Website / Facebook

Facebook started out as thefacebook.com, which was intended to be a social networking site for college students.

Originally, it was much more low-key than MySpace: A user needed an official school e-mail address to join. To a registered user, the interface worked somewhat similarly (a user could view everyone in his network, but would have to add friends from other networks to view their profiles). Because it came out in spring 2004, anyone who had graduated from college in 2003 or earlier was essentially forbidden from becoming a member, due to their lack of an official school account. Schools were also added piecemeal, so your friend might invite you to join, but find that your college wasn't in the site's database yet.

In 2006, regional, corporate and high school networks were established, leading to an outcry among college students, who felt that Facebook was becoming another MySpace; a counter-contingent appeared who disagreed. This outcry only intensified when the whole "official college e-mail address" thing was abolished later in the year and anyone with an e-mail address was allowed to join. The complaints later became Hilarious in Hindsight, as now it's MySpace that's trying to copy Facebook's every move, ever since it became Deader Than Disco.

As of 2014, Facebook remains one of the most popular (and actually still more low-key; it hasn't taken as much flak as whipping boy MySpace) networking sites out there. More and more sites are adding Facebook Like buttons on their pages, making it look as if Facebook is taking over the Internet. It lacks most of MySpace's profile-customization options; no sparklies or rainbow-colored fonts allowed. This may be to Facebook's benefit, as it creates a more professional feeling. However, there are a huge number of applications that one can add to one's profile, for anything from horoscopes to celebrity-lookalike pictures. As of now, it has over 1 billion users.

There are also a number of entries for fictional characters, such as Michelle Dessler from 24.

This wiki also now has its own page on there.

Facebook's layout has gone through several major changes, each one triggering a mass epidemic of "Ruined FOREVER." Ironically, each new update has people rushing to defend the old layout, deciding it was not so bad after all despite laying into that one prior. In addition to this, the media and some more tech-savvy members of the public have found a place to whip Facebook where it hurts the most: privacy. Over time, Facebook has implemented different levels of privacy for its user profiles (while urging people to use caution before posting any compromising photos or rants).

Facebook is home to a variety of third-party applications, including some rather addictive games like Mafia Wars and FarmVille. In fact, some people have Facebook accounts for the sole purpose of playing games.

A movie about the founding of Facebook, titled The Social Network, was released in 2010, directed by David Fincher, (Se7en, Fight Club) and written by Aaron Sorkin. Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross provided the soundtrack.

As with MySpace, the mere mention of Facebook in online forums and IRC channels can cause people to launch into long rants about why they don't use social networking sites.

It has led to the practice of "Facebook stalking"—looking at someone's profile, status updates and photo uploads to find out more about their lives (rather than, y'know, just talking to them directly). An especially useful tool if you either are curious about some stranger who has ninety-seven mutual friends, enjoy being a "detective", or are a Psycho Ex Boy-/Girlfriend (or, indeed, a thief, as Facebook offers great insight into when people are not at home, while also often giving enough information to find where that home is). Granted, however, it wouldn't be a concern if users simply didn't post this kind of info in the first place.

Facebook has announced an alliance with Skype.

Facebook entered the stock market on May 18, 2012, at 11 a.m. EDT, under the abbreviation FB, with an IPO of about US$38 billion, which it broke even at the end of that day. Even after the purchase, Mark Zuckerberg has control over the entire company. This move has made him a multi-billionaire and he coincidentally married his longtime girlfriend in a secret wedding just days after. But Facebook also lost a lot of money due to the falling stocks, and a few lawsuits have happened that they'll need to deal with, in addition to an investigation by the U.S. Senate.

Also, it is a well-known spammers' hangout as well.

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This Web site contains examples of:

