A STUDY ON CUSTOMER SATISFACTION ATTAINED

FROM THE USAGE OF FACEBOOK APPLICATION

BY
J DINESH

MAAMALLAN INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

MAAMALLAN NAGAR
SRIPERUMBUDUR-602105
ABSTRACT
The dawn of internet has been one of the greatest creations of
mankind in the modern world which has evolved day by day.

And this internet has unleashed many sources especially for the
purpose of communication with people located in different localities. One
of such unleashed communication sources is the outbreak of chat rooms.

There are many chat rooms available from the dawn of internet which
has been competed by one another. Though it was for the purpose of
communication, due to the outbreak of different chat rooms, these chat
rooms seem to have entered into the service market competing with one
another.

The report is based on service marketing strategies implied in

marketing a particular product. This product has reached the peak within
a very short period of time penetrating through the market.

Within a period of five years face book has peaked the service
market, moving its competitors aside.

This report is about a research based on service quality of the

product viz face book.

This report provides information regarding what differentiates face book

from its competitors and the quality of the services rendered by it.

In this research, quality is going to be ascertained on the basis of

the level of satisfaction attained by different customers.

Hence this study is based on the responses given by the respondents to

the questionnaires asked.

In this study questionnaires are be asked through the face book

application itself. Here I myself am an active member of the face book. So
getting responses has been made easier for me. The questionnaires
prepared are being posted in the option known as wall in face book where
people can view this option in their wall and can comment easily. Hence
their time is not being consumed much for this study. Hence people when
they login, they can find it in their newsfeed screen in face book.

And for the purpose of an effective study, I had taken into

consideration the responses of the respondents of those who are not a
member of face book. However they are being clearly knowledged about
face book in order to get a proper response.

In this study, majority of the people are well aware about this product
and another important fact is that majority of the respondents are
teenaged people.

The sample size in this research is chosen at random from a population

which exceeds beyond borders in billions.
INTRODUCTION
In general consumers are known as the king
of capitalist economy.

The vital reason for existence of many things like competition ,

development, research, the very existence of the enterprises and
products is mainly for the purpose of customer satisfaction.

An enterprise or product which lacks customer satisfaction is sure to fall.

Customer satisfaction, a business term, is a measure of how products

and services supplied by a company meet or surpass customer
expectation. It is seen as a key performance indicator within business and
is part of the four of a Balanced Scorecard.

In a competitive marketplace where businesses compete for customers,

customer satisfaction is seen as a key differentiator and increasingly has
become a key element of business strategy.

There is a substantial body of empirical literature that establishes the

benefits of customer satisfaction for firms.

However attaining this customer satisfaction is a tough job as it differs

from consumer to consumer and from time to time.
OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY:

Primary objective:

The overall objective of study is to assess the

customer awareness situations in face book and its direct effect on
customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Secondary objectives:

i. to identify and analyse the service quality and communication

activities for creating customer awareness on merchandise activities
in face book;
ii. to study the effectiveness of strategies and communication on
customer awareness ;
iii. to identify the interventions for improving the effectiveness of service
marketing and customer retention;
iv. to identify the constraints faced by the customers in face book and to
suggest suitable ways and means to improve the sales.
SCOPE OF STUDY:
The study would enable the case firm to understand the
consumer profile, their preference regarding the application and
what they expect from face book on promotional communication. It
would also enable the firm to understand the customer awareness,
satisfaction pattern and problems encountered by consumers in the
application. The information on service quality gaps will be useful to
the case firm to identify specific or relatively important areas in
which consistent improvements are to be made.
This study also aims to suggest better strategies to be
adopted by the company for sustaining the existing consumers and
attracting new footfalls for enhancing the sales in their retail outlet.

CONCEPTS AND REVIEW

Review of related concepts and past studies will give a holistic picture and that
will in turn help us in analyzing and understanding the current problem in proper
perspective. An attempt will be made in this chapter to review the concepts and
to define the concepts that will be used in the present study. A review of the
past studies would also be made under here.

CONCEPTS

CUSTOMER
Stanton (1984) defined customer as an individual who consumes goods,
whether manufactured by business unit or created by nature such as air, water,
etc., and utilities offered by the government, business organizations like
hospitals, religious, educational and other voluntary organization etc.

Nagendra (1994) defined customer as a person who bought goods or

services for own use and needs and not for resale.

