Social network Facebook

Today, Facebook continues to grow and expand, the number of users exceeded 20 million per month, while the number of viewed pages by users is about 300 000 million per day. This makes the Facebook one of the largest social networks in the world.

Facebook functions
Facebook allows customers to create profiles with photos, to invite friends, send messages, inform other users about statuse updates, etc. Facebook also provides the ability to create groups of interest.

Facebook offers many features, with which users can interact. Among the most popular are the virtual winks, photo albums and a “wall”, where friends can leave messages.
The user can control the level of access to information published on the profile and determine who has access to some parts. In 2007, Facebook announced the initiative, which allows third-party developers to create programs for certain services and make money on it. This promotion is possible to integrate multiple functions (games, tools, sharing music and photos), which in turn stimulated the activity of users.

Also, now there is a mobile version of Facebook, the SSO function for mobile devices. SSO is an enhancement of the login process to the mobile application on Facebook, so that now users can access all the applications on Facebook platform for mobile devices at the touch of a button. When first using the SSO, a user allows access to the applications of basic information. This is public information that the user makes accessible to all users of Facebook (the name, profile photo, sex, and a list of friends).

Mobile version of the social network Facebook (m.facebook.com) is supported by any phone that has a web browser. But unfortunately, the browsers of most mobile phones do not display the full resource. The full support is only available on certain devices, such as iPhone, which allow to download pages of the site. Social network Facebook does not charge any fees for using the mobile version of the resource, so users only have to pay to use the mobile Internet.

Impact of facebook on today’s society
The influence of social networks on people’s lives is huge, while many people do not even realize the scale of this phenomenon, but social networking is the most popular activity on the Internet. Today, of the 100 most visited websites in the world 20 belong to social networking, and other 60 are to some extent socialized. Over 80% of companies around the world use social networking sites at work. About 78% of people trust information from social networks, that allows to influence millions of people. That is, social networks, such as Facebook, have become the center of today’s

Internet.
At the moment, Facebook is essentially a huge database with wide variety of information about hundreds of millions of people around the world, which is well structured, and personal data of many’ is already available to the public. The more people communicate in various social networks, the more information you can gather about them without any difficulties. That is why the controversial statement that “70% of information about people is gathered from open sources” now becomes quite believable. For example, Facebook offers its users to specify almost everything about themselves: interests, information about education, work, the place of living, personal thoughts, to downloads photos, video, etc. Most of the information is available without registration, it is just necessary to find the page of the user. In addition, all information, including personal letters, can see the administration of the network, despite the privacy settings.
Also speaking on the negative impact of the social network, researchers mention dependence of users on the Internet, and such a dependence gradually develops in many people who got into a social network. A person het used to “online” life in the network, and the more time he uses it, the more difficult it is for him to live a real life. If a person for a few days is away from the computer, he will have a strong desire to go online and other symptoms of addiction, leading to a kind of depression. Dependence leads to many problems: complexes, depression, anxiety, etc.
But despite such negative impact of communication in a social network, you must also say that Facebook gives people today a tremendous opportunity to communicate with friends and people from all over the world. Facebook opens great opportunities to socialize, to find friends with the same interests, for fun, to find work, to find love, etc. Thus, the impact and importance of social networks in today’s world only grows with each passing day.

Works cited
Womack B. (November 15, 2010). “Facebook Becomes Third Biggest US Web Company”. thejakartaglobe.com. Web. 28 July 2011
Ante Spencer E. (August 5, 2008). “Has Facebook’s Value Taken a Hit?”. businessweek.com. Web. 28 July 2011
Fitzgerald M. (October 19, 2009). “Social networking proves to benefit today’s society”. Medailee perspective.com. Web. 28 July 2011