was supporting an emerging encapsulation mechanism known as Locator/Identifier Separation Protocol (LISP), which separates Internet addresses from endpoint identifiers to improve the scalability of IPv6 deployments. "Facebook was the first major Web site on LISP (v4 and v6)," Facebook engineers said during their presentation. Facebook said that using LISP allowed them to deploy IPv6 services quickly with no extra cost. Facebook's IPv6 services are available at www.v6.facebook.com, m.v6.facebook.com, www.lisp6.facebook.com and m.lisp6.facebook.com.[17]
[edit]Like
Main article: Like button
Described by Facebook as a way to "give positive feedback and connect with things you care about,"[18] users can "like" status updates, comments, photos, and links posted by their friends, as well as adverts, by clicking the "Like" button at the bottom of the content. This makes the content appear in their friends' News feeds.[19]
The "Like Button" is also available for use on websites outside Facebook: "When the user clicks the Like button on [a] site, a story appears in the user's friends' News Feed with a link back to [the] website."[20] At the same time when any visitor, including non Facebook members and logged out users, visit a site with the Like Button, their presence on the site is recorded by Facebook.[21]Introduced in April 2010, by September 2010 over 350,000 sites had installed it.[22] A "Like Box" also allows Facebook page owners to see how many users and which of their friends like the page.[23]From the end of 2010 and in the US, Microsoft's Bing search engine identifies which links in the results have been "Liked" by the searcher's Facebook friends.[24][25]
A lawsuit was filed in Los Angeles in 2010 claiming the Facebook should not allow minors to "like" advertising; Facebook said the suit was "completely without merit."[26] Because websites with a "Like Button" send IP address information of all visitors to Facebook, the German state of Schleswig-Holstein said in August 2011 that the button breaches German data protection laws and that federal agencies should remove the buttons and similar social plugins from their websites.[27] Canada's Privacy Commissioner raised similar concerns in 2010.[28] "Like" links are vulnerable to likejacking, a form of clickjacking that makes users "Like" content they did not intend to.[29] An Israeli couple named their child "Like" after the Facebook feature in 2011.[30]
In August 2011, Google linked their +1 button to Google Plus to rival the Facebook Like Button.[31]
[edit]Messages and inbox
Since the website's founding, it has allowed users to send messages to each other.[32] A Facebook user can send a message to any number of his/her friends at a time. Deleting a message from one's inbox does not delete it from the inbox of other users, thus disabling a sender to redo a message sent by him or her.
On November 15, 2010, Facebook announced a new "Facebook Messages" service. In a media event that day, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said, "It's true that people will be able to have a @facebook.com email addresses, but it's not email." The launch of such a feature had been anticipated for some time before the announcement, with some calling it a "Gmail killer." The system, to be available to all of the website's users, combines text messaging, instant messaging, emails, and regular messages, and will include privacy settings similar to those of other Facebook services.
[edit]Networks, groups, and "like" pages
Facebook allows different networks and groups which many users can join. It also allows privacy settings on basis of networks. Groups are used for discussions, events, etc. and are a way of enabling a number of people to come together online to share information and discuss specific subjects. They are increasingly used by clubs, companies and public sector organizations to engage with stakeholders – be they members of the public, employees, members, service users, shareholders or customers. A group includes but is not limited to the following: the members who have joined, recent news contents, wall contents, photos, posted items, videos and all associated comments of such items. In this respect, groups are similar to "Like pages" (below) but contain a different set of features. Groups are limited to 300 groups per Facebook customer.
Since October 2010, there are version 0 (legacy) and version 1 (current) groups.[33] Version 1 or "new" groups can contain the name of the group in their URL if the email-address of the group is set. Groups do not have a RSS feed to export the wall or the member list, such as Pages or Events have, but third parties provide such service[34]
A flag which indicates if the group was created prior to launch of the current groups product in October 2010.