Cravens (1996) explained that customers represented people in families

and other kinds of households who purchased and used products and services in
order to satisfy their personal needs and wants.

According to Kotler (2000) customers included all the individuals and

households who purchased or acquired goods and services for personal
consumption.

Levy et al. (2008) defined customer as an individual who consumes

goods, and services of manufacturers or retailers.

In the present study customers are those who use the face book
application.

CUSTOMER RETENTION STRATEGIES

 Paul (2004) stated that customer retention is conceptualized as resulting
from customer perceptions of service quality and customer satisfaction.

Tellis (2004) defined customer retention as aggressive branding and

promotions tactics used by the sellers adopting traditional marketing approach.

Nihos (2004) stated that market consists of all the potential customers
sharing a particular need or want who might be willing to and able to engage in
exchange to satisfy their need or want.

Levy et al., (2008) defined customer retention as approaches that

retailers use to retain their best customers.

In the present study, customer retention strategies are the activities

taken out by the retailers to satisfy the customers and achieve the target.

CUSTOMER EXPECTATION
Sciffman and Kanuk (1992) stated that customer’s expectation was
usually based on familiarity and pervious experience.

Levy and Weitz (1992) stated that the customer expectations are based
on customer knowledge and experiences of customer with that particular store.

Kotler (2005) opined that customer expectations were formed by their

experiences word of mouth and advertising.

In present study, the expectation of the buyer was studied by learning

what they wanted from face book application, after considering the past
experience.

CUSTOMER SATISFACTION
Oliver (1981) stated that consumer satisfaction or dissatisfaction
is the outcome of consumer’s subjective comparison of expected &
received product attribute levels.

Varshney and Gupta (2000) explained that satisfaction is a

person’s feelings of pleasure or disappointment resulting from comparison
of a product’s perceived and actual performance to his or her
expectations. So, consumer’s satisfaction is a function of the product’s
perceived performance and the consumer’s expectation.

Kotler and Armstrong (2003) described customer satisfaction as

the extent to which a product’s perceived performance matches a buyer’s
expectations. If the product’s performance is higher than expectation, the
buyer is satisfied or delighted.

Berman and Evans (2004) explained customer satisfaction is a

feeling that a product has met or exceeded the customer’s expectation.

Kotler (2005) explained that the consumer’s satisfaction or

dissatisfaction would decide the consumer’s preference for the product and if he
was satisfied with the product, then he would exhibit a higher probability of
purchasing it again.

According to Levy et al., (2008) satisfaction is a post-consumption

evaluation of how well a store or product meets or exceeds customer
expectations.

In this study, customer satisfaction is defined as the function of

perceived performance of case firms and expectations from the
application.

CUSTOMER LOYALTY
Saxena (2002) explained that customer loyalty is an outcome of the
customer’s faith or confidence with the company’s offer. The customer believes
and continues to buy or select it for the reason that he/she sees it reflecting
his/her values.

Berman and Evans (2004) said that customer loyalty exists when a
person regularly patronizes a particular retailer that he or she knows likes and
trusts.

Levy et al., (2008) indicated that customer loyalty to a retailer means

that customers are committed to purchase merchandise and services from the
retailer and will resist the activities of competitors attempting to attract their
patronage.
 In this study consumer preference referred to the reasons preferred by
the consumers to use face book application as compared to the competitors.

AWARENESS
Rogers and Shoemaker (1971) defined awareness as a function or a
stage of decision process when the individual is exposed to an innovative
existence and gains some understanding of how it functions.

Venugopal and Perumal (1991) defined awareness as the thing known

to an individual is presented as a cognitive domain. It is a pre-requisite for
adoption of innovation as this would enable the farmers to completely
understand the aspects behind a technology and also its relative advantages.

Supe (1994) awareness is the first stage of innovative decision process

wherein the individual is exposed to an idea but lacks detailed information about it.

According to Reddy (2005) awareness meant that the individual

just came to know about an innovation without knowing details of it.

Kotler (2007) opined that, the consumer becomes aware of the

innovation but lacks information about it.

REVIEW OF PAST STUDIES

CUSTOMER SATISFACTION
Bhave (2001) found that with better understanding of customers'
perceptions, companies can determine the actions required to meet the
customers' needs. They can identify their own strengths and weaknesses, where
they stand in comparison to their competitors, chart out path future progress
and improvement. Customer satisfaction measurement helps to promote an
increased focus on customer outcomes and stimulate improvements in the work
practices and processes used within the company.

