A teenager was stabbed to death on September 9th after a
party advertised on Facebook spiralled out of control. Jay Whiston, studying
A-levels at Frinton Technical College, died from a single stab wound to his
heart after he attended a party being held by a 15-year-old schoolgirl in an
upmarket neighbourhood in Colchester, Essex. More than 300 of Jay’s friends and
his family attended his funeral on 27th Sept where Jay has been
buried in a Cookie Monster coffin. The coffin was adorned with images of the
Sesame Street character, the Cookie Monster, who was a favourite of Jay’s when
he was growing up. The event was leaked on Facebook leading up to 100
gatecrashers. Although, it is still not clear what triggered the killing,
Police have released five teenagers on bail on suspicion of murder. Alhough
police have looked into the possibility that Jay stepped in to help a friend
who was being picked on.
Opinion
This is a perfect example of how social networking sites can have a
negative influence on society. If it wasn’t for facebook 17 year old, Jay
Whiston, may still be alive. Social networking over the years has been a key institution
is the spreading of word, a similar scenario on a larger scale would be the
recent London riots.
In 2011, Zynga, the owner of social games such as FarmVille, was
responsible for roughly 12% of Facebook’s earnings.
Facebook is now a publicly traded company. A $38 price tag valued the
world’s most popular social network at $104 billion. With 421 million shares on
sale, the Initial Public Offering (IPO) was expected to raise up to $18
billion.
Facebook is a social networking service launched in
February 2004, owned and operated by Facebook, Inc.
Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg with his college roommates and
fellow students Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum,
Dustin Moskovitz
and Chris Hughes.
93% of adult US internet users are on
facebook. About 152 million.
More than 60% men and women have used facebook to stalk their ex! Because
you cannot be caught that you are following and you will not be suffering any
humiliation. Al Pacino’s Face Was on the Original Facebook
Homepage (as seen in the image below).
Quotes
"A lot of
people are living their lives online in much more public ways with Facebook and
Twitter."
Dan Savage
"The thing
that we are trying to do at facebook, is just help people connect and
communicate more efficiently."
Mark Zuckerberg
"I am not a
fan of Facebook or Twitter. They both allow too much information to be
available and they make privacy a thing of the past."
Founded in 2004, Facebook’s mission is to make the world more open and
connected. People use Facebook to stay connected with friends and family, to
discover what’s going on in the world, and to share and express what matters to
them.
Employees
3,976 employees at the end of June 2012.
Statistics
955 million monthly active users at the end of June 2012.
Approximately 81% of our monthly active users are outside the U.S. and Canada.
552 million daily active users on average in June 2012.
543 million monthly active users who used Facebook mobile products in June
2012.
Offices
U.S. offices include: Atlanta; Austin; Detroit; Chicago; Dallas; Los
Angeles; Miami; New York; Seattle; Washington, DC; Prineville, Oregon. International offices include
: Amsterdam; Auckland; Brussels; Dublin;
Hamburg; Hong Kong; Hyderabad; London; Madrid; Milan; Paris; Selangor; Sao
Paulo; Singapore; Stockholm; Sydney; Tokyo; Toronto.
Facebook has affected the social life and activity of people
in various ways. With its availability on many mobile devices, Facebook allows
users to continuously stay in touch with friends, relatives and other
acquaintances wherever they are in the world, as long as there is access to the
Internet. It can also unite people with common interests and/or beliefs through
groups and other pages, and has been known to reunite lost family members and
friends because of the widespread reach of its network.
An example of this would be the reunion
between John Watson and his daughter who he had been searching for 20 years and
met after John found her FB profile.
Some argue that Facebook is beneficial to one's social life because they
can continuously stay in contact with their friends and relatives,
while others say that it can cause increased antisocial tendencies
because people are not directly communicating with each other. Some
studies have named Facebook as a source of problems in relationships.
Media impact
In April 2011, Facebook launched a new portal for marketers and creative
agencies to help them develop brand promotions on Facebook.The company began its push by inviting a select group
of British advertising leaders to meet Facebook's top executives in February
2010.
