FACEBOOK.COM

              



           Facebook is a social networking service launched in February 2004, owned and operated by Facebook, Inc. As of September 2012, Facebook has over one billion active users, more than half of them using Facebook on a mobile device. Users must register before using the site, after which they may create a personal profile, add other users as friends, and exchange messages, including automatic notifications when they update their profile. Additionally, users may join common-interest user groups, organized by workplace, school or college, or other characteristics, and categorize their friends into lists such as "People From Work" or "Close Friends".
 
                Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg with his college roommates and fellow Harvard University students Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes. The website's membership was initially limited by the founders to Harvard students, but was expanded to other colleges in the Boston area, the Ivy League, and Stanford University. It gradually added support for students at various other universities before opening to high school students, and eventually to anyone aged 13 and over.

                In May 2005, Accel partners invested $12.7 million in Facebook, and Jim Breyer added $1 million of his own money to the pot.

                According to a May 2011 Consumer Reports survey, there are 7.5 million children under 13 with accounts and 5 million under 10, violating the site's terms of service.



                 A January 2009 Compete.com study ranked Facebook as the most used social networking service by worldwide monthly active users. Entertainment Weekly included the site on its end-of-the-decade "best-of" list, saying, "How on earth did we stalk our exes, remember our co-workers' birthdays, bug our friends, and play a rousing game of Scrabulous before Facebook?" Critics, such as Facebook Detox, state that Facebook has turned into a national obsession in the United States, resulting in vast amounts of time lost and encouraging narcissism. Quantcast estimates Facebook has 138.9 million monthly unique U.S. visitors in May 2011. According to Social Media Today, in April 2010 an estimated 41.6% (129.5 million) of the U.S. population had a Facebook account. Nevertheless, Facebook's market growth started to stall in some regions, with the site losing 7 million active users in the United States and Canada in May 2011.

                The name of the service stems from the colloquial name for the book given to students at the start of the academic year by some university administrations in the United States to help students get to know each other. Facebook allows any users who declare themselves to be at least 13 years old to become registered users of the site.

Screenshot [show]
URL	facebook.com
Type of site	Social networking service
Registration	Required
Available language(s)	Multilingual (70)
Users	1 billion[1] (active October 2012)
Written in	C++ and PHP[2]
Owner	Facebook, Inc.
Created by	Mark Zuckerberg Eduardo Saverin Andrew McCollum Dustin Moskovitz Chris Hughes
Launched	February 4, 2004
Revenue	$ 3.71 billion (2011)[3]
Alexa rank	1 (January 2013)[4]
Current status	Active

 History

SWAMP PEOPLE SEASON PREMIERE: An all new season of Swamp People premieres Thursday, February 14 at 9/8c. Click “LIKE” if you’re excited to be reunited with Troy and the gang! 

  

HISTORY honors the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Find out more about his legacy, explore his life in photos and delve deeper into the history of the civil rights movement at:

Remembering Martin Luther King Jr.

By History.com Staff Today, people across America and around the world will commemorate the life of Martin Luther King Jr., the Baptist minister and social activist who played a key role in the American civil rights movement from the mid-1950s until his assassination in 1968. The driving force behind watershed events such as the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the March on Washington, King helped bring about such landmark legislation as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. In 1983, President Ronald Reagan signed a bill creating a federal holiday honoring Dr. King, and Martin Luther King Jr. Day was observed for the first time three years later.
Find out more about Dr. King’s legacy, explore his life in photos and delve deeper into the history of the civil rights movement to find out how King and other activists used nonviolent protest, civil disobedience and legal action to end segregation and pursue equality for all Americans.

A husband, a father, a pastor, a civil rights leader and a Nobel Prize winner—today we celebrate the life and legacy of Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Find out more about the life of Dr. King and the history of the holiday here:

 

• Texan Stoner

  
  

  
  

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96d_CzrfxsM&feature=youtu.be

  
  

  THIS DAY IN HISTORY: 
  
                    IN 1738 > Ethan Allen is born. 1793 > King Louis XVI is executed. 1924 > Vladimir Lenin dies. 1950 > Alger Hiss is convicted of perjury. 1954 > The world's first nuclear-powered submarine is launched. 1976 > Concorde takes off. 1977 > President Carter pardons draft dodgers. More from this day: 

  
  
  