Gomez et al., (2004) in their study found that there are three main
antecedents to customer satisfaction in SERVICE MARKETING ie. customer
service, quality of different products & value for money.

Homburg et al., (2005) in their study revealed that there is an

existence of a strong positive impact of customer satisfaction on the willingness
to pay.

INDUSTRIAL PROFILE
INTERNET:
The Internet is a global system of
interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet Protocol
Suite (TCP/IP) to serve billions of users worldwide. It is a network of
networks that consists of millions of private, public, academic, business, and
government networks of local to global scope that are linked by a broad array of
electronic and optical networking technologies. The Internet carries a vast array
of information resources and services, most notably the inter-
linked hypertext documents of the World Wide Web (WWW) and the
infrastructure to support electronic mail.

Most traditional communications media, such as telephone and television

services, are reshaped or redefined using the technologies of the Internet, giving
rise to services such as Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) and IPTV. Newspaper
publishing has been reshaped into Web sites, blogging, and web feeds. The
Internet has enabled or accelerated the creation of new forms of human
interactions through instant messaging, Internet forums, and social networking
sites.

The origins of the Internet reach back to the 1960s when the United States
funded research projects of its military agencies to build robust, fault-tolerant
and distributed computer networks. This research and a period of civilian funding
of a new U.S. backbone by the National Science Foundation spawned worldwide
participation in the development of new networking technologies and led to
the commercialization of an international network in the mid 1990s, and resulted
in the following popularization of countless applications in virtually every aspect
of modern human life. As of 2009, an estimated quarter of Earth's population
uses the services of the Internet.

COMPANY PROFILE
Facebook is a social networking website launched in February 2004
and operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc. Users can add
people as friends and send them messages, and update their
personal profiles to notify friends about themselves. Additionally,
users can join networks organized by workplace, school, or college.
The website's name stems from the colloquial name of books given
to students at the start of the academic year by university
administrations in the US with the intention of helping students to
get to know each other better. Anyone age 13 or older can become
a Facebook user.

ORIGIN OF FACEBOOK:
Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg with his
college roommates and fellow computer science students Eduardo
Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes. The website's membership was
initially limited by the founders to Harvard students, but was expanded to other
colleges in the Boston area, the Ivy League, and Stanford University. It later
expanded further to include (potentially) any university student, then high
school students, and, finally, to anyone aged 13 and over. The original concept
for Facebook was borrowed from a product produced by Zuckerberg's prep
school Phillips Exeter Academy, which for decades published and distributed a
printed manual of all students and faculty, unofficially called the "face book". The
website currently has more than 400 million active users worldwide.

GLOBAL SCENARIO OF FACE BOOK:

According to the beta
news, “Face book's global growth catapults it to #1 worldwide”

New independent data shows Face book enjoyed 153 percent growth
year over year, while MySpace remains essentially flat. The site's growth
is biggest overall outside of the US.
Overall, Face book attracted 132.1 million unique users in June,
compared to 117.6 million for MySpace, according to data from comScore
released this week. Another site that saw impressive growth was Hi5,
which doubled its unique user base to 56.4 million.
 ComScore's data seems to indicate that the market for social
networking in North America has matured, showing only 9% year-over-
year growth. But that's not the case elsewhere.

Evidence of a large untapped global market can be found in the

66% growth rate in the Middle East and Africa, and 35% and 33% growth
rates in Europe and Latin America, respectively.

Facebook is another story. Its growth is led by Latin America,

which saw a eleven-fold growth rate: users jumped to nearly 12 million in
June from just over 1 million a year ago. Similarly, Facebook more than
quadrupled its user base in the Middle East/Africa and Asia Pacific regions,
and tripled it in Europe.
Non-US users now make up an overwhelming majority of Facebook's user
base -- 63%, in fact. This can likely be tracked to its efforts to localize the
site: It's now available in some 89 languages, contributing to faster
growth.
"By increasing the site's relevance to local markets through local language
interface translation, the site is now competing strongly or even capturing
the lead in several markets where it had a relatively minor presence just
a year ago," comScore's Flanagan said.
Facebook's competitors seem to be pursuing a different strategy when
dealing with international markets. Hi5 released tools to allow its users to
localize the site into various languages, while supplementing it with its
own work in translating services.
MySpace is doing things much differently. Instead of expanding
everywhere and anywhere, it seems focused on developing markets
where there are not only latent users, but also ad dollars. The company
believes that this strategy is the more viable one for expansion outside
the US.

