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Facebook. Even if you don’t use it you have probably heard of it either though friends or the extensive news and media coverage it has had. For those of you that don’t know, Facebook is a social networking website which was launched in February 2004.

Originally built just for members of Harvard College, more than half of the undergraduates studying at Harvard had registered within the first month of the site launching. In early 2004 Facebook began allowing registrations from other universities and colleges including Stanford, Columbia and Yale. Shortly after that it expanded acceptance to other Ivy League establishments until it spreading to include universities in Canada as well as the US.

A version of Facebook aimed at high schools was released in September 2005 which was considered by creator Mark Zuckerberg as “the next logical step”. At that time, high-schools needed an invite to use the site. Facebook later also expanded its memberships to include employees of select companies including Apple and Microsoft until eventually on September 26 2006, Facebook opened its doors to everyone who had a valid Email Address and was aged 13 or over.

Facebook has since then grown in size and value considerably and early in 2010 it was anticipated that over 40% of the U.S inhabitants had a Facebook user profile. In May 2011 one study showed Facebook to have nearly 140 million monthly unique visitors from the US alone with over 750 million global users.

One of the main reasons for Facebook’s unprecedented growth is its application platform. The Facebook platform gives developers a series of APIs which enables them to include their applications within Facebook. This API has led to the rise of tools and games built especially for Facebook users. One provider of such games is an organisation named Zynga which is located in San Francisco who last year signed a 5 year contract to build games exclusively for Facebook and is now in 2011 reported at being valued at between $15 and $20 billion USD.

Another of the important Facebook features is the capability for companies and organisations to create their own ‘fan’ page (known as custom facebook fan pages) which then enables them to promote themselves on Facebook. They can build up followings of users for free and they can interact with anyone who ‘likes’ their fan page. Fan page owners can also embed custom content, for example parts of their own website, inside the Facebook business page so that users can find out more information about the company without ever leaving the Facebook website.

However, Facebook isn’t without competition and rival websites like MySpace and Bebo have still been competing, although somewhat unsuccessfully to remove Facebook from the number one social networking spot, and with search engine giant Google developing its Plus site specifically to rival Facebook, it will be interesting to see how long Facebook can remain the most popular.

Chris Gilchrist is the owner and business development manager at Hit Reach, who offer web design in Dundee and specialise in building WordPress websites, creating custom facebook pages and SEO services.