Facebook is the world’s largest social network, with 800 million users worldwide as of September 2011.
More than any other company, it has defined what some see as the “social” era of the Internet, in which connections made among people replace algorithm-driven searches. And its policies, more than any others, seem to be driving the definition of privacy in this new age.
Every day, Facebook users comment or press the “like” button more than 2 billion times and upload more than 250 million photos. The McKinsey Global Institute has estimated that the network’s users post 30 billion pieces of content every month.
It has also become one of the new titans of the Internet, challenging even Google with its vision of a Web tied together by personal relationships and recommendations, rather than by search algorithms. In a major expansion, Facebook has spread itself across other Web sites by offering members the chance to “Like” something — share it with their network — without leaving the Web page they are on.
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