As very close followers of Facebook’s growth and metrics, we at

Inside Facebook have been absolutely astounded by Facebook’s
international growth in 2009 and 2010.

At the beginning of 2008, Facebook’s international audience totaled

34 million people. By the first day of 2009, that number had
increased to 95 million – making nearly 70% of the total Facebook
audience. Today, this number is well over 400 million.

Dozens of these markets are still growing at double digit rates

every month – and for many, those growth rates are increasing.
Facebook’s growth rate accelerated by at least 25% in 47 countries
in one recent quarter. Its quarterly growth rate more than doubled
in 28 of those countries.

Now translated into over 100 languages, Facebook has shown that it
can penetrate nearly one third of the entire national population in
multiple developed markets, and we expect this to be true of many
more countries in the near future.

THE STRIKE OF FACEBOOK:

Facebook received its first investment of US$500,000 in June 2004

from PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel, in exchange for 7% of the company.[45] This
was followed a year later by $12.7 million in venture capital from Accel Partners,
and then $27.5 million more from Greylock Partners.[45][46] A leaked cash flow
statement showed that during the 2005 fiscal year, Facebook had a net loss of
$3.63 million.[47]

With the sale of social networking website MySpace to News Corp on July 19,

2005, rumors surfaced about the possible sale of Facebook to a larger media
company.[48] Zuckerberg had already said he did not want to sell the company,
and denied rumors to the contrary. [49] On March 28,
2006, BusinessWeek reported that a potential acquisition of Facebook was under
negotiation. Facebook reportedly declined an offer of $750 million from an
unknown bidder, and it was rumored the asking price rose as high as $2 billion.
[50]

In September 2006, serious talks between Facebook and Yahoo! took place

concerning acquisition of Facebook, with prices reaching as high as $1 billion.
[51]
 Thiel, by then a board member of Facebook, indicated that Facebook's
internal valuation was around $8 billion based on their projected revenues of
$1 billion by 2015, comparable to Viacom's MTV brand, a company with a shared
target demographic audience.[52]

On July 17, 2007, Zuckerberg said that selling Facebook was unlikely because he
wanted to keep it independent, saying "We're not really looking to sell the
company... We're not looking to IPO anytime soon. It's just not the core focus of
the company."[53]

In September 2007, Microsoft approached Facebook, proposing an investment in

return for a 5% stake in the company, offering an estimated $300–500 million.
[54]
 That month, other companies, including Google, expressed interest in buying
a portion of Facebook.[55]

On October 24, 2007, Microsoft announced that it had purchased a 1.6% share
of Facebook for $240 million, giving Facebook a total implied value of around
$15 billion.[56] However, Microsoft bought preferred stock that carried special
rights, such as "liquidation preferences" that meant Microsoft would get paid
before common stockholders if the company is sold. Microsoft's purchase also
included rights to place international ads on Facebook. [57]

In November 2007, Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing invested $60 million in

Facebook.[58]

In August 2008, BusinessWeek reported that private sales by employees, as well

as purchases by venture capital firms, had and were being done at share prices
that put the company's total valuation at between $3.75 billion and $5 billion. [57]

In October 2008, Zuckerberg said "I don't think social networks can be
monetized in the same way that search did... In three years from now we have
to figure out what the optimum model is. But that is not our primary focus
today."[59]

In August 2009, Facebook acquired social media real-time news

aggregator FriendFeed,[60] a startup created by the former Google employee
and Gmail's first engineer Paul Buchheit who, while at Google, coined the phrase
"Don't be evil".[61][62][63]

In September 2009, Facebook claimed that it had turned cash flow positive for
the first time.[64]

In February 2010, Facebook acquired Malaysian contact-importing startup

Octazen Solutions.[65]

On April 2, 2010, Facebook announced acquisition of photo-sharing service

called Divvyshot for an undisclosed amount. [66]

In June 2010, an online marketplace for trading private company stock reflected

a valuation of $11.5 billion.[67]
 Total registered users
Date Users (in millions) Days later
GROWTH:
August 26, 2008 100 1,665
April 8, 2009Facebook
200 Now Nearly
225 Twice The Size Of
September 15,MySpace
2009 300 160
 Worldwide
February 5, 2010 400 143
— 500 In November 2008 Facebook drew 200 million unique
139 (ongoing)
worldwide visitors; more than 1 in 5 people who accessed the Internet that
month visited the site. When sites are that big growth generally stagnates, but
in Facebook’s case it’s still skyrocketing. In December, 222 million people
visited the site says newly released Comscore stats, a 10.8% month over
month growth rate. 22% of the total Internet audience went to Facebook in
December.

