Status Update in Facebook is an innovative offering which will integrate the three most demanding sources of communication of modern life-Face book, Twitter and Cell Phone. By utilizing this service the subscribers will have the privilege to record their status and update it in their profile. Thus they can share their emotions with their friends more lively!

“Update status via mobile through SMS” is the ability to receive a friend’s status notifications on your mobile phone through text messages.

 1.2  Description of Facebook

 Facebook is a social utility that connects people with friends and others who … People use Facebook to keep up with friends, upload an unlimited number of … Login, Facebook Bog, Facebook, Developers, Statics

Intro

Mostly, these are Unicode-encoded special text characters. I picked some cool and unusually-looking symbols for my collection. You can find here funny chinese signs, cross, peace symbol, cool skull, and lots more. People usually use them in Facebook, Google+ plus, Myspace, and other social networks in status, for additional expression and to make text emoticons (smiley faces). Turn on your imagination and have fun!

How to use

Just copy-paste symbols that you like into your status, comments, and messages. Just to save your time, note that due to recent update, Facebook won’t let you put them into your name. Though, strangely, it seems like some symbols can form “combos” like in video game and don’t work if you put them one after another. So if you see some of your symbols turning into squares after you have put some new symbol into the input field – that might be a problem. To solve it just press “Ctrl” + “Z” and don’t put these troublemaker symbols. Or put them in a first place.

Big font

It seems like there is no way to style your text in Facebook profile. So it’s not likely that you’ll be able to make your text symbols bigger. Neither you’ll be able to paint them with the color you want. Only own you’re on site, or in “notes”.

Experiencing any trouble?

If some problem arises with these symbols, like if you see some characters as squares or “?” and wonder why is it so in help on problems with symbols.

1.3 The History of Facebook

Facebook is a popular social network that has grown to rank with MySpace has. But what is it about Facebook that has special appeal and makes it even more popular than MySpace? What makes Facebook Facebook? And what made it a mega hit?It all got started back in 2003, as Face mash. Mark Zuckerberg created it, along with help of his friends and roommates Chris Hughes and Dustin Moskovitz. Zuckerberg was in his sophomore year at Harvard when opened it up, as a way to get his mind off his crush. After it was initially started, it was forwarded to Harvard’s school admits and it was quickly shut down. Zuckerberg was charged and faced expulsion for breaching privacy. Later on, Harvard dropped their charges against Zuckerberg. After the charges were dropped, the following semester he recreated Face mash, and opened The Facebook in February 2004. In 2005, he dropped “the” from the name and URL. Also in September 2005, he launched the High School version of Facebook. When he first started the high school version, each high school had to be invited before being allowed to join the network. Shortly after launching the high school version he started allow companies to have their own networks on Facebook as well.Now a group of operators, a year after they launched their high school version, they opened it up to the public for everybody over the age of 13.Syria and Iran have blocked Facebook from being accessed in their countries. Some companies have forbidden it from their offices. It has also been said that Zuckerberg had stolen the code and intellectual property from former classmates of his. They have been sued more than once and have been the subject of criticism. In Aug 2007, the code that normally creates the pages for Facebook showed instead of the content, leaving many to wonder if their data on Facebook is even safe.  In February 2009, Facebook changed their privacy policy, causing an up roar along the way. They made it so that their users once upload data onto their servers, that they own all the rights. Even, after the user deletes their account. Many users got upset by this, and entered a debate that was all over the internet. EPIC filed a claim against Facebook with the FTC, while Zuckerberg tried to defend Facebook’s policy change. To do damage control they switched back to their old policies, though they are in the middle of rewriting them again. They will allow users to vote on the new terms before they are adopted officially. It has been rumored that a film about Facebook being made, though the Facebook spokesperson has said that they have not agreed to cooperate with anyone about making a film.

Facebook’s history is a mixture of trouble and success from very early on. They have seen more than their share of legal issues and likely will as long as they exist. Currently it is the number one social network with My Space and Twitter both behind it. They have over 175 million active users worldwide currently and are growing every day. Though they may have had their share of issues, they still maintain a well kept site that hasn’t gotten lost through the Web 2.0 shuffle.

1.4   The Complete Biography of Facebook

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An in-depth profile of Facebook, written by Mash able contributor Sid Yadav and edited by Pete Cash more. Image credit: Bryan Veloso.Facebook is the second largest social network on the web, behind only My Space in terms of traffic. Primarily focused on high school to college students, Facebook has been gaining market share, and more significantly a supportive user base. Since their launch in February 2004, they’ve been able to obtain over 8 million users in the U.S. alone and expand worldwide to 7 other English-speaking countries, with more to follow. A growing phenomenon, let’s discover Facebook.

The Facebook Phenomenon

First, let’s start by looking into Facebook in a broad spectrum – as the network, the phenomenon, the company, and its brand.

History

Originally called the facebook, Facebook was founded by former-Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg (while at Harvard) who ran it as one of his hobby projects with some financial help from Eduardo Saver in. Within months, Facebook and its core idea spread across the dorm rooms of Harvard where it was very well received. Soon enough, it was extended to Stanford and Yale where, like Harvard, it was widely endorsed. Before he knew it, Mark Zuckerberg was joined by two other fellow Harvard-students – Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes – to help him grow the site to the next level. Only months later when it was officially a national student network phenomenon, Zuckerberg and Moskovitz dropped out of Harvard to pursue their dreams and run Facebook full time. In August 2005, the facebook was officially called Facebook and the domain facebook.com was purchased for a reported $200,000.

Availability

Unlike its competitors MySpace, Friendster, Xanga, hi5, Bebo, and others, Facebook isn’t available to everyone — which explains its relatively low user count. Currently, users must be members of one of the 30,000+ recognized schools, colleges, universities, organizations, and companies within the U.S, Canada, and other English-speaking nations. This generally involves having a valid e-mail ID with the associated institution.

Surveys & Studies

A large number of surveys and studies have been conducted around Facebook – some with interesting results. For instance, according to an internal September 2005 survey, approximately 85% of the students in the supported colleges had a Facebook account, with 60% of them logging in daily. A survey conducted by Student Monitor revealed Facebook was the most “in” thing after the iPod and tying with beer and comScore Media Metrix discovered users spend approximately 20 minutes everyday on Facebook. Another 2005 survey said 90% of all undergraduates in the U.S. use either Facebook or My Space regularly, and a detailed questionnaire analysis by Chris Roberts revealed that 76.2% never click on its ads. Perhaps the most amazing statistic of all may be that Facebook is the 7th most trafficked site in the U.S.

Business & Funding

Given the situation other social networks on the web are facing, Facebook is in a good position financially. While it hasn’t managed to get acquired like its rival MySpace (despite some rumors about an $800m deal with Viacom), it’s been quite lucky in most aspects. For its initial funding, it received $500,000 from Peter Theil, co-founder of PayPal. A few months later, it was also able to get $13 million from Accel Partners, who are also investors in 15 other Web 2.0 startups, and $25 million from Greylock Partners, making their overall venture equal to approximately $40 million.

For users, Facebook’s core service is completely free and ad-supported. In fact, in August 2006 Facebooksigned a three year deal with Microsoft to provide and sell ads on their site in return for a revenue split. The deal followed an announcement from Facebook’s direct competitor MySpace who signed a similar deal with Google. The youthful demographic that both the services attract is highly prized amongst advertisers and should return a good amount of revenue for both the services to stay alive – and profit. Another deal which made news in July was Facebook’s agreement with Apple to give away 10 million free iTunes samplers to Facebook users. A deal has also been signed to provide Facebook credit cards.

Lawsuits & Concerns

In its early days, Facebook faced an extremely threatening lawsuit from ConnectU, a very similar social network which – like Facebook – shares its roots back to Harvard, and as a result almost got shutdown. The founders of ConnectU alleged that Facebook’s founder Mark Zuckerberg stole source code while he was in their employment. Zuckerberg denied the allegation and the lawsuit was dismissed. Facebook has also been host to other issues and concerns, especially in the privacy sector where its privacy policy states “Facebook also collects information about you from other sources, such as newspapers and instant messaging services. This information is gathered regardless of your use of the Web Site.” Another theory is that Facebook could also be a data-gathering project or if not, used extensively for these purposes. Facebook’s policy also states that it “may share your information with third parties, including responsible companies with which we have a relationship.”

The Service

Now, let’s look into Facebook – the service itself, and some of its features, highlights, and the things that got Facebook where it is today.

Facebook Profiles

As Facebook has evolved, so have its profile pages – new fields have been added and users can share more information than before. A typical Facebook profile consists of a number of different sections, including Information, Status, Friends, Friends in Other Networks, Photos, Notes, Groups, and The Wall. Most of the sections are self-explanatory but some are specific to Facebook.

