What is Facebook?

Facebook is a social networking web site that was once exclusively for college students but is now open to the public.  In the beginning, you had to be a college student that had accessed to the web site.  It started with Ivy League schools and filtered out to smaller schools across the nation.  As long as you had an active university-based e-mail address, you could sign up for a Facebook account and network with fellow college students or friends going to school elsewhere in the United States.

Eventually, as Facebook's popularity soared and it began a direct competition with MySpace on the web, Facebook opened its doors to the public. As long as you are 13 years or older, have an active e-mail account and go through the registration process, you can now sign up for a Facebook account. Facebook allows you to create a profile, share photos, videos and more.

You can install applications on your Facebook profile to share sports scores, poke friends and even follow your favorite TV shows or play games. These applications are created by users and other third parties and most require you to agree that Facebook is not liable for any issues that arise from their use. Many Facebook profiles are littered with applications that give users a much wider use of the social networking web site.

As Facebook competes with MySpace, it has been met with some controversy in the recent months.  Most notable, Facebook tried to implement a policy that gave them license to use any material hosted on their site as they saw fit.  This meant that if you uploaded pictures or videos, Facebook now owned the rights to them.  The outcry from such a policy was met with such protest, Facebook amended its policy and now is taking input from the community as to any major changes to user policies and site usability.