Facebook now has nearly 100 million more worldwide users than MySpace,
which added 4 million new users in December to 125 million total. The page
view difference is more dramatic – Facebook had 80 billion monthly page views
in December v. 43 billion for MySpace. Just six months ago the sites were
about the same size.

Facebook, still a private company, is the world’s default social network.

MySpace is still the king in the U.S., but trends suggest that 2009 is its last
year on top. By January 2010, at current relative growth rates, Facebook will
overtake MySpace as the largest U.S. social network as well.

We reached out to MySpace for a comment on the growth trends. They say
“We are laser focused on building a sustainable global business which we
measure by profits and revenue – not just eyeballs. In a tough economic
climate, our international revenue is up 35 percent year over year and we
continue to focus on those markets with the strong monetization opportunities.
Additionally, MySpace continues to dominate the U.S. market–where the bulk
of online advertising revenues reside–both in terms of monetization and user
engagement with more than 76 million unique users and a 40% spike in
engagement year over year.”

Given below is the comparative graphical growth rate of facebook and myspace
Facebook No Longer The Second Largest
Social Network

It was sort of inevitable given Facebook’s monster growth over the last
few years, but April 2008 was the milestone: Facebook  officially caught
up to MySpace  in terms of unique monthly worldwide visitors, according
to data released by Comscore and shown above. Both services are
attracting around 115 million people to their respective sites each
month.
Most of Facebook’s user growth, however, has been in international
markets – MySpace is still dominates Facebook in the U.S. market, with
72 million monthly uniques. Facebook has 36 million monthly uniques,
up from 23 million a year ago.

Facebook added 75 million monthly uniques over the last twelve month,
but just 13 million of those visitors are located in the U.S. MySpace
added 5 million U.S. uniques during that period – at this rate it will take
4+ years for Facebook to catch up to MySpace in the U.S. market.

There’s a real question about how valuable all these international users
are from an advertising standpoint. We’ll be publishing our thoughts on
that next week.
FACE BOOK IN INDIA:
Social networking site Facebook will be
launching its India operations from Hyderabad – its first office in Asia –
within two months from now. A proposal to this effect was cleared by the
government on Saturday.

Facebook’s new centre in Hyderabad will come up at the Raheja

Mindspace special economic zone (SEZ), and will supplement operations
supported out of Palo Alto, California, Dublin, Ireland and Texas.

In a press release on Sunday, the state information technology and

communications (ICT) department said about five IT companies had been
accorded permission by the unit committee meeting of the development
commissioner, AP IT SEZs, to set up their offices in a total area of
391,000 sft in different SEZs. Prominent among these are Facebook India
Online Services Private Limited, Accenture and Invesco.

"Vijayawada is being preferred as an alternative Tier-II IT destination in

view of its strategic location," the release said.

An IT SEZ in an area of 30 acre with 200,000 sft has been developed in

Vijayawada by the Andhra Pradesh Industrial Infrastructure Corporation
(APIIC), in association with L&T Info City, which is ready for occupation.

The approval committee gave its go-ahead to four companies – Tektraks,

Exranet Software Solutions, Indermax and Galla IT Services – to set up
their operations at the IT SEZ, according to the release.

COMPETITION:
Face book is battling with awareness that
it takes its users for granted as it makes changes that both infuriate and
frustrate its subscriber base.