  On this day in 1977, U.S. President Jimmy Carter grants an unconditional pardon to hundreds of thousands of men who evaded the draft during the Vietnam War.
  In total, some 100,000 young Americans went abroad in the late 1960s and early 70s to avoid serving in the war. Ninety percent went to Canada, where after some initial controversy they were eventually welcomed as immigrants. Still others hid inside the United States. In addition to those who avoided the draft, a relatively small number--about 1,000--of deserters from the U.S. armed forces also headed to Canada. While the Canadian government technically reserved the right to prosecute deserters, in practice they left them alone, even instructing border guards not to ask too many questions.
  For its part, the U.S. government continued to prosecute draft evaders after the Vietnam War ended. A total of 209,517 men were formally accused of violating draft laws, while government officials estimate another 360,000 were never formally accused. If they returned home, those living in Canada or elsewhere faced prison sentences or forced military service. During his 1976 presidential campaign, Jimmy Carter promised to pardon draft dodgers as a way of putting the war and the bitter divisions it caused firmly in the past. After winning the election, Carter wasted no time in making good on his word. Though many transplanted Americans returned home, an estimated 50,000 settled permanently in Canada, greatly expanding the country's arts and academic scenes and pushing Canadian politics decidedly to the left.
  Back in the U.S., Carter's decision generated a good deal of controversy. Heavily criticized by veterans' groups and others for allowing unpatriotic lawbreakers to get off scot-free, the pardon and companion relief plan came under fire from amnesty groups for not addressing deserters, soldiers who were dishonorably discharged or civilian anti-war demonstrators who had been prosecuted for their resistance.
  Years later, Vietnam-era draft evasion still carries a powerful stigma. Though no prominent political figures have been found to have broken any draft laws, Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush and Vice-Presidents Dan Quayle and Dick Cheney--none of whom saw combat in Vietnam--have all been accused of being draft dodgers at one time or another. Although there is not currently a draft in the U.S., desertion and conscientious objection have remained pressing issues among the armed forces during the recent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  
  

  HISTORY IN THE HEADLINES: 

                     As President Barack Obama is sworn in for a second term, explore eight surprising facts about presidential inaugurations. 

  
  

  

  
  1. Inauguration Day used to be March 4.
  Lame ducks used to be much lamer. Until 1937, the president and vice president began their terms on March 4, four months after Election Day. With technological advances requiring less time to count votes and travel to Washington, D.C., the 20th Amendment, which was ratified in 1933, moved up Inauguration Day to January 20. (When January 20 falls on a Sunday, as it does this year, the public swearing-in ceremony takes place on January 21.) Franklin Roosevelt in 1937 was the first president to take the oath of office on January 20.
  2. One man has both taken and administered the oath of office.
  Twelve years after he was sworn in as America’s 27th president, William Howard Taft was appointed chief justice of the Supreme Court. In that role, he was the man to administer the oaths of office to Calvin Coolidge in 1925 and Herbert Hoover in 1929.
  3. Vice presidents used to have separate swearing-in ceremonies.
  In modern times, the swearing-in of the vice president moments before the president has been the warm-up act to the main event. Before 1937, however, the second fiddles had their own swearing-in ceremonies inside the Senate chamber before heading outside for the presidential inauguration. Veeps even delivered their own inaugural addresses, sometimes at their own peril. In 1865 Andrew Johnson delivered a rambling, drunken speech described by Senator Charles Sumner as “the most unfortunate thing that had ever occurred in our history.” Luckily, Abraham Lincoln’s memorable second inaugural address quickly swept Johnson’s incoherent oratory into the dustbin of history.
  4. A Congressional chair squabble led to the first outdoor inaugural address.
  Except for George Washington’s first inauguration in 1789, presidential swearing-in ceremonies were initially indoor affairs, held in the House and Senate chambers. The 1817 inauguration of James Monroe was scheduled for the House chamber, but after a disagreement broke out between the House and Senate about whose chairs would be used, Monroe had enough and decided to take the oath of office and deliver his speech outdoors. Except on three occasions when weather intervened, Inauguration Day festivities since 1829 have been held outdoors.
  5. The man with the longest inaugural address had the shortest presidency.
  Brevity can be a presidential virtue; long-windedness can prove fatal. A month after William Henry Harrison spent two hours delivering his 8,445-word inaugural address in 1841, the 68-year-old president was dead from pneumonia, perhaps due to his prolonged exposure to raw, blustery elements during the inaugural. By contrast, these presidents delivered the shortest addresses: George Washington (135 words in his second address), Franklin Roosevelt (559 words in his fourth address) and Abraham Lincoln (701 words in his second address). In their entirety, all three of these speeches were shorter than just a single sentence–topping 700 words–in the inaugural address of John Adams.
  6. The swearing-in ceremony for four presidents resembled marriage vows.
  The Constitution does not specify precise instructions for how chief justices should administer presidential oaths, thus the swearing-in ceremony has varied over the centuries. While most justices and presidents have alternated reciting lines of the oath, Chief Justices Edward D. White and Taft recited the entire oath and posed it in the form of a question, requiring Woodrow Wilson, Warren Harding, Coolidge and Hoover to merely say, “I do.”
  7. Whiskey may have saved the White House from being trashed during a rowdy inauguration party.
  In 1829, Andrew Jackson threw open the doors of the White House to his supporters to celebrate his inauguration. The rowdy party quickly got out of control with the throng muddying the carpets, destroying several thousand dollars worth of china and crystal and getting into fistfights over refreshments. The new president had to escape through a window to get some breathing space. The exuberant crowd was finally lured out of the White House when tubs of whiskey were rolled onto the south lawn.
  8. John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address obscured a comedy of errors.
  Things didn’t exactly go smoothly during Kennedy’s 1961 inauguration. An overnight snowstorm almost forced the cancellation of the festivities, but they continued as planned—sort of. During the invocation, a short circuit caused smoke to temporarily pour out from the lectern. Then when poet Robert Frost took to the podium, he was unable to read his original composition due to the bright glare reflecting off the snow. Instead, he was forced to recite another ode from memory and then told the crowd he dedicated it “to the president-elect, Mr. John Finley.” Luckily, most only remembered Kennedy’s eloquent inaugural address that followed.