ENTREPRENEURIAL VENTURE OF FACEBOOK.COM

Entrepreneurial Venture: facebook.com



TABLE OF CONTENTS



Executive Summary3

Introduction4

Company History5

Expansion of the Company8

Services Offered by Facebook9

Controversies12

Public or private space12

Sale of Personal Information to Private Companies12

Consequences of Disclosure of Privacy14

Movements and Instruments to Fight against Invasion of Privacy14

The Controversy Related to Beacon: The Opt-Out at the Opt-In15

Prosecution15

Future of Facebook16

Conclusion17

Bibliography18

Appendix20

Executive Summary

This paper is discussing the entrepreneurial venture of facebook.com, a social network website, which has been increased remarkably in its popularity among the general public around the world. The paper has identified the background of the website, the founders and the origin of the company. Further, it has described the growth and prosperity achieved by the company, and its expansion throughout the world. Firstly, it was built to serve only the students of Harvard University, but later on it extended its services to other students around the world. Now, it is being used by even the households and younger children. Employers are also using Facebook in order to recruit people.

The website is also used by businesses to sell or advertise their products and services online to numerous customers of eligible profiles. In the end, the paper has mentioned the controversies and issues appeared regarding the privacy of users, and the claims filed by different people against Facebook for hosting violent groups. Furthermore, the future directions of the website are also discussed.

Entrepreneurial Venture: facebook.com

Introduction

Facebook is a website of social networks created by Mark Zuckerberg and founded by Eduardo Saverin, Chris Hughes, Dustin Moskovitz and Mark Zuckerberg. Originally it was a site for the students at Harvard University but is now open to anyone with an email account. Users can participate in one or more social networks in relation to their academic status, place of work or geographic region.

The site has received much attention in the blogosphere and in the media to become a platform on which third parties can develop applications to do business from the network.

In the mid of 2007, Facebook launched its versions in French, German and Spanish to promote its expansion outside the United States, because its users were concentrated in the U.S., Canada and Great Britain only. In July 2010, Facebook has developed 500 million members, and translations into 70 languages. Original structure consists of a network of over 50,000 servers using distributions of operating system GNU / Linux using LAMP (Eldon, 2008, 41).

Facebook is a social network on the Internet that allows anyone with an account to create their profile and to publish information for which visibility is controlled by the Facebook to others. The use of this network extends from the simple sharing of private information (through photographs, links, text, etc.) to the constitution of pages and groups to make known institutions, companies or various causes. All the information published on these two media, unlike the profile, can be accessed by any user without the need to open an account (with the notable exception of the names of members who are partially obscured in this case) (Schwankert, 2007, ...