What is Facebook

It is a social networking website created by Mark Zuckerberg and founded with Eduardo Saverin, Chris Hughes and Dustin Moskovitz. In its beginnings, it was a site for students of Harvard University. Its purpose was to design a space in which the students of said university could exchange fluent communication and share content easily through the Internet. His project was so innovative and successful that over time it was extended to be available to any user of the network.

In mid-2007, it launched the French, German and Spanish versions translated by users in an unpaid way, 6 mainly to boost its expansion outside the United States, since its users are concentrated in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom. Facebook has more than 1350 million members, and translations into 70 languages. 7 8 9 In October 2014, Facebook reached 1,350 million users, 7 of which there were more than 700 million mobile users. Brazil, India, Indonesia, Mexico and the United States are the countries with the most users, 10 however there are users who have more than one account.

Its main infrastructure consists of a network of more than 50,000 servers that use distributions of the GNU / Linux operating system using LAMP.12

The main criticisms of the social network and the company have always focused on the alleged lack of privacy suffered by its millions of users. These criticisms were heightened in 2013, when it was discovered that the United States National Security Agency and other intelligence agencies monitor the profiles of millions of users and their relationships with friends and co-workers. In order for the user to have greater control over their account, they can use their own Facebook Analytics app.

On April 9, 2012 it was announced that Facebook acquired Instagram for $ 1 billion.14 In February 2014, Facebook managers announced the purchase of the WhatsApp mobile messaging service for 16,000 million dollars.