Think Before You Engage: 100 Questions to Ask Before Starting a Social Media Marketing Campaign

45. Why Do So Many People Use Facebook?

Facebook is a social networking website intended to connect friends, families, business associates, and anyone else. It began as a college networking website and has expanded to include the general public (see Figure 7-1).

FIGURE 7-1: The Facebook home page

It was founded in 2004 by Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg and originally was called thefacebook. It was quickly successful on campus and expanded beyond Harvard into other Ivy League schools. With the phenomenon growing in popularity, Zuckerberg enlisted two other students, Duston Moskovitz and Chris Hughes, to assist. Within just a few months, Zuckerberg's simple networking project became a nationwide college networking website.

As the site continued growing and the site went national, both Zuckerberg and Moskovitz left Harvard to work full time on the Facebook. In August 2005, after securing the rights to the domain Facebook.com for a reported $200,000, they renamed it Facebook. During this time, access to the site was available only to schools, universities, organizations, and a limited number of companies in English-speaking countries. Since this time, the site has expanded to open registration for anyone who wants to sign up.

Facebook users create a profile page that shows information ...