Facebook Photos

With over 1.5 million photos uploaded daily, one of Facebook’s most popular features has been the ability to upload photos. Users can upload unlimited photos from their cell phone or through its Java-based web interface. Facebook is one of the few services to offer an unlimited quota with their only restriction being a 60-photos-per-album limit – this is much appreciated by Facebook’s college demographic.The process of uploading photos is very simple. Users create albums which they can assign limitations to (e.g. visible to my friends only) and upload photos within them. The album is then put into their profile, and other users with right credentials have the ability to see and comment on them. Facebook also gives the feature to share the photos with a simple web link or send them via AIM or by e-mail. What’s more, users can also order prints online through a simple integrated interface.

Facebook Groups

Just like every other social network, Facebook has something called ‘groups.’ Users can create new ones or join and participate in existing ones. This is also displayed in their profile and is a good indication of hobbies and interests a person might have.There are two kind of groups, a normal group and a secret group, which isn’t shown on the profile. A normal group is just like any other, but users can also create and invite others into secret groups. These can be used for collaborating on university projects, and provide a way to have closed discussions. About 80% of the groups are ‘fun-related’ and companies can even sponsor groups – as is the case with, for example, the Apple users group.

Facebook Events

Another Facebook success is their ‘events’ feature, which provides the ability to organize, be part of, and plan for events. This feature has been extremely successful when it comes to organizing parties. Along with organizing and joining events, users can also invite and recommend others to an event. This feature, however, has raised some controversy as it is generally the start of underage drinking and dry campus violations. Colleges and universities use the feature to catch planning of such events before hand and investigate those that are over. In any case, it’s one of the most popular features of the service and even beats some of the competing products made specifically for this purpose.

Facebook Developers

As of August 2006, Facebook has offered a free Developers API called Facebook Developers. This essentially gives anyone access to Facebook’s internals and lets programmers create widgets, mashups, tools and projects based around Facebook.This is an important feature for Facebook since it makes it the first major social network to give access to its API. Although it is limited to 100,000 requests a day, it’s more than enough for a decent web app to come through. What’s more, a selection of applications has already been created. FaceBank is a promising tool which lets you ‘keep track of depts and shared expenses with friends.’ Another interesting application islickuacious which lets you ‘rank your friends by wall popularity.’ The Wall, of course, is Facebook’s comments feature.

Facebook Notes

Facebook’s most recent addition launched in late August. The service is called Facebook Notes, and allows users to write a Facebook blog. All notes are displayed in the user’s profile, and other members can add comments.Notes possesses an important feature, which is the ability to import and syndicate an external blog, although unlike Technorati, doesn’t allow you to claim one only to yourself (e.g. it’s possible to claim the New York Times syndication feed easily in one’s Notes). The service allows HTML to be included in the posts, although JavaScript and Flash are disabled. You can attach photos and also post via cell phone by sending your notes to notes@facebook.com. Another interesting feature is tagging – tagging a post with a username will automatically send it to that specific user. The Notes feature has been well received.

The Future

Facebook is a massively successful social networking service that grew to prominence in virtually no time. It’s not hard to see why: its features and tools are highly appealing, and Facebook users are extremely well networked in real life. Rumors of an acquisition continue to circulate, with some estimates putting the price in the billions of dollars. In the short term, however, Facebook plans to go it alone, continuing to build out one of the world’s most successful social networks.

1.5  Timeline

• July

Facebook reaches over 750 million active users

• August

Facebook launches Places

• July

Facebook reaches over 500 million active users

• July

Facebook launches beta of Questions

• February

Facebook reaches over 400 million active users

• December

Facebook reaches over 350 million active users

• September

Facebook reaches over 300 million active users

• August

Facebook acquires FriendFeed

• July

Facebook reaches over 250 million active users

• June

Facebook launches Facebook Usernames

• May

Digital Sky Technologies makes a $200 million investment for preferred stock at a $10 billion valuation

• April

Facebook reaches over 200 million active users

• February

Facebook reaches over 175 million active users Facebook joins OpenID board “Like” feature added

• January

Facebook reaches over 150 million active users CNN Live/Facebook integration

• December

Facebook Connect becomes generally available

• August

Facebook reaches over 100 million active users

• April

Facebook launches Facebook Chat Facebook releases Translation application to 21 additional languages

• March

Facebook updates privacy controls to include Friend List privacy Facebook launches in German

• February

Facebook launches in Spanish and French

• January

Facebook co-sponsors Presidential Debates with ABC News

• November

Facebook launches Facebook Ads

• October

Facebook reaches over 50 million active users Facebook launches Facebook Platform for Mobile Facebook and Microsoft expand advertising deal to cover international markets; Microsoft takes a $240 million equity stake in Facebook

• July

Facebook acquires startup Parakey

• May

Facebook launches Marketplace application for classified listings Facebook hosts F8 event to launch Facebook Platform Facebook Platform launches with 65 developer partners and over 85 applications

• April

Facebook reaches 20 million active users  Facebook updates site design and adds network portals

• March

Facebook reaches over 2 million active Canadian users and 1 million active UK users

• February

Virtual gift shop launches as a feature

• December

Facebook reaches more than 12 million active users

• November

Share feature added on Facebook, simultaneously launched on over 20 partner sites

• September

News Feed and Mini-Feed are introduced with additional privacy controls Facebook expands registration so anyone can join

• August

Facebook development platform launches Notes application is introduced Facebook and Microsoft form strategic relationship for banner ad syndication

• May

Facebook expands to add work networks

• April

Facebook raises $27.5 million from Greylock Partners, Meritech Capital Partners and others
Facebook Mobile feature launches

• December

Facebook reaches more than 5.5 million active users

• October

Photos is added as an application  Facebook begins to add international school networks

• September

Facebook expands to add high school networks

• August

The company officially changes its name to Facebook from thefacebook.com

• May

Facebook raises $12.7 million in venture capital from Accel Partners;  Facebook grows to support more than 800 college networks

• December

Facebook reaches nearly 1 million active users

• September

Groups application is added; the Wall is added as a Profile feature

• June

Facebook moves its base of operations to Palo Alto, Calif.

• March

Facebook expands from Harvard to Stanford, Columbia and Yale

• February

Mark Zuckerberg and co-founders Dustin Moskovitz, Chris Hughes and Eduardo Saverin launch Facebook from their Harvard dorm room

• 1 General
  • 1.1 Chat
  • 1.2 Credits
• 2 Feature List
  • 2.1 Deals
  • 2.2 Easter eggs
  • 2.3 Facebook Live
  • 2.4 IPv6
  • 2.5 Messages and Inbox
  • 2.6 Networks, Groups, and Like Pages
  • 2.7 News Feed
  • 2.8 Notifications
  • 2.9 Phone
  • 2.10 Photo tagging
  • 2.11 Poke
  • 2.12 Smartphones
  • 2.13 Feature phones
  • 2.14 Status updates
  • 2.15 URL shortener
  • 2.16 Usernames
  • 2.17 Wall
  • 2.18 Questions
• 3 Applications
  • 3.1 Events
  • 3.2 Marketplace
  • 3.3 Notes
  • 3.4 Places
  • 3.5 Platform
  • 3.6 Questions
  • 3.7 Photos
  • 3.8 Videos
• 4 Languages
• 5 Security features
  • 5.1 Click jacking warnings
  • 5.2 Login Approvals
  • 5.3 Site warnings
• 6 Former features
  • 6.1 FBML
  • 6.2 Gifts
  • 6.3 Light
• 7 References

Chat

On April 5, 2008, Facebook pre-released Facebook Chat. As of April 23, 2008, Facebook Chat was released to the entire Facebook user base. Users may chat with their Facebook friends on a one-to-one basis, or a user may chat with multiple friends simultaneously through the groups feature. Instant messaging clients that currently support Facebook Chat includeAOL InstantMessenger, eBuddy, Flock, MirandaIM, Trillian, Empathy, Digsby, Pidgin, Adium, Nimbuzz, FIM (Windows Mobile / Windows Phone 7), Palringo (Windows Mobile), Meebo,Tokbox as well as QIP Infium with a Firefox plugin. Windows Live Messenger 2011 (Wave 4) can connect to Facebook as well. Facebook Chat can also be run on the desktop using Gabtastik, a dedicated web chat browser. Facebook Chat can also be run on the iPhone using Facebook Chat for iPhone app. Facebook also released the official app for iPad Facebook chat is also available to use for Blackberry users via the Blackberry Facebook app. On May 13, 2008, a Facebook developer announced that they are working on XMPPsupport, allowing hundreds of instant messaging clients to interoperate with the service; this functionality became operational on February 10, 2010. As of August 2011, Facebook Chat supports video chat. Upon using the feature for the first time users must download a plug-in for their web browser.

