The Facebook Blog

When we recently added the ability to comment on your friends' status updates to the Facebook mobile site, we didn't expect that we would receive nearly a million status comments in the first 24 hours.

This may not seem like much, but it was actually part of a really important change. As people on Facebook share more and more information each day, status updates have become one of the most popular ways for people to connect quickly and easily on the site. Before, you could only update your status or read other people's from your mobile phone.... Now you can converse with your friends on Facebook by commenting on their updates no matter where you are.
People are hungry for interactive mobile features worldwide, and Facebook users are no exception. Usage of our mobile products has grown from 5 million to 15 million active users since the beginning of the year. We have expanded our mobile team and are continuing to make improvements every day.

Our mobile site, m.facebook.com, works on nearly any mobile browser in the world, while our extended mobile site, x.facebook.com, provides a great experience for advanced mobile devices. Facebook SMS allows you to receive notifications or update your status with text messages, and our applications for specific devices, such as Palm, Blackberry and iPhone, allow you to do even more.

With over 3 billion phones in the world, we're working hard to make sure that we have something for everyone.


Wayne, an engineer on Facebook's mobile team, wants to let you use Facebook anywhere.

Game Day is a day in late spring when Facebook employees spend an entire day in the sun on a large field playing games. Employees are divided up into teams that span all departments, which then fiercely compete in such timeless schoolyard classics as Kickball, Dodgeball, and Steal the Bacon. The top three teams at the end of the day are given trophies, and the most spirited team is given the coveted Game Day Spirit Award. In its venerable third year, Game Day has become one of Facebook's oldest and time-honored traditions.
In 2006, Game Day... was relatively easy to organize. There were three games, 60 people, and six teams represented by colors. The day included round robin Bocce Ball and Kickball competitions. It concluded with a relay race involving all the teams, which ended in a human six-person pyramid. Everyone was slightly pink the day afterwards.

By Game Day 2007, the number of participants had doubled, which presented a challenge. Like so many engineering challenges at Facebook, Game Day itself had become a scalability problem. In order to accommodate everyone, we added two more teams to the team roster. Teams got creative that year and gave themselves names based on their colors: Orange Crush, Purple Haze, and Gang Green were among some favorites. A single-elimination tug-of-war tournament was added as a main event to spice things up a little. The end relay race was elongated, but still ended in a human pyramid. The day after, everyone was slightly pink, but mostly sore. Many blamed their soreness on the addition of Capture the Flag.

By Game Day 2008, the number of people playing had more than tripled in size since the previous year and we were looking to host nearly 400 attendees. As scalability challenges go, this one would be a doozy. No longer would the organizers (myself and 6 others) be able to partake in Game Day games; each of us would need to act as a full-time Game Day referee. To deal with the massive increase in players, we added two new team colors, increasing the total number of teams to ten. New teams and new names formed: Blue Steel, Redrum, and Purple Reign were among some creative favorites. Five 80-person games at a time would be a little excessive, so each team would be strategically split into playing two games each round. We added six new games to the roster, including a parking lot relay featuring separate Green Machine™ and Ripstik™ courses. In order to avoid rampant post-Game Day soreness issues, we also required each team to do a bit of team stretching before the day began. Like the previous year, the day concluded with a tug-of-war tournament and a relay race that ended in a six-person human pyramid. The day after Game Day, everyone was still sore and slightly pink.

By nearly all accounts, Game Day 2008 was a success. There were great games, few injuries, perfect weather, and, of course, good old-fashioned cross-departmental bonding. Now we have our sights set on next year. At the rate we're growing, Game Day 2009 will have nearly 800 attendees. I'm glad we have an entire year to figure how to scale it. One thing is for certain: next year we'll be handing out sunscreen.




Wayne, who is a Facebook engineer when he's not engineering social events, wants to make a shout out to Red Team 2006, the original Game Day champions. You can check out our Game Day album on the Facebook Page.

We at Facebook are probably among the most avid users of Facebook. In fact, it's hard to think how our company would function without it. Well, obviously, if Facebook didn't exist, we wouldn't have a company, but beyond that the site plays a vital role in our company culture.

Our new hires browse the Facebook work network to friend and get to know their new co-workers. We make Facebook Groups centered around office inside jokes. All of our company events and parties are organized with Facebook Events, and the pictures taken at those events are... posted on Facebook all too soon afterwards. Our e-mail chat list has grown quieter these days because most of us opt to post funny links to our profiles via Facebook Share. We write Facebook Notes to spread gossip about our fellow co-workers' love interests, and we have some of the most intense poke war rivalries known to man. My favorite application of Facebook in the workplace, however, has been using it to organize Facebook Games.

Immunity Challenge #9: Team photo in team color.