• Artifact Title: The term "facebook" once referred to printed directories that colleges hand out to students featuring everyone's photo and contact info — essentially what Facebook originally aimed to imitate. Not so much now that it's open to the general public and has so many other features. Meanwhile, its massive popularity has caused a real-life inversion of this trope: Nobody would refer to such a publication as a "facebook" now (assuming they are even printed at all anymore).
• Bag of Sharing: Files for download on groups and pages.
• Early Installment Weirdness: Definitely. In its very earliest form, the website was restricted to a tiny handful of universities, and explicitly designed as a tool for socializing on university campuses. It also didn't have status updates for the first five years of its existence, and didn't add a "Like" button until the year after that; by now, both features have largely taken over the website, even though the the website started to gain popularity many years before either of them were introduced.
• Flame War: Whether it's by commenting on other users' pages, trolling the walls of groups they don't like, or posting scathing rants on every conceivable subject, Facebook users are never at a loss for ways to start one.
• Flanderization: A website being Flanderized, you may ask? But this website is now seen as something of a "lets-free-for-all" type site.
  • Taken Up to Eleven in the United Kingdom, where it is a case of New Media Are Evil.
• Food Porn: As on another major social networking site, people seem to feel an inexplicable urge to let the world know what they're eating for lunch (with pictures).
• G.I.F.T.: Mostly averted, since the site requires users to use their real names. But that doesn't stop some people from being Jerkasses anyway—additionally, Facebook isn't always that vigilant, so a few users can slip past the censors using fake names and cause trouble.
  • It still comes up on other sites like news ones, which let people use their Facebook profiles to leave comments.
  • And of course leaving your profile logged in is risky...◊
• Glurge Addict: You probably have at least one of these in your circle.
• Happiness Is Mandatory: See the Quotes page. It's the main reason why you merely "Ignore" or "Not Now" unwanted friend requests, or are unable to "Dislike" a post.
  • Not only that, but Facebook has a tendency to filter posts that you might not like. Made painfully clear in August 2014 when there were plenty of people posting about riots and protests in Ferguson, Missouri, but all anyone saw were feel-good posts about the "ice bucket challenge."
  • Mitigating this somewhat, in 2015 they added a more diverse range of ways to respond to a story without commenting, allowing the user to select from a range of emoticons representing "love", "haha", "yay", "wow", "sad" and "angry". None of these generally see as much use as the standard "like" button, but at least the option's there.
• Home Game: Sort of. There are Facebook versions of Wheel of Fortune, The Price Is Right, Press Your Luck, Family Feud and Jeopardy!.
• Interface Screw: Every damn time they change the look, something is done differently.
• Loose Lips: Two types of people who love Facebook? Private investigators and divorce lawyers. People forget that often anyone can read what they put online, although upping your privacy settings can reduce (but not eliminate) the risks involved. Remember: It's a bulletin board, not a diary.
  • Law enforcement as well, who have been using the site in the last few years to track down criminals.
  • The ATF, and likely the other US Federal agencies, leave the site unblocked on their network for explicitly that reason.
  • If you post detailed information about when and where you plan on traveling for your honeymoon, and your address, and don't have strict privacy settings ... well, don't be surprised when your house gets burgled while you're away.
• Misplaced Nationalism: Plenty of rather nasty nationalist groups can be found on the site. Luckily, reporting them can yield results if the people in charge pay attention.
  • Even the more benevolent groups dedicated to a country will usually have a problem at some point with their walls being trolled by people of other nationalities who don't like them.
• Moral Guardians: More than a few concerns raised by this group, including privacy and other things...
• New Media Are Evil: The typical reaction whenever Facebook changes its privacy settings.
• Noodle Incident: Reading peoples' profiles can often have multiple variants of these, proving that it is a Justified Trope.
  • Hell, Failbook.com is a site dedicated to collecting these.
• Online Personas: Facebook users can fit every conceivable sub-trope of this one.
• Orwellian Editor: Users are able to delete any content they want, but there's always someone who takes a screenshot before incriminating posts get deleted.
• Overly Long Gag: Constantly receiving notifications from a thread you barely participated in can become this, but luckily this has been fixed.
• Ragequit: Every now and then people decide to take a stand against this site, as they feel their privacy is seriously compromised, or just their time.
• Revealing Cover-Up: Along with "failed search for a profile", if a post/comment has a single like, and it is from a blocked person, once the mouse hovers the thumbs-up the hand disappears!
• Serious Business: Aside from the flame wars people start by commenting on more sensitive topics, friending/defriending, personal posts, comments and notes are taken very seriously, to the point where defriending someone is considered equivalent to spitting in his face. People expect to get sympathy for every problem with their lives there, so simple relationship breakups and accidentally burning a pizza become equivalent to Armageddon. Some users go so far as to report harassment if one decides to decline participation in an event, and will flat-out block you for simply not going to the said event.
  • Remember, any relationship with another human being is not official until it's Facebook Official®. So if you post your wedding photos and haven't listed yourself as "married to [person Y]", it hasn't strictly happened yet until you have.
• Shamed by a Mob: A Trope Codifier for doing this online. It is not trolling when people post abuse on Facebook, but gang stalking (i.e. organized psychological harassment).
• Sickeningly Sweethearts: You know at least one couple who send syrupy messages to each other in public on the site.
  • And you likely know a married couple who share a Facebook page with a name something like "Billyandmaria Smithperson". And unless they say who's posting, you can't tell which one is.
• Spammer: This is one of the New Tens way spammers operate.
• Talk Like a Pirate: English (Pirate) is amun' the language options, matey! Arr, this be pleasin' to my eye!
• The Internet Is for Porn: Even though anything but the most softcore photos will probably get deleted, people still try to sneak crap past the radar.
• There Are No Girls on the Internet: Hardest ever subversion/discrediting of this. About half the userbase is female, surprisingly like Real Life.
• The Tetris Effect: Spending too much time on Facebook can lead to seeing phantom notifications in the corner of your screen, or looking for the "like" button on forum posts.
• Unperson: The concept of "unfriending" – removing someone from the list of "friends" – taken to another level, where a former friend is also blocked from seeing the blocker's profile or otherwise contacting him/her via Facebook. Those who are blocked are virtually "invisible" to each other. On top of this, the event itself goes without any notification — you'll never notice that someone has unfriended you unless you (A) memorize the number of friends you have and see that it has gone down, or (B) go looking specifically for that person's profile, and fail to find it.
• Troll: At times sadly present. Thankfully there are many options to shut them up (reporting to the higher-ups, deleting the posts, removing from the group/page, or downright blocking to remove them out of sight).
• Your Cheating Heart: Got a paramour on Facebook you're hiding from your partner? Sorry, they're going to find out eventually. There is no such thing as privacy on this site. The large number of joint accounts for couples might be an attempt for one partner to prevent philandering by another.

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Examples of Facebook in popular culture:

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