Credits

Main article: Facebook Credits Facebook Credits are a virtual currency you can use to buy gifts, and virtual goods in many games and applications on the Facebook platform. As of July 2010, users of Facebook can purchase Facebook credits in Australian dollars, British pound,Canadian Dollars, Chilean Peso, Colombian Peso, Danish Krone, Euro, Hong Kong Dollar, Japanese Yen, Norwegian Krone, Swedish Krona, Swiss Franc, Turkish Lira, US Dollars, and Venezuelan Bolivar. Facebook credits can be used on many popular games such as Happy Aquarium, Happy Island, Zoo Paradise, Happy Pets, Hello City, It Girl FarmVille, and Mafia Wars.

Friend

“Friending” someone is the act of sending them a friend request on Facebook. Once the friend request is set, the two people are both Facebook friends until and unless the receiving party accepts the friend request. In addition to accepting the request, the user has the option of declining the friend request or hiding it using the “Not Now” feature. Deleting a friend request removes the request, but does allow the sender to resend it in the future. The “Not Now” feature hides the request but does not delete it, allowing the receiver to revisit the request at a later date. It is also possible to remove a user from one’s friends, which is referred to as “unfriending” by Facebook. Many Facebook users also refer to the process as “de-friending”. “Unfriend” was New Oxford American Dictionary’s word of the year in 2009. Facebook profiles may be set by a user to greatly restrict access to those users who are not “friends”, for example, blocking access to photos of that person and contact information. After a person accepts a friend request, the new “friend” then has much greater access to that person’s profile information.

Deals

On April 25, 2011, Facebook announced a pilot program called Deals, which offers online coupons and discounts from local businesses. Facebook initially released Deals as a “test” in five cities: Atlanta, Austin, Dallas, San Diego and San Francisco with the hope of expanding. This new offering is a direct competitor to other social commerce sites such as Living Social and Group on for online coupons and deals-of-the-day. Facebook users will be able to use Facebook Credits to purchase vouchers that can be redeemed for real goods and services. Facebook has since closed its deal program.

Easter eggs

The following are easter eggs that Facebook had at one time or another.

    At one time, entering the Konami Code followed by Enter at the home page caused a    lens flare-style series of circles to display when clicking, typing, or scrolling.

    Facebook chat supports some unusual emoticons.

    Asking “how is babby formed?” with the Questions feature released September 23, 2010 will Rickroll the user.

    A user can change his/her language to Leet Speak, Pirate language, and upside down English.

Facebook Live

On August 13, 2010, Facebook launched a new service called “Facebook Live”, a live streaming video channel that is intended to keep Facebook users updated to what is happening on the social networking site. The service, powered by Livestream, will feature videos from Facebook staff members and celebrity interviews, but is not designed for Facebook users to showcase their own videos. All the content shown on Facebook Live will have some tie-in with Facebook products, features, or how people are using the site. Facebook said this is not an opening to get them into the video distribution space. The first official guest was America Ferreira, the leading actress in the television series Ugly Betty. She discussed her new independent film The Dry Land that was being promoted almost exclusively through social media channels.

IPv6

According to a June 2010 report by Network World, Facebook said that it was offering “experimental, non-production” support for IPv6, the long-anticipated upgrade to the Internet’s main communications protocol. The news about Facebook’s IPv6 support was expected; Facebook told Network World in February 2010, that it planned to support native IPv6 user requests “by the midpoint of this year.” In a presentation at the Google IPv6 Implementers Conference, Facebook’s network engineers said it was “easy to make [the] site available on v6.” Facebook said it deployed dual-stackIPv4 and IPv6 support on its routers, and that it made no changes to its hosts in order to support IPv6. Facebook also said it was supporting an emerging encapsulation mechanism known as Locator/Identifier Separation Protocol (LISP), which separates Internet addresses from endpoint identifiers to improve the scalability of IPv6 deployments. “Facebook was the first major Web site on LISP (v4 and v6),” Facebook engineers said during their presentation. Facebook said that using LISP allowed them to deploy IPv6 services quickly with no extra cost. Facebook’s IPv6 services are available at www.v6.facebook.com, m.v6.facebook.com, www.lisp6.facebook.com and m.lisp6.facebook.com.

Like

 Like

Users of Facebook can “like” status updates, comments, photos, and links posted by their Facebook friends and other users, as well as adverts, by clicking a link at the bottom of the post or content. This makes the content appear in their friends’ News feeds. Facebook says “Liking” is intended to “Give positive feedback and connect with things you care about”. A “Like Button” is also available for use on websites outside Facebook: “When the user clicks the Like button on [a] site, a story appears in the user’s friends’ News Feed with a link back to [the] website.” At the same time when any visitor, including non Facebook members and logged out users, visit a site with the Like Button, their presence on the site is recorded by Facebook. Introduced in April 2010, by September 2010 over 350,000 sites had installed it. A “Like Box” also allows Facebook page owners to see how many users and which of their friends like the page. From the end of 2010 and in the US, Microsoft’s Bing search engine identifies which links in the results have been “Liked” by the searcher’s Facebook friends. A lawsuit was filed in Los Angeles in 2010 claiming the Facebook should not allow minors to “like” advertising; Facebook said the suit was “completely without merit.” Because websites with a “Like Button” send IP address information of all visitors to Facebook, the German state of Schleswig-Holstein said in August 2011 that the button breaches German data protection laws and that federal agencies should remove the buttons and similar social plugging from their websites. Canada’s Privacy Commissioner raised similar concerns in 2010.”Like” links are vulnerable to like jacking, a form of click jacking that makes users “Like” content they did not intend to. An Israeli couple named their child “Like” after the Facebook feature in 2011.In August 2011, Google linked their +1 button to Google Plus to rival the Facebook Like Button.

Messages and Inbox

Since the website’s founding, it has allowed users to send messages to each other. A Facebook user can send a message to any number of his/her friends at a time. Deleting a message from one’s inbox does not delete it from the inbox of other users, thus disabling a sender to redo a message sent by him or her.On November 15, 2010, Facebook announced a new “Facebook Messages” service. In a media event that day, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said, “It’s true that people will be able to have a @facebook.com email addresses, but it’s not email.” The launch of such a feature had been anticipated for some time before the announcement, with some calling it a “Gmail killer.” The system, to be available to all of the website’s users, combines text messaging, instant messaging, emails, and regular messages, and will include privacy settings similar to those of other Facebook services.

Networks, Groups, and Like Pages

Facebook allows different networks and groups which many users can join. It also allows privacy settings on basis of networks. Groups are used for discussions, events, etc. and are a way of enabling a number of people to come together online to share information and discuss specific subjects. They are increasingly used by clubs, companies and public sector organizations to engage with stakeholders – be they members of the public, employees, members, service users, shareholders or customers. A group includes but is not limited to the following: the members who have joined, recent news contents, wall contents, photos, posted items, videos and all associated comments of such items. In this respect, groups are similar to “Like pages” (below) but contain a different set of features. Groups are limited to 300 groups per Facebook customer. Since October 2010, there are version 0 (legacy) and version 1 (current) groups. Version 1 or “new” groups can contain the name of the group in their URL if the groups email address of the group is set. Groups do not have a RSS feed to export the wall or the member list, such as Pages have, but external services provide such services A flag which indicates if the group was created prior to launch of the current groups product in October 2010.Facebook customers can create “Like Pages” which allow fans of an individual, organization, product, service, or concept to join a Facebook fan club. The Like Pages were introduced in November 2007. Like Pages look and behave much like a user’s personal private profile, with some significant differences. Public Profiles are integrated with Facebook’s advertising system, allowing Public Profile owners to easily advertise to Facebook’s users. Owners can send updates to their fans, which show up on their home page. They also have access toinsights and analytics of their fan base.^[34] Early on, users had the option to “become a fan” of the page until 19 April 2010when the option was later changed to “like” the page. While an individual with a personal profile can acquire up to 5,000 friends, a “Like Page” can have an unlimited number of “Likers”. “Like Pages” can also be customized by adding new Tabs using the Static FBML application. This powerful feature can bring additional functionality to a page such as e-mail collection, specialized content, or a landing page for sales activity. TheURLs of “Like Pages” start with http://www.facebook.com/pages... and include the name of the page.