Some of the competitors of face book are listed below

 Appleseed
 Collegiate nation
 Onesocial web
 Crabgrass
 Elgg
FACEBOOK FEATURES:
General
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 are only able to chat with their
Facebook friends and on a one-to-one basis, although a user may chat with multiple friends
simultaneously through separate chat interfaces. Instant messaging clients that currently
support Facebook Chat include eBuddy, Flock, Miranda
IM, Digsby, Adium, Nimbuzz, FIM (Windows Mobile)Palringo (Windows Mobile), Tokbox with
a Firefox plugin as well as Pidgin with a cross-platform plug-in. Windows Live Messenger
with Buddyfuse (plugin) can connect to Facebook as well. Facebook Chat can also be run on
the desktop using Gabtastik, a dedicated web chat browser. 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[3]; this functionality became operational on
February 10, 2010[4]. A Facebook help article containing all the information required to
connect most popular XMPP supporting IM clients to Facebook's chat service is available.

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 on many popular games such as Happy Aquarium, Happy
Island, Zoo Paradise, Happy Pets, Hello City,[5] FarmVille, and Mafia Wars.

Starting in early August of 2010, Facebook is partnering with the electronic payments
company MOL to sell Facebook Credits at half a million 7-Eleven stores, Internet
cafés, online banks and other retailers in Asia.

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.[citation needed]
 Facebook chat supports some unusual emoticons
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 main communications 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."[7]

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.

Lite
In August 2009, Facebook announced the rollout of a "lite" version of the site, optimized for
users on slower or intermittent Internet connections. Facebook Lite offered fewer services,
excluded most third-party applications and required less bandwidth. A beta version of the
slimmed-down interface was released first to invited testers before a broader rollout across
users in the United States, Canada, and India. It was announced on 20 April 2010 that
support for the "lite" service had ended and that users would be redirected back to the
normal, full content, Facebook website. The service was only operational for eight months.

Messages and Inbox

Since the website's founding, it has allowed users to send messages to each other.

Networks, Groups, and Pages

Facebook allows different networks and groups to which many users can join. It also allows
privacy settings on basis of networks. Groups are used for discussions and events etc.
Groups 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,
discussion board contents, wall contents, photos, posted items, videos and all associated
comments of such items. In this respect, groups are similar to pages but contain more
features[citation needed]. Groups are limited to roughly 300 groups per user.

Individuals or companies can create "Like Pages" which allows users to "like" the individual,
product, service, or concept. 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. Early on, users had
the option to "become a fan" of the page until April 19, 2010 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.

News Feed
On 6 September 2006, Farooq Khan announced a new home page feature called News
Feed. 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.[14] 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.

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." 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. Currently, users may prevent friends
from seeing updates about several types of especially private activities, although other
events are not customizable in this way.
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. 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.

Notifications
Notifications of the more important events, e.g. someone sharing a link on the user's wall or
commenting on a post the user previously commented on, appear in the bottom left. When a
user is online, new notifications appear on their screen, keeping the user up to speed with
events as they are occurring.

Pokes
The poke feature is intended to be a "nudge" to attract the attention of another user. Many
facebook users use this feature to attract attention or say "hello" to their friends.[20] It can also
be interpreted as flirting. 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."

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"—
including Slide.com's SuperPoke! application. People often reciprocate pokes back and forth
until one side gives up, an event known as a "Poke War".
Server infrastructure
At QCon San Francisco 2008, Director of Engineering Aditya Agarwal indicated that the
front-end servers are running a PHP LAMP stack with the addition of Memcached, and the
back-end services are written in a variety of languages including C+
+, Java, Python and Erlang. Other components of the Facebook infrastructure (which have
been released as open source projects) include Scribe, Apache Thrift and Apache
Cassandra, as well as existing open-source components such as ODS.

In January 2010, Facebook confirmed it is building the company's first custom data center in
Prineville, Oregon. When completed in June 2011, the 147,000 square feet (13,700 m2)
building will occupy 30 acres (0.12 km2) of the 124 acres (0.50 km2) site they purchased, and
will house 35 employees.
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.[25] 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.[26] Version 3.0 was released in August 2009 and
added features such as events, and uploading video with a iPhone 3GS.[27]

Nokia 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.[28]

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.

