Image via CrunchBase Facebook is the most popular social networking website which was launched in the year 2004. Currently, this website contains more than six hundred million users. A member of Facebook has the ability to create a profile on the site and include other users of the site in his/her friends list.

The members can pass any types of messages to other users of the site and notifications could be sent automatically whenever they update their profile information. Also, the users may become a member of any of their desired groups which could be a school, college, workplace or interest group.  To become a member of this site, a user must be at least thirteen years of age.

Facebook was invented by Mark Zuckerberg along with his roommates and some important fellow students of computer science Dustin Moskovitz, Eduardo Saverin and Chris Hughes. At first, only the students of Harvard University were allowed to join the site and later college students of the Boston region, Ivy League and the University of Stanford were also included in the website. Then, the site was gradually opened to all the students of Universities and high school and at last, everyone above the age of thirteen were able to join the site.

Computer.com conducted a study in the year of 2009 that revealed that Facebook is the most commonly utilized social networking website across the world. During October 2010, Quantcast estimated that Facebook was visited by 135.1 million US users each month. Based on a study conducted by Social Media Today during April 2010, above forty one percentages of United States people contain an account on Facebook.  Facebook is however blocked in China by the government, and users there use an alternative called RenRen.com.

The source of majority of the revenue income of Facebook is advertising and marketing. Microsoft is the main partner of Facebook in banner advertising. Facebook gathers the same amount of details from the users as Microsoft and Google, however much less than the site Yahoo!  Users have the choice of uploading their pictures in their profile along with their interests, contact details and other personal details as they wish. Private and public chat messaging facility is also available in the site through which the users can communicate with each other.  Users also have the ability to alter their privacy settings to restrict any unwanted members gaining access to their profile information on the site.

Claire Jarrett runs Marketing By Web, who offer Pay Per Click Advertising and SEO Bristol