News Feed

On 6 September 2006, Ruchi Sangvhi announced a new home page feature called News Feed. Originally, when users logged into Facebook, they were presented with a customizable version of their own profile. The new layout, by contrast, created an alternative home page in which users saw a constantly updated list of their friends’ Facebook activity. News Feed highlights information that includes profile changes, upcoming events, and birthdays, among other updates. This has enabled spammers and other users to manipulate these features by creating illegitimate events or posting fake birthdays to attract attention to their profile or cause. News Feed also shows conversations taking place between the walls of a user’s friends. An Integral part of the News Feed interface is the Mini-Feed, a news stream on the user’s profile page that shows updates about that user. Unlike in the News Feed, the user can delete events from the Mini-Feed after they appear so that they are no longer visible to profile visitors. In 2011, Facebook updated the News Feed to show top stories and most recent stories in one feed, and the option to highlight stories to make them top stories, as well as to un-highlight stories. In response to users’ criticism, Facebook later updated the News feed to allow users to view recent stories first. Initially, the addition of the News Feed caused some discontent among Facebook users. Many users complained that the News Feed was too cluttered and full of undesired information. Others were concerned that the News Feed made it too easy for other people to track activities like changes in relationship status, events, and conversations with other users. This tracking is often casually referred to as “Facebook-Stalking.” In response to this dissatisfaction, creator Mark Zuckerberg issued an apology for the site’s failure to include appropriate customizable privacy features. Thereafter, users were able to control what types of information were shared automatically with friends.^[40] Currently, users may prevent friends from seeing updates about several types of especially private activities, although other events are not customizable in this way. With the introduction of the “New Facebook” – in early February 2010 – came a total redesign of the pages, several new features and changes to News Feeds. On their personal Feeds (now integrated with Walls), users were given the option of removing updates from any application as well as choosing the size they show up on the page. Furthermore, the community feed (containing recent actions by the user’s friends) contained options to instantly select whether to hear more or less about certain friends or applications.

Notifications

Notifications of the more important events, for example, someone sharing a link on the user’s wall or commenting on a post the user previously commented on, briefly appear for a few seconds in the bottom left as a popup message (if the user is online), and a red counter is updated on the toolbar at the top, thus allowing the user to keep track of all the most recent notifications.

Phone

On September 2010, rumors of a “Facebook Phone” similar to Google’s Android, circulated in business and tech industry news. In an interview with well-known technology blogTechcrunch, CEO Mark Zuckerberg was noted to have said, “Our strategy is very horizontal. We’re trying to build a social layer for everything,” while denying that they were attempting to compete with the Apple iPhone or Android.

Photos

On April 11, 2011, Facebook launched a new feature for photo tagging – people can tag photos with a brand, product, company or person’s Facebook page, similar to the way they tag their friends in photos. In August 2011, Facebook announced that it would be adding a series of photo filters to its mobile application Facebook plans to unveil nearly a dozen photo filters, which will be similar to Instragram’s grainy images. Per last known numbers, today in the world, highest numbers of photos are hosted at Facebook. Unfortunately, as of yet, Facebook has not tied up with any photo printing companies to offer printed personalized gifts of the photos the users own. Though, there are companies that have modified their websites (example: smugmug.com) to fetch Facebook photos into your account to create a gift. A few applications have come up with unique way of offering an application on Facebook itself to create a personalized gift with Facebook photo (e.g. ezsnaps.com)

Poke

The poke feature is intended to be a poke gesture (similar to “nudge” in instant messaging) to attract the attention of another user. Many Facebook users use this feature to attract attention or say “hello” to their friends.^[47] A previous version of Facebook’s FAQ gave additional insight into the origin of the feature, stating: “When we created the poke, we thought it would be cool to have a feature without any specific purpose. People interpret the poke in many different ways, and we encourage you to come up with your own meanings.” Mark Zuckerberg during a live Facebook   webinar. There are several applications on Facebook which extend the idea of the poke feature by allowing users to perform other actions to their friends—such as “kick” or “wave to”. People often reciprocate pokes back and forth until one side gives up, an event known as a “Poke War”.

Smartphones

Many new smartphones offer access to the Facebook services either through their web-browsers or applications. The Facebook iPhone-compatible web site was launched August 2007 and as of July 2008 over 1.5 million people used it regularly, at the point when a free application for the iOS named “Facebook for iPhone” was launched. Version 2.0 of this app was released in September 2008 and featured improved services such as being able to respond to friend requests and notifications. Version 3.0 was released in August 2009 and added features such as events, and uploading video with an iPhone 3GS. In the latest update for the Facebook for iPhone app, GPS use is also integrated in the app under the section “places” in which you can discover moments and experiences when you and your friends are at the same place at the same time. This app is compatible with iPhone 3G, 3Gs, 4, and 4S running iOS 3.0 or later. Microsoft developed an application for Facebook on their Windows Phone 7 platform, avalible in the Windows Phone Marketplace. You can pin elements such as Messages, Events, the News Feed, and Photos directly onto your homescreen. It also includes tile notifications for events, friend requests, tags, and so on. Windows Mobile platform, including features such as messaging, uploading pictures and video straight from the device, managing profile information, contact integration allowing users to call anyone in their friends list that has their number in their profile information. It is also possible to add an chat feature to Windows Mobile via third-party software such as FIM, available in the Windows Mobile Marketplace. Nokiaalso offers a Facebook app on its Ovi Store for Nokia S60 devices such as the N97 and contains most of the functionality of the full website.

Google’s Android 2.0 OS automatically includes an official Facebook app. The first device to use this is the Motorola Droid. The app has options to sync Facebook friends with contacts, which adds profile pictures and status updates to the contacts list. Research In Motion also offers a Facebook application for the BlackBerry. It includes a range of functions, including an ability to integrate Facebook events into the BlackBerry calendar, and using Facebook profile pictures for Caller ID.

Feature phones

Although like all other website apps Facebook made its presence on the smartphones as mentioned but also is present for the feature phones. As the company said that the feature phones dominate the American cell phone markets hence an app was exclusively made for this purpose as well.

Status updates

Facebook has a feature called “status updates” (also referred to simply as “status”) which allows users to post messages for all their friends to read. In turn, friends can respond with their own comments, and also press the “Like” button to show that they enjoyed reading it. A user’s most recent status update appears on the user’s wall, and is also noted in the “Recently updated” section of a user’s friend list. Originally, the purpose of the feature was to allow users to inform their friends of their current “status” (for example, their current feelings, whereabouts, or actions) by referring to themselves in the third person (for example, “George is happy” or “John is with Robert at his house”). However, users are no longer required to write in the third person. Facebook originally prompted the status update with “Username is…” and Facebook users filled in the rest. This feature first became available in September 2006. However, on December 13, 2007, the requirement to start a status update with is was removed. The question “What are you doing right now?” was introduced. In March 2009, the status update question was changed from “What are you doing right now?” to “What’s on your mind?”^. In 2009, Facebook added the feature to tag certain friends (or groups, etc.) within one’s status update by adding an @ character before their name, turning the friend’s name into a link to their profile and including the message on the friend’s wall. Now, however, typing a friend’s name without any symbol beforehand will present you with a list of names matching the letters you inputted. This means that the “@” symbol is no longer needed.

Ticker

In 2011, Facebook launched a ticker that showed all of their friends and pages updates. For example, it shows when their friends comment or like a status, and their status updates as soon as they posted them. If users do not have the chat sidebar open, the ticker appears on Facebook home next to the News Feed. If users do have the chat sidebar open, the ticker appears above the list of friends, and can be re-sized (it can’t be if the chat sidebar isn’t open). The ticker cannot be closed, and this has brought up concern among users, especially privacy concerns. However, Facebook has been keen to emphasize that the ticker only shows what people could see before – it just makes it “more discoverable”.

URL shortener

On December 14, 2009, Facebook launched its own URL shortened based on FB.me domain name. From that point on, all links based on facebook.com can be accessed after fb.me, which is seven characters shorter.

Usernames

Starting June 13, 2009, Facebook introduced a feature that allowed users to choose a Facebook username to make user location easier. The user is able to direct others to their page through a simple link such as www.facebook.com/username rather than an otherwise complex URL. This feature on Facebook quickly spread, with more than 1 million users registering usernames in the first three hours. Usernames are now available to any existing or newly registered user. According to the FAQ, “Facebook reserves the right to remove and/or reclaim any username at any time for any reason”.

Wall

The Wall is a space on each user’s profile page that allows friends to post messages for the user to see while displaying the time and date the message was written. One user’s Wall is visible to anyone with the ability to see his or her full profile, and different users’ Wall posts show up in an individual’s News Feed. Many users use their friends’ Walls for leaving short, temporal notes. More private discourse is saved for messages, which are sent to a user’s inbox, and are visible only to the sender and recipient(s) of the message, much like email.

