Summer 2012
An overview
Facebook was realized on February 4, 2004 by an American computer programmer and Internet entrepreneur- Mark Elliot Zuckerberg. Facebook has said it will be valued at up to $96bn (£59bn) when it sells shares to investors this month in a record-breaking flotation. The first investment from Peter Thiel was $500,000 into Facebook.
Facebook has minted four billionaires: Mark Zuckerberg, Dustin Moskovitz, Eduardo Saverin and Sean Parker. The 27-year-old Zuckerberg 's net worth was estimated at $17.5bn on the 2011 Forbes list of the wealthiest Americans. Moskovitz had a net worth of $3.5bn but pipped Zuckerberg for the title of world 's youngest billionaire, being eight days younger. The Brazilian-born Saverin, who left Facebook early on after a falling-out with Zuckerberg, had a net worth of $2bn. Parker, the Napster co-founder who briefly served as Facebook 's president, had a net worth of $2.1bn
On November 15, 2010, Facebook announced it had acquired the domain name fb.com from the American Farm Bureau Federation for an undisclosed amount. On January 11, 2011, the Farm Bureau disclosed $8.5 million in "domain sales income", making the acquisition of FB.com one of the ten highest domain sales in history
Nowadays, 1 in every 13 people on earth uses Facebook, more than 900m active users, with over 250 million of them who log in every day. The average user has about 130 friends, but that has expanded in. The core 18-24 year old segment is now growing the fastest at 74% year on year. Almost 72% of all US internet users are on now Facebook, while 70% of the entire user base is located outside of the US.
(Source: Facebook)
At the beginning, Facebook has 1 million users. In 2008, it increased to 100 million. In 2010 the number of users reached 400 million and up to 500 million within 5 months.
Google- a web search engine, it is the company 's most popular service. It began in January 1996 as a research
Cited: Nielsenwire. "August 2011- Top US Web Brands." August 2011 - Top US Web Brands. N.p., 30 Sept. 2011. Web. 20 June 2012. <http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/online_mobile/august-2011-top-us-web-brands>. YChart