Status Updates
Facebook has a feature called "status updates" (also referred to simply as "status") which
allows users to post messages for all their friends to read. In turn, friends can respond with
their own comments, and also press the "Like" button to show that they enjoyed reading it. A
user's most recent status update appears at the top of their profile, 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" (i.e. their current feelings, whereabouts or actions) by referring to themselves in the
third person (e.g. "George is happy" or "John is with Robert at his house"). However, users
are no longer required to write in the third person. Facebook originally prompted the status
update with "Username is..." and Facebook users filled in the rest. However, on December
13, 2007, the requirement to start a status update with is was removed.[30] The question
"What are you doing right now?" was introduced. In March 2009, the status update question
was changed from "What are you doing right now?" to "What's on your mind?"[31]

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.
URL shortener
On December 14, 2009, Facebook launched its own URL shortener based on FB.me domain
name. From that point on, all links based on facebook.com can be accessed under fb.me,
which is seven characters shorter.

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.[33] 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".[34]

Wall
The Wall is a space on each user's profile page that allows friends to post messages for the
user to see while displaying the time and date the message was written. One user's Wall is
visible to anyone with the ability to see his or her full profile, and different users' Wall posts
show up in an individual's News Feed. Many users use their friends' Walls for leaving short,
temporal notes. More private discourse is saved for messages, which are sent to a user's
inbox, and are visible only to the sender and recipient(s) of the message, much like email.

In July 2007, Facebook allowed users to post attachments to the Wall,[35] 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 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.[36]

Applications
Events
Facebook events are a way for members to let friends know about upcoming events in their
community and to organize social gatherings.[37] Events require an event name, network,
host name, event type, start and end time, location, and a guest list of friends invited. Events
can be open, closed, or secret. When setting up an event the user can choose to allow
friends to upload photos or videos.

Marketplace
In May 2007, Facebook introduced the Facebook Marketplace allowing users to post free
classified ads within the following categories: For Sale, Housing, Jobs, and Other. Ads can
be posted in either available or wanted format.[38] The market place is available for all
Facebook users and is currently free.[39]. In 2009, Facebook transferred ownership of the
Marketplace to Oodle.

Notes
Facebook Notes was introduced on 22 August 2006, a blogging feature that allowed tags
and embeddable images. Users were later able to import blogs
from Xanga, LiveJournal, Blogger, and other blogging services.[41]

A recent use of Notes includes the Internet meme - "25 Random Things About Me" which
involves writing 25 things about the user that their friends don't already know about them
and using the tag function to ask 25 friends to also do so. Nearly 5 million "25 Random
Things" notes were written on Facebook profiles in the first week of February 2009.[42]

Questions
In May 2010, Facebook began testing Questions, an application in which users submit
questions for their friends to answer. It is expected to compete directly with services such
as Yahoo! Answers.

Photos
One of the most popular applications on Facebook is the Photos application, where users
can upload albums of photos, tag friends, and comment on photos. According to Facebook,
[44]
 in May 2007 there were:

 1.7 billion user photos

 2.2 billion friends tagged in user photos
 160 terabytes of photo storage used with an extra 60 terabytes available
 60+ million photos added each week which take up 5 terabytes of disk space
 3+ billion photo images served to users every day
 100,000+ images served per second during peak traffic windows

Videos
During the time that Facebook released its platform, it also released an application of its own
for sharing videos on Facebook. Users can add their videos with the service by uploading
video, adding video through Facebook Mobile, and using a webcam recording feature.
Additionally, users can "tag" their friends in videos they add much like the way users can tag
their friends in photos, except the location of the friend in the video is not displayed. Users
also have the option of video messaging. Videos cannot be placed in categories, whereas
photos are sorted by albums.
Former features
GIFTS:

In February 2007, Facebook added a new virtual gift feature to the website. Friends

could send gifts - small icons of novelty items designed by former Apple designer Susan
Kare - to each other by selecting one from Facebook's virtual gift shop and adding a
message. Gifts given to a user appear on the recipient's wall with the giver's message,
unless the giver decided to give the gift privately, in which case the giver's name and
message is not displayed to other users. Additionally, all gifts (including private gifts)
received by a user are displayed in the recipient's gift box (right above their wall on their
profile), marked with either the first name of the user (for public gifts) or the word "Private."
An Anonymous option is also available, by which anyone with profile access can see the gift,
but only the recipient sees the message. None will see the giver's name, and the gift goes in
the recipient's gift box but not the wall.

Facebook users are given one free gift to give upon registering their account. Each
additional gift given by a user costs US$1.00. The initial selection of gifts was Valentine's
Day themed, and 50% of the net proceeds (after credit card processing fees were taken out,
etc.) received through February 2007 were donated to the charity Susan G. Komen for the
Cure. After the month of February, the proceeds were no longer donated. Soon after,
Facebook began making one new gift available each day, most of which had a limited supply
or were available for a limited time.