In July 2007, Facebook allowed users to post attachments to the Wall, whereas previously the Wall was limited to text only. In May 2008, the Wall-to-Wall for each profile was limited to only 40 posts. Recently Facebook has allowed users to insert html code in boxes attached to the wall via apps like Static FBML which has allowed marketers to track use of their fan pages with Google Analytics.

Timeline

Questions

On March 24, 2011, Facebook announced that its new product – Facebook Questions – facilitates short, poll-like answers in addition to long-form responses, and also links directly to relevant items in Facebook’s directory of “fan pages.”

Events

Facebook events are a way for members to let friends know about upcoming events in their community and to organize social gatherings. Events require an event name, network, host name, event type, start time, location, and a guest list of friends invited. Events can be Public or Private. Private events cannot be found in searches and are by invitation only. People who have not been invited cannot view a Private event’s description, Wall or photos. They also will not see any Feed stories about the event. When setting up an event the user can choose to allow friends to upload photos or videos. Note that unlike real world events, all events are treated as separate entities (when the reality is some events sit inside other events, going to one event would preclude going to another, and so on).In February 2011, Facebook began to use the hCalendar microformat to mark up events, and the hCard micro format for the events’ venues, enabling the extraction of details to users’ own calendar or mapping applications.

Marketplace

In May 2007, Facebook introduced the Facebook Marketplace allowing users to post free classified ads within the following categories: For Sale, Housing, Jobs, and Other. Ads can be posted in either available or wanted format.The market place is available for all Facebook users and is currently free.In 2009; Facebook transferred ownership of the Marketplace to Oodle.

Notes

Facebook Notes was introduced on August 22, 2006, a blogging feature that allowed tags and embeddable images. Users were later able to import blogs from Xanga, Live Journal, Blogger, and other blogging services. A recentuse of Notes includes the Internet meme – “25 Random Things about Me” which involves writing 25 things about the user that their friends don’t already know about them and using the tag function to ask 25 friends to also do so. Nearly 5 million “25 Random Things” notes were written on Facebook profiles in the first week of February 2009.

Places

Facebook announced Places on August 18, 2010. It is a feature that lets users “check in” to Facebook using a mobile device to let a user’s friends know where they are at the moment. This feature is already known from Foursquare, a social network where users share their geo location data via mobile phones. In November 2010, Facebook announced “Deals”, a subset of the Places offering, which allows for users to check in from restaurants, supermarkets, bars, and coffee shops using an app on a mobile device and then be rewarded discounts, coupons, and free merchandise. This feature is marketed as a digital version of a loyalty card or coupon where a customer gets rewarded for loyal buying behavior. Available countries: places is currently available only in some countries: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Estonia, Canada, Cayman Islands, Japan, United Kingdom, United States, France, Italy, Spain, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Poland, South Africa, Finland, Ireland, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, Hong Kong, Philippines, and Malaysia with many more on the way.

Supported phones: On October 10, 2010, Places became available on BlackBerry, after iPhone. The Android OS is also places capable. Other users, including Windows Mobile users, must use a HTML5 browserto use Places via Facebook Touch Site.Discontinuation: Facebook Places was reported discontinued on August 24, 2011.

Platform

Main article: Facebook Platform.The Facebook Platform provides a set of APIs and tools which enable third-party developers to integrate with the “open graph” — whether through applications on Facebook.com or external websites and devices. Launched on May 24, 2007, Facebook Platform has evolved from enabling development just on Facebook.com to one also supporting integration across the web and devices.

Facebook Platform Statistics as of May 2010:

• More than one million developers and entrepreneurs from more than 180 countries
• More than 550,000 active applications currently on Facebook Platform
• Every month, more than 70% of Facebook users engage with Platform applications
• More than 250,000 websites have integrated with Facebook Platform
• More than 100 million Facebook users engage with Facebook on external websites          every month

Third party companies such as Adonomics, Kontagent and Mixpanel provide application metrics, and blogs such as AppRate, Inside Facebook, and Face Reviews have sprung up in response to the clamor for Facebook applications. On July 4, 2007, Altura Ventures announced the “Altura 1 Facebook Investment Fund,” becoming the world’s first Facebook-only venture capital firm. On August 29, 2007, Facebook changed the way in which the popularity of applications is measured, to give attention to the more engaging applications, following criticism that ranking applications only by the number of people who had installed the application was giving an advantage to the highly viral, yet useless applications. Tech blog Valleywag has criticized Facebook Applications, labeling them a “cornucopia of uselessness.”Others have called for limiting third-party applications so the Facebook “user experience” is not degraded.

Primarily attempting to create viral applications is a method that has certainly been employed by numerous Facebook application developers. StanfordUniversity even offered a class in the Fall of 2007, entitled, Computer Science (CS) 377W: “Create Engaging Web Applications Using Metrics and Learning on Facebook”. Numerous applications created by the class were highly successful, and ranked amongst the top Facebook applications, with some achieving over 3.5 million users in a month.

Questions

In May 2010, Facebook began testing Questions. Questions are an application in which users submit questions for their friends to answer. It is expected to compete directly with services such as Yahoo! Answers.

Photos

One of the most popular applications on Facebook is the Photos application, where users can upload albums of photos, tag friends helped by face recognition technology and comment on photos. According to Facebook,

• 50+ billion user photos (in July 2010)
• More than 1.5 petabytes (1.5 million gigabytes) of photo storage used (in May 2009).
• 220 million photos added each week which take up 25 terabytes of disk space (in May 2009).
• 3+ billion photo images served to users every day (in May 2007).
• 550,000+ images served per second during peak traffic windows (in May 2009).

Videos

During the time that Facebook released its platform, it also released an application of its own for sharing videos on Facebook. Users can add their videos with the service by uploading video, adding video through Facebook Mobile, and using a webcam recording feature. Additionally, users can “tag” their friends in videos they add much like the way users can tag their friends in photos, except the location of the friend in the video is not displayed. Users also have the option of video messaging. Videos cannot be placed in categories, whereas photos are sorted by albums. Facebook Video can support up to 1080p format and even 4K resolution.

On May 12, 2011, Facebook announced that it is launching several new security features designed to protect users from malware and from getting their accounts hijacked.

Clickjacking warnings

Facebook will display warnings when users are about to be duped by click jacking and cross-site scripting attacks in which they think they are following a link to an interesting news story or taking action to see a video and instead end up spamming their friends.

Login Approvals

Facebook also offers two-factor authentication called “Login Approvals,” which, if turned on, will require users to enter a code whenever they log into the site from a new or unrecognized device. The code is sent via text message to the user’s mobile phone.

Site warnings

Facebook is partnering with the free Web of Trust safe surfing service to give Facebook users more information about the sites they are linking to from the social network. When a user clicks on a potentially malicious link, a warning box will appear that gives more information about why the site might be dangerous. The user can either ignore the warning or go back to the previous page.

FBML

Facebook Markup Language (FBML) is considered to be Facebook’s own version of HTML. While many of the tags of HTML can be used in FBML, there are also important tags that cannot be used such as HTML, HEAD and BODY. Also, Java script cannot be used with FBML. According to the Facebook Markup Language (FBML) Developer’s page, FBML is now deprecated. No new features will be added to FBML and developers are recommended to develop new applications utilizing HTML, JavaScript and CSS. FBML support will end January 1, 2012 and FBML will no longer function as of June 1, 2012.

Gifts

In February 2007, Facebook added a new virtual gift feature to the website. Friends could send gifts, small icons of novelty items designed by former Apple designer Susan Kare, to each other by selecting one from Facebook’s virtual gift shop and adding a message. Gifts given to a user appear on the recipient’s wall with the giver’s message, unless the giver decided to give the gift privately, in which case the giver’s name and message is not displayed to other users. Additionally, all gifts (including private gifts) received by a user are displayed in the recipient’s gift box (right above their wall on their profile), marked with either the first name of the user (for public gifts) or the word “Private.” An Anonymous option is also available, by which anyone with profile access can see the gift, but only the recipient sees the message. None will see the giver’s name, and the gift goes in the recipient’s gift box but not the wall.

