The Evolution of Facebook

When Facebook began in a Harvard dorm room in 2004, co-founder Mark Zuckerberg couldn’t have imagined that it would be the enormous social network that it is today. What began as only 650 registered students grew to 10,000 over one month and now has reached almost 500 million people throughout the world.

Senior Melissa Munson has heard of the college student who invented Facebook from his Harvard dorm room. She checks her Facebook four to five times a day.

“Facebook has changed the way people live. People may even give it more significance in their life than it deserves.” Munson said. “It helps and can hinder people in many ways.”

Zuckerberg has become an advocate for helping people through Facebook. With the new Facebook stories you can share your own story about the impact Facebook has had on you and your friends’ lives.

“I could have never imagined all of the ways people would use Facebook when we were getting started 6 years ago,” Zuckerberg said via Facebook. “Our mission at Facebook is to help make the world more open and connected.”

Psychology and women’s studies senior Melissa Lininger enjoys Facebook and has had a page since her sophomore year.

“I like keeping a connection with my friends overseas in Finland,” Lininger said. “We use Facebook chat to talk about what has been going on in our lives.”

Zuckerberg says Facebook’s most important pieces are not its membership but the portion of the wired world using the site. The information, photographs, news articles and status updates zipping across its servers are something that cannot be ignored.

Sharing all of this information can cause users some trouble. According to David Kirkpatrick, author of “The Facebook Effect,” at least 30 percent of employers reject applicants for a position based on the contents of their Facebook page.

Lininger is not worried at all about the job hunt.

“I am not worried about finding a job with my Facebook,” Lininger said. “I barely have any photographs on Facebook that are even remotely incriminating.”

What began as an online student communication center has now grown into a world wide social network. Accounting and information systems junior Scott Fishbeck checks Facebook a couple of times a day, and enjoys the benefits of having a page.

“The benefits of Facebook are that it makes it so easy to communicate with not only close friends who you see everyday but also with friends and family that lives far away from home,” Fishbeck said. “It’s nice that I can see old friends and see what they are doing with their lives now.”

Facebook has changed the way people communicate with each other by allowing them to know what’s going on in each other’s life with a click of a mouse. It’s a social network that will continue to expand for many years to come.

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