Facebook posts US $ 3.6 b net income in 2015

This week, we look at Facebook, the social network and technology company.

Facebook is the world's biggest social media site with over 1.6 billion active users. It aims to bring people together via the internet. After registering to use the site, users can create a user profile, add other users as friends, exchange messages, post status updates and photographs, share videos, use various apps and receive notifications when others update their profiles.

Users may join common-interest groups, organised by the workplace, school or college, or other characteristics. Facebook helps users to choose their own privacy settings and choose who can see specific parts of their profile.

It is the second most visited website in the world after Google, according to the Amazon-owned internet rankings company, Alexa. It supports all major languages, including Sinhala and Tamil.

Facebook began only in 2004. The origins of Facebook have been in dispute from the very week, 19-year-old Mark Zuckerberg launched the site as a Harvard sophomore on February 4, 2004.

Then called 'thefacebook.com', the site that aimed to connect Harvard students was an instant hit. The name was apparently taken from the sheets of paper distributed to freshmen, profiling students and staff. Within 24 hours, 1,200 Harvard students had signed up, and after one month, over half of the undergraduate population had a profile.

A week after he launched the site, Mark was accused by three Harvard seniors of having stolen the idea from them.

The primary dispute around Facebook's origins centered around whether Mark had entered into an 'agreement' with the Harvard seniors, Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss and a classmate Divya Narendra, to develop a similar web site for them - and then, instead, stalled their project while taking their idea and building his own.

Extended network

Although the lawsuits filed in this connection were settled later, many people still have lingering doubts on whose story is correct.

The network was promptly extended to other Boston universities, the Ivy League and eventually all US universities. It became facebook.com in August 2005 after the address was purchased for $200,000. US high schools began signing up from September 2005, then it spread worldwide.

As of September 2006, the network was extended beyond educational institutions to anyone with a registered email address. By this, one can say that Facebook's actual tenth anniversary falls this year.

Coincidentally, bitter Facebook rival Twitter also celebrates its 10th anniversary this year. Facebook was close to buying Twitter at one time, but the deal never materialised. Facebook now has a market cap of over US$ 300 billion. It earned a revenue of US$ 18 billion and a net income of US$ 3.6 billion in 2015. Facebook depends almost entirely on advertising for its revenue, since users do not have to pay anything for using it.

One billion video views

Today, Facebook has become the de-facto site on the internet for many companies who seem to prefer it to having a website of their own. Facebook has nearly 13,000 employees worldwide.

Facebook also owns What's App, Instagram, Virtual Reality maker Oculus (whose Rift VR headset will be available throughout the world soon) and PrivateCore.

Facebook also offers the Messenger service as a separate app on iOS, Android and Windows. Users can chat by text and audio on Facebook, while video calling support is provided through Microsoft's Skype.

In September 2014, Facebook said it delivers one billion video views per day, only second to Google's You Tube. In addition to the Pc/Mac versions, you can access Facebook through apps on iOS, Android, Windows and Blackberry platforms, though in a controversial move, Facebook will soon end Blackberry support.

Facebook's 'Like' button for expressing your support for a particular posting or video is a very popular feature of the site. Facebook recently added more 'Reactions' emojis to convey other expressions including 'love, ha-ha, wow, sad or angry' to express their reaction.

Posts in News Feed will now show a tally of the reactions - how many loves, how many wows - a post gets.

"Not every moment you want to share is happy," CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote in a Facebook post. "Sometimes you want to share something sad or frustrating. Our community has been asking for a dislike button for years, but not because people want to tell friends they don't like their posts. People want to express empathy and make it comfortable to share a wider range of emotions."

Many users decamp the site on a regular basis. A 2013 study examined the reasons users eventually quit the site. It found the most common reasons were privacy concerns (48%), general dissatisfaction with Facebook (14%), negative aspects regarding Facebook friends (13%) and the feeling of getting addicted to Facebook (6%). Facebook also has a large number of profile pages of people who have since passed on, but the pages remain active for others to pay tributes.

Facebook quitters were found to be more concerned about privacy, more addicted to the internet and more conscientious. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is the world's sixth richest person according to Forbes. He is closing in on Amazon founder Jeff Bezos who is on fifth place. Sheryl Sandberg is the Chief Operating Officer of Facebook.

Facebook is headquartered in Menlo Park, California. It opened an office in India in 2010. Facebook has data centres in the US and Sweden and does not use third party cloud vendors such as Google and Microsoft. Facebook is keen to provide free internet to the developing world, but its 'free basics' program has run into controversy in countries such as India. Facebook also wants to use other techniques such as drones to deliver the internet. Incidentally Facebook is either censored or totally banned in some countries including China, Iran and Bangladesh.

The story of Facebook's origin is recounted vividly in the David Fincher film 'The Social Network' which had the tagline "You don't make 500 million friends without making a few enemies". With a soaring screenplay by Aaron Sorkin, the film which starred look-alike Jesse Eissenberg was a major blockbuster.

Next week: Google/Alphabet