 Facebook users are given one free gift to give upon registering their account. Each additional gift given by a user costs US$1.00. The initial selection of gifts was Valentine’s Day themed, and 50% of the net proceeds (after credit card processing fees were taken out, etc.) received through February 2007 were donated to the charity Susan G. Komen for the Cure. After the month of February, the proceeds were no longer donated. Soon after, Facebook began making one new gift available each day, most of which had a limited supply or were available for a limited time. On 8 November 2008, Facebook changed the $1.00 per gift model to a micro-payment model of 100 points per $1.00, with the existing gifts costing 100 points. They planned to allow a wider variety of gifts in the future. The built-in Gifts feature was removed on August 1, 2010, to allow Facebook to focus on more important website features. Existing gift-giving applications can be used as a replacement for the Gifts feature.

Lite

In August 2009, Facebook announced the rollout of a “lite” version of the site, optimized for users on slower or intermittent Internet connections. Facebook Lite offered fewer services, excluded most third-party applications and required less bandwidth. A beta version of the slimmed-down interface was released first to invited testersbefore a broader rollout across users in the United States, Canada, and India.^[87] It was announced on 20 April 2010 that support for the “lite” service had ended and that users would be redirected back to the normal, full content, Facebook website. The service was operational for only eight months.

Chapter – 2

Facebook Process and Necessary

2.1    Registration Process

2.2  Subscribe Process

Go to the profile page of the person whose status updates you’d like to receive by text message on your mobile phone. Under their profile picture, you will see a list of options. “Subscribe via SMS” should be one of the options. Click on “subscribe via SMS”. It’s that easy!

Before the text message feature, if you wanted to update your status message on Facebook, users would have to log into the mobile version of Facebook and then type in the message. When I attempted to test it out, I realized that I never activated Facebook mobile:

The above message will appear if we do not have our phone activated. A  To activate a phone on Facebook, we have to go to www.facebook.com/mobile, enter our phone number hit Activate. A  Facebook will text message we a confirmation code and then our phone should be ready to update status messages.

From that point forward, we send a text message to 32665 about what we are doing. A  I wrote “Is testing out facebook status texting” and sent it to the number. A  Below are the results:

and then Facebook Mobile sent me back the below text message:

I doubt I’ll use this feature much since I like surfing the web on my phone more than sending text messages nowadays, but it is a great feature to add. We all know about Facebook is one of the most popular social networking site around the world. Now a days Face is introducing new features some of new features recently introduced by Facebook are “Upload Photos via email“, “m.facebook.com” and “facebook for your phone“. Now they have recently added new feature called “Facebook Mobile Texts” through we can utilize most features of facebook through our mobile phone.

Some other Functions of Mobile Texts:

Update Facebook status

Message

Get profile info

Get cell phone #

Wall post

Poke

Add a friend

To start using sms to update facebook status feature we first need to register our mobile phone to facebook account. The below steps will helps you to register your mobile phone.

Firstly sign into our facebook account then click settings >> Account settings in top right side

1. In Activate facebook texts the step 1 will ask our  country and mobile service provide select the appropriate option.

In step 2 they will ask to send text message to 51555 (number may differs depending on location) containing only letter “f”

Ex: f to 51555

Click Next button.

2. They will send activation code to our  mobile phone enter that code in “Enter code here” option and click confirm

That’s all now we can start using your Facebook account on our  mobile phone through by just sms and start updating our  facebook status from anywhere In abouttricks.com you can find all sort of tech news related to Digital Camera, Data Recovery , software reviews, Computer Support, Laptop Computer, PC tips etc.

2.3       Necessary steps

• Create an E-mail account.
• Create a Facebook account.
• Create a Facebook application.
• Create two SMS keyword.
• Create a registration table in database.
• Create a status update table.

Create an E-mail account:

Create a new valid mail account to registration a facebook account.

Create a facebook account:

Create a facebook account.

Create SMS Database:

Create a database and also create a keyword table in this database. And assign a keyword and short code for registration.

Create a registration table in database:

Create a registration table in same database. This table used for registration.

Create a status update table:

Create a status update table in this database. All registration information recorded in this table. And registration information.

Facebook account information:

When a user registration to facebook status update then this users information should be change in his/her facebook information.

Facebook status:

Facebook status change and after that user automatic update by his/her mobile.

Registration Process:

User will send a SMS and need a keyword.

     Example: FBREG<space>name@example.com

• User will receive a SMS to check his e-mail address for a link.
• User will receive an E-mail on his/her provided email account. Then he/she should be hit on this provided link.

Status Update Process:

User will send a SMS using a particular keyword.

            Example:  FBSTATUS<space>”Users facebook status”

The status of a facebook user will be updated and he/she will get a confirmation SMS on his mobile.

The process of facebook status updates registration.

Successfully registration in facebook . Information sent from sms server.

This confirmation indicates that facebook status update request successfully accepted in sms server.

Status updates confirmation by sms server.

This information indicates that the user information inserted into users mail account.

When a user sent invalid mail id then the sms server through a invalied alert by sms.

When sms server cannot created facebook session id the server through this message.

Configuration File:

This configure file used for a configuration exe file.

This application file indicates that which machine and id used for sms send and resend. This file runs a central machine server.

• It is an innovative project.
• It makes our life livelier.
• I will try my best to do the most perfectly.

2.4    Facebook Steps:

1. Go to the Message Option
2. Type- <FBREG><space><email address>

2.5 The Future of Facebook:

COMMENTARY – In the news trade, they call it burying the lede and on Thursday the biggest headline out of Facebook’s big developer conference was all but ignored amid the understandable fuss made about open graphs, user timelines and music sharing in real time.

Little surprise, really. What advantage was there for Mark Zuckerberg to wave a red cape in front of his rivals – current or future? After all, the day was chockablock with meaty announcements and there was enough on the docket to give fans and bloggers enough fodder to chew over for now. But let’s step back and consider just how rapidly Zuckerberg and his cohorts are working to turn Facebook into a platform that would have an intimate influence over what we choose to buy, read and hear. The road map isn’t any secret. He told the crowd that “the next five years are going to be defined by the apps and depth of engagement.” Translation: in the future according to Zuckerberg, every application would be “social” and, best of all from The Hoodie’s point of view, inextricably linked to Facebook’s platform. Think about it: All that data, all that information – and all that potential advertising.

It’s a breathtaking ambition.

Before getting too carried away, however, I have to insert the mandatory “to be sure” paragraph. Tech industry lore is filled with examples of big, bold ideas challenging conventional thinking about platforms – and this one is that harder to handicap precisely because it’s so all-encompassing. Whether Facebook will succeed where others have failed is the $64, 000 questions we can’t yet answer.

CBS News: Facebook ramps up colonization of the Web CNET: How to sign up for Timeline Facebook: Tell your story with Timeline ZDNet: A closer look at the Facebook Timeline and the Open Graph CNET: Facebook’s new version of the “Open Graph” During the early 1990s, for instance, I remember the excitement about Java’s potential for supplanting Windows as the development platform. That ambition came up short for any number of reasons, not the least being Microsoft’s determination to squash so-called middleware threats to its operating system dominance. Later on, with the rise of the commercial Internet, Netscape enjoyed its moment in the sun and many people similarly thought the web browser would emerge as the technology world’s de-facto application development platform. Unfortunately for Netscape, it was an idea years ahead of its time.

So if you had asked me a year ago about Facebook’s chances of becoming much more than a very sticky destination site – a franchise, coincidentally, that’s already valued in the tens of billions of dollars – I would have put the odds at less than 50 percent. Google was developing its own social network and it was just a matter of time before Eric Schmidt, reprising the cameo of Ming the Merciless, turned on the Death Ray. That was before Zuckerberg donned the Flash Gordon garb and turned the tables.

Why the Future of Facebook Just Looks Grim

Facebook is on track to generate more than $4 billion in ad revenue this year. That’s a pretty hefty number for a company still in its infancy. Right now, talk around the virtual campfire suggests a valuation stabilizing at around $70 billion for the company, as some of the irrational exuberance on Shares Post isn’t expected to hold. Everything is looking good for Facebook … at least on the surface. If you think about how the social media environment works, however, it’s easy to wonder if this company can really go the distance.

According to eMarketer, 90 percent of Facebook’s revenue comes from its ad business. With granular targeting, self-service capabilities and a user base of more than half a billion people, it’s not a bad business to have. You don’t need to buy through an agency or have a big budget to get to the table. In fact, you can get your message out via Facebook ads for less than a hundred bucks. And, all of this stuff is poised to grow. It must seem pretty strange, therefore, to see me question Facebook’s ability to thrive. It has the users, loyalty, technology and simplicity needed to win. This is all good stuff for the marketing guys (like me), but there’s something else we want: results. And, it doesn’t look like Facebook is equipped to deliver them easily.The fundamental problem with Facebook ads is that they aren’t served up to a user who is in a buying mindset. You have to see it, understand it, change your frame of mind and take action. This stands in stark contrast to Google’s ad solution, which delivers something contextually relevant when you are searching – and search implies that the user is looking to take action.