Facebook customers can create "Like Pages" which allow fans of an individual, organization, product, service, or concept to join a Facebook fan club. The Like Pages were introduced in November 2007. Like Pages look and behave much like a user's personal private profile, with some significant differences. Public Profiles are integrated with Facebook's advertising system, allowing Public Profile owners to easily advertise to Facebook's users. Owners can send updates to their fans, which shows up on their home page. They also have access to insights and analytics of their fan base.[35] Early on, users had the option to "become a fan" of the page until 19 April 2010[36] when the option was later changed to "like" the page. While an individual with a personal profile can acquire up to 5,000 friends, a "Like Page" can have an unlimited number of "Likers". "Like Pages" can also be customized by adding new Tabs using the Static FBML application. This powerful feature can bring additional functionality to a page such as e-mail collection, specialized content, or a landing page for sales activity. The URLs of "Like Pages" start with
http://www.facebook.com/pages... and include the name of the page.In April 2010 it was announced that "community pages" would integrate content from Wikipedia, under a Creative Commons license.[37]
[edit]News feed
On 6 September 2006, Ruchi Sangvhi announced a new home page feature called News Feed.[38] Originally, when users logged into Facebook, they were presented with a customizable version of their own profile. The new layout, by contrast, created an alternative home page in which users saw a constantly updated list of their friends' Facebook activity. News Feed highlights information that includes profile changes, upcoming events, and birthdays, among other updates. This has enabled spammers and other users to manipulate these features by creating illegitimate events or posting fake birthdays to attract attention to their profile or cause.[39] News Feed also shows conversations taking place between the walls of a user's friends. An integral part of the News Feed interface is the Mini-Feed, a news stream on the user's profile page that shows updates about that user. Unlike in the News Feed, the user can delete events from the Mini-Feed after they appear so that they are no longer visible to profile visitors. In 2011, Facebook updated the News Feed to show top stories and most recent stories in one feed, and the option to highlight stories to make them top stories, as well as to un-highlight stories. In response to users' criticism, Facebook later updated the News feed to allow users to view recent stories first.[40]
Initially, the addition of the News Feed caused some discontent among Facebook users. Many users complained that the News Feed was too cluttered and full of undesired information. Others were concerned that the News Feed made it too easy for other people to track activities like changes in relationship status, events, and conversations with other users. This tracking is often casually referred to as "Facebook-Stalking."[41] In response to this dissatisfaction, creator Mark Zuckerberg issued an apology for the site's failure to include appropriate customizable privacy features. Thereafter, users were able to control what types of information were shared automatically with friends.[42] Currently, users may prevent friends from seeing updates about several types of especially private activities, although other events are not customizable in this way.[43]
With the introduction of the "New Facebook" – in early February 2010 – came a total redesign of the pages, several new features and changes to News Feeds.[44] On their personal Feeds (now integrated with Walls), users were given the option of removing updates from any application as well as choosing the size they show up on the page. Furthermore, the community feed (containing recent actions by the user's friends) contained options to instantly select whether to hear more or less about certain friends or applications.[45]
[edit]Notifications
Notifications of the more important events, for example, someone sharing a link on the user's wall or commenting on a post the user previously commented on, briefly appear for a few seconds in the bottom left as a popup message (if the user is online), and a red counter is updated on the toolbar at the top, thus allowing the user to keep track of all the most recent notifications.
[edit]Phone
On September 2010, rumors of a "Facebook Phone" similar to Google's Android, circulated in business and tech industry news. In an interview with well-known technology blog Techcrunch, CEO Mark Zuckerberg was noted to have said, "Our strategy is very horizontal. We're trying to build a social layer for everything," while denying that they were attempting to compete with the Apple iPhone or Android.[46]
[edit]Photos
On April 11, 2011, Facebook launched a new feature for photo tagging – people can tag photos with a brand, product, company or person’s Facebook page, similar to the way they tag their friends in photos.[47] In August 2011, Facebook announced that it would be adding a series of photo filters to its mobile application.[48] Facebook plans to unveil nearly a dozen photo filters, which will be similar to Instragram's grainy images.[48] Per last known numbers, today in the world, highest number of photos are hosted at Facebook.
On Feb 9, 2012, a silicon valley startup company WeaverMobile announced its iPhone app "PhotoBox". It's a facebook photo app. One of the most useful features is "untag photos". Users can see all their being tagged photos as an album, and choose an untag button to remove those unfavored photos for privacy concerns.
[edit]Poke
The poke feature is intended to be a poke gesture (similar to "nudge" in instant messaging) to attract the attention of another user. Many Facebook users use this feature to attract attention or say "hello" to their friends.[49] A previous version of Facebook's FAQ gave additional insight into the origin of the feature, stating: "When we created the poke, we thought it would be cool to have a feature without any specific purpose. People interpret the poke in many different ways, and we encourage you to come up with your own meanings." Mark Zuckerberg during a live Facebook webinar.
There are several applications on Facebook which extend the idea of the poke feature by allowing users to perform other actions to their friends—such as "kick" or "wave to". People often reciprocate pokes back and forth until one side gives up, an event known as a "Poke War".
