Facebook Connect
This is a list of features that can be found on the website. Basic features include friend networking with others and posting on a "wall".
Features
News Feed
On 6 September 2006, Ruchi Sanghvi 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 alternate home page in which users saw a constantly updated list of their friends' Facebook activity. News Feed also shows conversations taking place between the walls of a user's friends.
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.
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.
Thereafter, users were able to control what types of information were shared automatically with friends. Currently, users may prevent friends from seeing updates about several types of especially private activities, although other events are not customizable in this way.
Recently, Facebook allows users to minimize how often they see certain types of stories and certain friends in their News Feed.
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. More private discourse is saved for Messages, which are sent to a person'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 content only.
In the most recent incarnation of Facebook; e.g.
The Wall feature has been discarded and has been replaced with a streaming personal news feed concerning the individual, with the ability for frequenting friends of the users' profile to leave "Comments".
Photos
One of the most popular applications on Facebook is the Photos application, where users can upload albums of photos, tag friends, and comment on photos. According to Facebook, there are
1.7 billion user photos
2.2 billion friends tagged in user photos
160 terabytes of photo storage used with an extra 60 terabytes available
60+ million photos added each week which take up 5 terabytes of disk space
3+ billion photo images served to users every day
100,000+ images served per second during peak traffic windows
Gifts
Some of Facebook's gifts, as displayed in the website's gift shop.
In February 2007, Facebook added a new 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 will see the message. They plan to allow a wider variety of gifts in the future.
With the advent of Applications came a way to subvert the required US$1.00 payment; however, the gifts in the "Free Gifts" application, created by Zachary Allia, are not the same as the official gifts, as they are displayed in a different manner.
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.
Pokes
Facebook includes a "poke" feature that allows one user to send a "poke" to another. According to Facebook's FAQ section on the Poke Feature, "a poke is a way to interact with your friends on Facebook.
People interpret the poke in many different ways, and we encourage you to come up with your own meanings." In principle, this is intended to be a "nudge" to attract the attention of the other user. However, while many Facebook users, as intended, use the feature to attract attention or say hello, some users construe it as a sexual advance (which is hardly surprising, as "poke" has, for centuries, had the sexual meaning in colloquial English language).
There are several applications such as "X Me" and "SuperPoke!" that allow users to put any action in place of the word "poke."
Status
Facebook has a micro-blogging feature called "status updates" which allows users to inform their friends of their current whereabouts, actions, or thoughts. When setting up an event the user can choose to allow friends to upload photos, video, and posted items.
Networks and groups
Facebook allows different networks and groups to which many users can join.
Groups are a way of enabling a number of people to come together online to share information and discuss specific subjects. Instant messaging clients that currently support facebook chat include Digsby, Adium, and Scrapboy, as well as Pidgin with a cross-platform plugin.
Pages are integrated with Facebook's advertising system, allowing Page owners to easily advertise to Facebook's users.