Because of this dynamic, you can see tens of thousands of impressions (or more) accumulate against your Facebook ads before a single click is delivered. If you’re operating in a highly targeted environment, the outcome is saturation and repeated display in front of people who tuned you out long ago. A certain number of repeats certainly helps, but after a while, you want to give up on them and find some new blood. In this regard, Facebook falls short.

Of course, the alternative is “brand,” that wonderful, squishy word, which is important but still needs to contribute some results, even if indirectly. Couldn’t Facebook be an effective platform for brand advertising?

The problem here is that Facebook really isn’t set up to serve up these sorts of ads well. In a nod to the user experience, which all those old-school social media purists wish to remain untainted; Facebook makes it impossible to deliver any visually compelling ads. With the current solution, you can only put up a small image that easily becomes swallowed by the ad text around it, let alone everything else on the page. Placement sucks, and users seem to be training themselves to ignore them (I have heard this anecdotally and experienced it personally). As a result, if you want to help potential customers get to know you, you don’t really have the right tools to get the job done. It’s starting to look like Facebook could be $70 billion of vapid value, set to decline as advertisers grow weary of the platform’s results. Yet, the company could right itself for the future. This will involve two major efforts: (1) the creation of more advertiser-friendly tools and (2) diversification of revenue streams.

For the former, one can look to Nick Denton’s Gawker Media. Sure, the company took it on the chin in terms of traffic following its redesign, though Denton attributes this search engine optimization problems rather than the design change. But, his new approach accommodates premium advertisers, especially those looking for brand exposure rather than a direct response play. If Facebook could give up even a little more real estate to advertisers, not even so much that it would impact the end-user experience significantly, it could gain access to a larger, more lucrative market. The other issue is revenue streams. Right now, Facebook is reliant on one form: a specific type of ad. Now, it seems like time to explore other alternatives, from premium accounts to analytics to the sale of data. The approach has worked well for LinkedIn, arguably the most mature social media company on the market (as evidenced by its liquidity event this week).

Facebook is huge. It’s successful. It’s the major name in social media. But, it is far too dependent upon one revenue stream – and it’s a revenue stream that’s packed with risk. For Facebook to be both big and enduring, a next step toward maturity is necessary.

Traditional Mobile SMS processing

While Facebook does not charge for this service, your mobile-service provider’s standard text messaging rates will apply so be sure to check with your provider. You can stop receiving text message status updates from your friends and connections at any time. Unsubscribe in one of three ways: reply directly from your mobile phone with “unsubscribe,” return to a friend’ profile and click the “Unsubscribe from SMS Updates” link or edit your mobile texts settings from the Mobile settings page. If you’re not able to sign-up yet, keep checking back. We’re working to expand this to more and more people around the world. As of now, we’re able to offer this service in 18 countries, where we have existing relationships with mobile service providers, like the U.S., South Africa, Indonesia and New Zealand.

We’re constantly working to add new mobile features for Facebook. Learn more about all of the mobile options on Facebook, from device-specific applications to our m.facebook.com mobile site, on our Facebook Mobile page.I use Facebook as my ‘social network of choice’, and the means for updating friends of my status.

The problem with Facebook: You can only PULL status updates, and until now, you can not UPDATE them programmatically. I want a way to update Facebook without physically logging into Facebook. It can be done, and I found out how. Facebook has no status update API and their update box uses AJAX to post, so cURL is out of question… or so everyone thought! Facebook has a mobile service (http://m.facebook.com) that allows you to update your status and view your Facebook from a cell phone. It looks the best on Windows Mobile devices (I have a Q), and works great on normal WAP browsers. This is the key to my facebook-twitter hack.

Facebook mobile uses a normal POST method for updating status. How cool is that? This means that it HAS to be possible to update your Facebook from a program. Using nothing but cURL (or, in my case, PHP with the cURL extension), you can update your Facebook status. What does this mean? This means that if someone wanted, they could easily keep their Facebook status synced up with their latest Twitter status. The code is below. Feel free to use it. Mentioning my blog/name would be greatly appreciated.

With the facebook SMS, One can use facebook’s basic functionality like status update, send friend request, search friend etc through the SMS without internet connectivity.

SMS Facebook and send to 32665 and a confirmation code will be sent to you via SMS which needs to be entered in your facebook account for initiate facebook SMS. Or follow this link from mobile: http://m.facebook.com/ Settings> SMS

Then you can update your facebook status and receive notification through SMS. You can also use following keywords for facebook SMS service.

 Status

Poke

Friends

Fan/Like a page

 Photos

 Activation of the service

 Help

 Charges: each SMS is charged only BDT 1 (excluding vat) and any incoming SMS is free.

While Facebook does not charge for this service, your mobile-service provider’s standard text messaging rates will apply so be sure to check with your provider. You can stop receiving text message status updates from your friends and connections at any time. Unsubscribe in one of three ways: reply directly from your mobile phone with “unsubscribe,” return to a friend’s profile and click the “Unsubscribe from SMS Updates” link or edit your mobile texts settings from the Mobile settings page.If you’re not able to sign-up yet, keep checking back. We’re working to expand this to more and more people around the world. As of now, we’re able to offer this service in 18 countries, where we have existing relationships with mobile service providers, like the U.S., U.K., South Africa, Indonesia and New Zealand.

We’re constantly working to add new mobile features for Facebook. Learn more about all of the mobile options on Facebook, from device-specific applications to our m.facebook.com mobile site, on our Facebook Mobile page. I use Facebook as my ‘social network of choice’, and the means for updating friends of my status. The main reason is because most of my friends have no idea what Twitter is, nor would many of them use it. Everyone I know does have a Facebook account though, so it seems only natural that I use the medium which will give my updates the largest audience. Although I do not use Twitter, I fully support it and love the idea of it. Out of curiosity, I wanted to see if I could meld Facebook and Twitter. What I envisioned was a one-stop shop for updating my statuses across the internet. To do this you would need something that can PUSH and ACCEPT updates. Twitter has an API that will ACCEPT updates, but nothing that will PUSH them. Facebook has an API that does not have any functions for status updates at all, but they do have status update RSS feeds. I want Twitter to be the top of my update tree. I want to update twitter (because of its SMS/Web/IM/API updating capabilities) and have everything else know about it. The API allows me to make a plug in for my IM client that could possibly throw my latest away message up on Twitter. SMS/Web/IM allows me to update twitter from wherever I am.

4.2    Service at a Glance:

1. Subscribers need to register for this Service through SMS.
2. Then the Subscriber will dial a Short Code and record the “Status Update” with a simple IVR flow.
3. After recording from IVR Flow in Visio, an URL will be called using External Action command in Visio Tool. Voice Update Application will post this recorded message to the respective subscriber’s Facebook Status of his/her profile.
4. The Subscriber or their friends on FB will be able to listen to the Voice Status by clicking the link of the Status.

The Application need to be able to integrate our VSDP with Facebook

User will send a SMS using a particular keyword where first word should be 8(Eight) characters long and after the space user’s status should be sent. Example:  FBSTATUS<space>”Users facebook status” The status of a facebook user will be updated and he/she will get a confirmation SMS on his mobile.

While Facebook does not charge for this service, your mobile-service provider’s standard text messaging rates will apply so be sure to check with your provider. You can stop receiving text message status updates from your friends and connections at any time. Unsubscribe in one of three ways: reply directly from your mobile phone with “unsubscribe,” Return to friend’s profile and click the “Unsubscribe from SMS Updates” link or edit your mobile texts settings from the Mobile settings page.

If you’re not able to sign-up yet, keep checking back. We’re working to expand this to more and more people around the world. As of now, we’re able to offer this service in 18 countries, where we have existing relationships with mobile service providers, like the U.S.,U.K., South Africa, Indonesia and New Zealand. We’re constantly working to add new mobile features for Facebook. Learn more about all of the mobile options on Facebook, from device-specific applications to our m.facebook.com mobile site, on our Facebook Mobile page. I use Facebook as my ‘social network of choice’, and the means for updating friends of my status. The main reason is because most of my friends have no idea what Twitter is, nor would many of them use it. Everyone I know does have a Facebook account though, so it seems only natural that I use the medium which will give my updates the largest audience. Although I do not use Twitter, I fully support it and love the idea of it. Out of curiosity, I wanted to see if I could meld Facebook and Twitter. What I envisioned was a one-stop shop for updating my statuses across the internet. To do this you would need something that can PUSH and ACCEPT updates. Twitter has an API that will ACCEPT updates, but nothing that will PUSH them. Facebook has an API that does not have any functions for status updates at all, but they do have status update RSS feeds. I want Twitter to be the top of my update tree. I want to update twitter (because of its SMS/Web/IM/API updating capabilities) and have everything else know about it. The API allows me to make a plug in for my IM client that could possibly throw my latest away message up on Twitter. SMS/Web/IM allows me to update twitter from wherever I am

FBREG->Represents the ‘Keyword’, which will be confirmed by the client.

space->This is the ‘space’ option of mobile.