On 8 November 2008, Facebook changed the $1.00 per gift model to a micro-payment
model of 100 points per $1.00, with the existing gifts costing 100 points. They plan to allow a
wider variety of gifts in the future.

With the advent of Applications came a way to subvert the required US$1.00 payment;
however, the gifts in the Free Gifts application, created by Zachary Allia, are not the same as
the official gifts, as they are displayed in a different manner.

The built-in Gifts feature will be removed on August 1, 2010, to allow Facebook to focus on
more important website features. Existing gift-giving applications can be used as a
replacement for the Gifts feature.

10 LESS KNOWN FEATURES OF FACEBOOK:

1. Tag other people in status updates
This feature was released earlier this week and is not well understood by the majority of
Facebook users. For those of us that are savvy to Twitter, it’s a pretty simple transition as it
functions the same way. You call someone out or speak directly to them by typing the @
symbol and then their name in your status update or on someone else’s wall. Facebook has
programmed the feature to not only tag them, but also link to the said person’s Facebook
page. Once you’ve posted your tag, anyone who sees the status update will see your friends
name posted as a hyperlink and have the option of navigating to his or her page.

2. Block people on chat

This feature wasn’t available when Facebook chat launched. As a woman, my initial
experience was not always good when up late working - lonely dudes would pop-up to say
“hello,” looking to find out what I was “up to tonight.” Creepy. Thankfully FB has finally
provided the option to prohibit this from happening. To block people from chat, you have to
organize them under one group which you can then choose to be inactive in chat. Be careful
though, if they’re filed under another group as well (i.e. “work friends” and “block from
chat”),they will still show up in chat under the group that you haven’t blocked!

3. Create a “top friends” list, without an app

That’s right, just like MySpace, you can easily separate your top friends from the rest so
everyone can see who your favorite people are, without using an external app! It is a new
feature that was introduced when Facebook unveiled their new layout. To edit your top
friends, view your own profile and click the “edit” button in the friends section. Type the
names of your friends who you want to be permanently highlighted on your friends list and
they will remain there until you remove or replace them.

4. Login with your username

Another newly introduced feature, Facebook makes it easier to login by giving you the option
of entering your username instead of your email. The ease of this option is especially
noticeable when logging in from a mobile device where typing can be time consuming and
awkward. Don’t have a username yet? Go tofacebook.com/username and pick your vanity
URL!

5. Edit the tabs on your profile

Just click the “+” button in your tabs section to choose which applications you’d like easier
navigation to. This feature makes it simple to promote a cause that’s important to you or
encourage people to join you on YoVille. Oh no, did I really just give advice on how to further
promote YoVille?
6. Publicize your event without sending annoying messages

Easy to do, just change the time on your event and everyone on the list will get a notification
of the time change in the bottom right hand corner of their homepage. This is a very subtle
way to remind people about your event!

7. Select multiple people at a time for Facebook event invites

By default, Facebook doesn’t allow you to invite your whole friends list to your event,
obviously as a measure to reduce spam. You can get around this, however, if you take the
time to organize all of your friends into specific groups - Facebook does allow you to select
all in a given group or network for quick inviting!

8. Restrict your wall activity

If you’re spending too much time looking at your own wall or tired of friends posting
inappropriate comments that family and co-workers can see, you can disable wall posts from
specific people to keep your reputation, and perhaps sanity, in tact.

9. Use your friend groups to easily send messages

Compose a message on Facebook and easily send to all your friends by typing their names
in the ”To” line. The big downside is that you can’t blind carbon copy (bcc) anyone, and
anyone who responds will send their message to the whole group. Be cautious when
sending group messages and be sure everyone on list would benefit from getting updates
and responses from other group members. Otherwise it’s best and more respectful to take
the time to send individual messages.

10. Changing Your Privacy Settings

For those of us who use Facebook regularly, we probably know how to do this, but I still run
into a lot of people who don’t. If you don’t want the boss to know what you’re “really” doing at
work, lump him into a group titled “work friends” and tweak that group’s settings from viewing
your status updates and anything else you don’t want them to see. Facebook privacy
settings are incredibly specific - you can personalize each list to see, or not see, pretty much
anything on your profile, giving you total control over your personal brand.