Facebook Celebrates 5th BiRthday

 

Facebook, the world’s biggest social networking site, is celebrating its fifth birthday. In a blog post, the site’s founder, Mark Zuckerberg, states that Facebook will continue to work as hard as it has in the last five years in order to stay the web’s number one communication site.

The company started in a dorm room in 2004. Today it has 150 million active users, more than the 130 million of rival MySpace.

Facebook is different from other social networking sites because you can communicate with people you really know and trust. Before, most people didn’t want to share their real identities online. Facebook has given people a safe and trusted environment for people to interact online. It has changed the way people view the world. A friend from any country is only a few clicks away.

It was back in February 2004 when Zuckerberg started “The facebook” from a Harvard student’s room. The aim was to help students get in touch with each other over the Internet. Within 24 hours over a thousand students had signed up and soon after that the network spread out to other universities.

By 2005 a research study showed that about 85% of the students in the network had a Facebook account. Another survey showed that Facebook was almost as important as an iPod.

At the end of 2005 Facebook came to the U.K. and up to today the site has been translated into 35 languages.

 

 

Five years after its start Facebook has escaped the universities and colleges. More than half of its users are not at college anymore and the fastest growing group are the 30 to 40 year olds. Every day 15 million users update their profiles to tell their friends and the world what’s happening to them. They also share photos, upload videos, chat, make friends, join groups – and simply have fun.

 

 

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Words

  • aim = something you want to do
  • blog = a webpage that has information on a certain subject; the newest articles are at the top
  • celebrate =to do something nice and have fun at a special event
  • dorm room = a room where students sleep
  • environment = the world around us
  • founder = a person who started something
  • interact = to talk to each other and work together
  • research study = if you look at a topic in a serious way and try to find out more about it
  • share =to use together
  • sign up = to join , become a member
  • social network = Internet platform where people can become a member and find friends all over the world
  • spread out =here: to move to
  • state = say
  • survey = questions that you ask people in order to find out what they think about something
  • translate = to write something in a different language
  • trust =to believe that someone is good to you and won't do anything bad
  • update = to add new information about something