Email address-> this is the Email Address of the subscriber, where invitation will be sent. The email address should be a valid one which is used to register into facebook. For any other email address the service will not be activated.

5.2    Return/Confirmation SMS:

After sending the SMS, system will check whether the email address is valid or not. If it is not valid, then system will send a return SMS to the subscriber. The return SMS will be like the below message-“Invalid Email ID, please insert the correct one” If the email address is valid, then the subscriber will get a message from the short code to check his/her email. The message will be like below-“An e-mail has been sent to your <email address> account. Please check you’re Email and follow the instructions to register this service” The user will logged in to their email and will find a link. The link will be like below-“Dear User, to register on facebook status update service please click to http://202.22.193.179/test_facebook/ and then login to your facebook account and allow our application to update your Facebook status time to time”. The user will click the link and then he /she will be redirected to facebook login page with a notification that the application wants an authentication to access his/her account. After he/she will log in, they’ll have to allow the Application. As soon as the application will be allowed, the user will get a confirmation SMS. The confirmation message will be like the below message-“Dear Subscriber, the registered process is successful. Please dial XXXX to record your status and share with your friends”.

5.3   The problem with Facebook

You can only PULL status updates, and until now, you can not UPDATE them programmatically. I want a way to update Facebook without physically logging into Facebook. It can be done, and I found out how. Facebook has no status update API and their update box uses AJAX to post, so URL is out of question… or so everyone thought! Facebook has a mobile service (http://m.facebook.com) that allows you to update your status and view your Facebook from a cell phone. It looks the best on Windows Mobile devices (I have a Q), and works great on normal WAP browsers. This is the key to my facebook-hack. Facebook mobile uses a normal POST method for updating status. How cool is that? This means that it HAS to be possible to update your Facebook from a program. Using nothing but cURL (or, in my case, PHP with the cURL extension), you can update your Facebook status. What does this mean? This means that if someone wanted, they could easily keep their Facebook status synced up with their latest Twitter status. The code is below. Feel free to use it. Mentioning my blog/name would be greatly appreciated.

5.4 Security Features

Login Approvals

Facebook also offers two-factor authentication called “Login Approvals,” which, if turned on, will require users to enter a code whenever they log into the site from a new or unrecognized device. The code is sent via text message to the user’s mobile phone.

Site warnings

Facebook is partnering with the free Web of Trust safe surfing service to give Facebook users more information about the sites they are linking to from the social network. When a user clicks on a potentially malicious link, a warning box will appear that gives more information about why the site might be dangerous. The user can either ignore the warning or go back to the previous page.

Users to Facebook: Forget ‘memorable’ status updates to Digital Life.

 First, now I can ask questions and poll my friends as an option on status updates. But it’s a flawed addition, since the “Add an option” field in the poll choices doesn’t let you edit the number of choices you can give your friends. And when I started typing in choices, it would try to auto-fill with existing pages. It was very frustrating because, as you might have noticed, I like polls. And no one really seems to have noticed the one question I put out there (“iPad 2: Wi-Fi only, or go for 3G?”). Are others getting any traction on that feature?

Second, that “Memorable status updates” from my friends are showing up on the right-hand bar. To be fair, some are memorable. But some are me. What algorithm decides that? It was showing up last night, but on checking around Facebook today, no sign of it. Did they pull it off?

If Facebook did remove this brief experiment, perhaps it was because of pages like “FB, Lose ‘Memorable Status Updates’ – or Give us Control” (thanks All Facebook, for pointing us there). People weren’t shy about voicing their disapproval of these blasts from the past. One member of the group I contacted via Facebook email, Carroll Leeds, responded by writing me why she objects to it:

The reason this bothers me is that I have had to see posts that my friends and fiancee wrote as their statuses after my mother died and for some odd reason these posts seem to be the most prevalent, as well as posts about pets that passed around the same time etc. Other people in our group have had the same issues with R.I.P. posts popping up as well as posts that were written to ex lovers that they are now forced to read, even though they are no longer with that person and have moved on. These posts have become mentally distressing as they are memories that are either best left in the past or things you may not want to think about at the moment, particularly if you are having a fairly good day. FB is supposed to be fun and a way to connect, but last week I found myself crying in front of the computer reading the posts about my mother.

How do I activate Mobile Texts?

You can go to the Mobile tab of your Account Settings page to activate Mobile Texts. Click “Register for Facebook Text Messages” and complete the steps that follow.

If you find that your carrier is not listed in the drop-down menu in Step 1 of the activation process, it means that your carrier is not currently supported for Facebook Mobile Texts. We encourage you to talk to your mobile operator to let them know that you are interested in this service.

How do I add a new number or switch phone numbers?

You can go to the Mobile tab of your Account Settings page to add, remove, or switch phone numbers.If you already have a mobile number on the account, you can click Add another phone to activate another number, or remove your existing number by clicking remove next to the number you wish to remove. We also recommend adding an email address to your account, so you always have a backup.

6.2    Using Mobile Texts

How do I use Mobile Texts?

Visit the Mobile Texts page to learn about the different functions available through Mobile texts, such as posting on someone’s wall (timeline) or updating your status. You can use the demo to type in different commands and see what action will be taken on Facebook.

How can I receive more Mobile Texts after I have reached my daily limit?

Facebook will send you a text when you have reached your daily limit. Reply to this text with “reset” to reset your limit for that day.

How do I like a Page via mobile text?

To like a page via mobile text, just text like and the Page’s username to your country code. For example, if you text: Deactivating Mobile Texts

How do I stop/deactivate Facebook Mobile Texts?

To stop Facebook notifications from being sent to your phone, you can simply text “Off” (without quotation marks) to the number that you send your status updates to. You will receive a text message back confirming that Facebook texts are now off. Alternatively, you can go to the Mobile tab of your Account Settings page and change your settings to “Off.” Note that you can still send text messages to the same number to update your status or take actions Facebook

You can also choose to completely remove a number from your account on this page by clicking “remove” next to the phone number that you wish to remove.

6.3    Send text messages to any mobile from Facebook

Hi Guys, today i want to post a interesting topic on how to send a text message to your friend mobile from Facebook for free without any long process. Most of us are now using Facebook now days. We don’t want to log off until we waste atleast 4 to 5hrs in it. People are not even bothered to reply text messages to there friends via mobile. They want everything to be done at a single place. In Facebook you can send a text message to anyone in Bangladesh with a simple application. There are a lot of applications in Facebook through which we can send a free text message to anyone. But they require some surveys, credits, and etc which waste a lot of your time. I have a simple way of sending the messages to any mobile just like that, without any surveys, credits or likes. All you have to do is to allow a simple application which is very trusted by all Facebook users and also very famous. So, no need to worry.

The application is called Free SMS to India via Indyarocks which is really cool. All you have to do is to follow some simple steps which i mention below.

1. First go to the application either by searching for it in Facebook or by Clicking here – Indyarocks and checkout the Screenshot if you are confused.
2. Next ‘Like’ the page if you have done it before.
3. After Liking the page, it refreshes automatically and now you can find a small icon called Go to App beside the title, just click on it.
4. You will be asked whether you want to allow the app to be run or not, click on Allow to continue or Leave App to come again later. Checkout the Screenshot if you are lost.
5. After that you will be asked to Enter your Username or Password if you have already registered in there website use it here.If not,create one by entering your email id in the update email section and click on update. I prefer you to enter your existing facebook email id which has a email id and password which has already been entered by you t

Conclusion:

Every day, hundreds of millions of people access Facebook from their mobile devices to share and connect with the people they care about, whenever and wherever they want. As this number continues to grow, we want to make sure that everyone has a great experience regardless of the mobile device they choose to use. To achieve this, we’ve been working with several application developers, operators, and hardware manufacturers from the mobile industry. We want people to have a great mobile experience no matter what type of phone they carry. Smart phone’s have offered better features for sharing with friends but aren’t used by most people around the world.

   If we already have Facebook Mobile activated for our phone or device, then we will begin receiving the text message updates after confirming our subscription. If we haven’t yet set up Facebook Mobile, we will be taken through a series of steps to activate it before receiving text messages.