[edit]Smartphones
Many new smartphones offer access to the Facebook services either through their web-browsers or applications. The Facebook iPhone-compatible web site was launched August 2007 and as of July 2008 over 1.5 million people used it regularly, at the point when a free application for the iOS named "Facebook for iPhone" was launched.[50] Version 2.0 of this app was released in September 2008 and featured improved services such as being able to respond to friend requests and notifications.[51] Version 3.0 was released in August 2009 and added features such as events, and uploading video with an iPhone 3GS.[52] In the latest update for the Facebook for iPhone app, GPS use is also integrated in the app under the section "places" in which you can discover moments and experiences when you and your friends are at the same place at the same time. This app is compatible with iPhone 3G, 3Gs, 4, and 4S running iOS 3.0 or later.[53]
Microsoft developed an application for Facebook on their Windows Phone 7 platform, available in the Windows Phone Marketplace. You can pin elements such as Messages, Events, the News Feed, and Photos directly onto your homescreen. It also includes tile notifications for events, friend requests, tags, and so on. [54] Windows Mobile platform, including features such as messaging, uploading pictures and video straight from the device, managing profile information, contact integration allowing users to call anyone in their friends list that has their number in their profile information. It is also possible to add an chat feature to Windows Mobile via third-party software such as FIM, available in the Windows Mobile Marketplace. Nokia also offers a Facebook app on its Ovi Store for Nokia S60 devices such as the N97 and contains most of the functionality of the full website.[55]
Google's Android 2.0 OS automatically includes an official Facebook app. The first device to use this is the Motorola Droid. The app has options to sync Facebook friends with contacts, which adds profile pictures and status updates to the contacts list. Research In Motion also offers a Facebook application for the BlackBerry. It includes a range of functions, including an ability to integrate Facebook events into the BlackBerry calendar, and using Facebook profile pictures for Caller ID.[56]
[edit]Feature phones
Although like all other website apps Facebook made its presence on the smartphones as mentioned but also is present for the feature phones. As the company said that the feature phones dominate the American cell phone markets hence an app was exclusively made for this purpose as well.[57]
[edit]Status updates
"Status updates" (also called as a "status") allows users to post messages for their friends to read. In turn, friends can respond with their own comments, as well as clicking the "Like" button. A user's most recent updates appear at the top of their Timeline/Wall and is also noted in the "Recently Updated" section of a user's friend list. Originally, the purpose of the feature was to allow users to inform their friends of their current "status," including feelings, whereabouts, or actions, where Facebook prompted the status update with "Username is..." and users filled in the rest. This feature first became available in September 2006, though on December 13, 2007, the requirement to start a status update with is was removed.[58]
The is updates were followed by the "What are you doing right now?" status update question; in March 2009, the question was changed to "What's on your mind?"[59] In 2009, Facebook added the feature to tag certain friends (or groups, etc.) within one's status update by adding an @ character before their name, turning the friend's name into a link to their profile and including the message on the friend's wall. Tagging has since been updated to recognize friends' names by typing them into a status while a list of friends whose names match the inputted letters appears.
[edit]Ticker
In 2011, Facebook launched a ticker that showed all of their friends and pages updates. For example, it shows when their friends comment or like a status, and their status updates as soon as they posted them. If users do not have the chat sidebar open, the ticker appears on Facebook home next to the News Feed. If users do have the chat sidebar open, the ticker appears above the list of friends, and can be re-sized (it can't be if the chat sidebar isn't open). The ticker cannot be closed, and this has brought up concern among users, especially privacy concerns. However, Facebook has been keen to emphasize that the ticker only shows what people could see before – it just makes it "more discoverable".[60]
[edit]Timeline
Since December 15, 2011, a Timeline is the new virtual space in which all the content of every Facebook user will be organized and shown.[61] Replacing the Facebook Profile, in a Timeline the photos, videos, and posts of any given user will be categorized according to the period of time in which they were uploaded or created.[62] Posts and events are displayed along a timeline that runs through the center of the profile, with the option of adding events that occurred prior to the user joining Facebook as well as "hiding" posts.[63][64] Some experts[65] see this as a crucial step on the use of social networks.
Like the Wall, users can set Timeline privacy settings to change who can see their entire profile. Users' friends have the ability to post messages on the user's timeline.
Timeline was originally offered as an option, but all users will be migrated to the format despite considerable antipathy.[66]
[edit]URL shortener
On December 14, 2009, Facebook launched its own URL shortener based on FB.me domain name.[67] From that point on, all links based on facebook.com can be accessed after fb.me, which is seven characters shorter.
[edit]Usernames
Starting June 13, 2009, Facebook introduced a feature that allowed users to choose a Facebook username to make user location easier. The user is able to direct others to their page through a simple link such as www.facebook.com/username rather than an otherwise complex URL. This feature on Facebook quickly spread, with more than 1 million users registering usernames in the first three hours.[68] Usernames are now available to any existing or newly registered user.
According to the FAQ, "Facebook reserves the right to remove and/or reclaim any username at any time for any reason".[69]
[edit]Wall
The Wall is the original profile space where Facebook users' content, as of December, 2011, is shown. It allows the posting of messages, often short or temporal notes, for the user to see while displaying the time and date the message was written. A user's Wall is visible to anyone with the ability to see his or her full profile, and friends' Wall posts appear in the user's News Feed.
In July 2007, Facebook allowed users to post attachments to the Wall,[70] whereas previously the Wall was limited to text only. In May 2008, the Wall-to-Wall for each profile was limited to only 40 posts. Recently[when?] Facebook has allowed users to insert html code in boxes attached to the wall via apps like Static FBML which has allowed marketers to track use of their fan pages with Google Analytics.[71]
In addition to postings by other users, the Wall also displays other events that happened to the user's profile. It displays when information is changed, when they change their profile picture, and when they connect with new people, among other things.
The Wall is being replaced by the Timeline profile layout, which was introduced in December 2011.
[edit]Questions
On March 24, 2011, Facebook announced that its new product – Facebook Questions – facilitates short, poll-like answers in addition to long-form responses, and also links directly to relevant items in Facebook's directory of "fan pages." [72]
