The Facebook Blog

One of the hidden perks of working at Facebook is that we have the privilege of witnessing the amazing ways people use the site. The stories range from the profound to the quotidian—but all demonstrate the power of Facebook to help people share, connect and change the world along the way.

A daughter wrote in to say she'd found her mother on Facebook, "I have been looking for my biological mother for 20 years...and my mom found me on Facebook. We were able to exchange pictures and talk. It was the best day of my life, and I owe that to... Facebook". A local paper picked up on a school principal engaging with his students in a group. Perhaps the biggest stories we've seen are on the protests around the world, against a 40-year-old terrorist organization called the FARC, as a result of a Facebook group and event started by an ordinary Colombian citizen.

Whether or not these stories hit the papers, they give our work more meaning, and we want to be able to share them more broadly. In the coming months, we'll be highlighting stories like these here on our blog. In the process, we hope you can see the different ways Facebook is used across the world. If you have a story you would like to share with us, please submit it here. Read the next blog post in this series here.


Joanna, a Team Lead in User Operations, can't wait to hear from you.

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. This year I won't be going home to spend the holiday with my family, but I will be chatting with them on Facebook.

Recently, my parents joined Facebook. My mom and dad have been setting up their profile and learning about the site. Of course, this has required some help from me and my brother and my step-sisters and my cousins and…well, the whole family. But we're all pretty excited that we can now communicate with my parents on Facebook. My mom and dad are even happier that they can share photos with... us, send messages and read about what we're up to in their News Feed.

My parents aren't the only ones joining Facebook—so are their friends. In fact, their age group represents one of our fastest growing demographics. As a Product Manager on the Growth team, I've been excited to see a significant increase in people my parents' age joining Facebook over the past year, both in the US and abroad. Facebook is for everyone and as the site grows, people—including my parents—can connect with more of their friends and family, no matter where they are. Facebook is even more important to me now that my parents are my Facebook friends.

So, this Thanksgiving, instead of having a Turkey dinner with my family, I'll just have to do with sending them one.


Naomi Gleit, Product Manager on Growth, is staying close despite being far away.


Tip: Create a Friends List for your family, and add your parents, siblings and extended family. You'll have an easier time sending them a message all at once, inviting them to family events or making sure no one but your family sees your embarrassing holiday photos.

Full-length television is coming to Facebook, via a new generation of applications. Entire shows such as Grey's Anatomy, Heroes, and The Simpsons and more will be available through a wide range of TVLoop "Addicted to..." applications and Mesmo TV. Many of these shows are streamed directly from television networks or via the video site, Hulu. For the first time, I found myself watching more shows through Facebook than on my own TV.

These applications make it easy, not only to watch shows, but also to discuss them, share bloopers, challenge... friends' knowledge of TV trivia, connect with other fans, and see how many of your friends are watching each week. TV on Facebook means that you can share and engage with friends through videos and comments.

November sweeps, when Nielsen measures audience size for television programming, is nearing its end. And we're excited to see interesting trends among TV viewers on Facebook, too. TVLoop's ratings sometimes overlap with Nielsen's rankings of the top shows for regular household viewing but diverges in some interesting ways. For instance, the top three shows in Nielsen's ratings this season have been CSI, Dancing with the Stars and NCIS. For TVLoop, the applications with the most usage this season have been The Office, Grey's Anatomy, and Family Guy.


Josh can't wait to find out what happens next on The Office and hopes Dwight and Angela get back together.

Last Friday, Facebook won an important victory for our users – and against spam and those who create it.

We've all experienced spam – those unwanted and, sometimes, inappropriate marketing messages. The bad guys behind those messages are always looking to find new ways to annoy people and Facebook's users have been among those targeted. We don't take this affront to our users lying down.

In a court in San Jose, after a legal proceeding lasting four months, federal Judge Jeremy Fogel awarded Facebook $873 million in damages against Adam... Guerbuez and Atlantis Blue Capital for sending sleazy messages to our users. The award is the largest judgment in history for an action brought under Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act (CAN-SPAM).

Does Facebook expect to quickly collect $873 million and share the proceeds in some way with our users? Alas, no. It's unlikely that Geurbez and Atlantis Blue Capital could ever honor the judgment rendered against them (though we will certainly collect everything we can). But we are confident that this award represents a powerful deterrent to anyone and everyone who would seek to abuse Facebook and its users.

This judgment is the result of the tireless effort of our security experts, legal team and the other significant resources we've devoted to finding, exposing and prosecuting the sources of spam attacks. These efforts complement the sophisticated technical systems we continue to develop to limit the impact of these attacks or to block them altogether.

Everyone who participates constructively in Facebook should feel confident that we are fighting hard to protect you against spam and other online nuisances. We will continue to invest in this area by improving our technical safeguards and devoting significant resources to finding, exposing and prosecuting the sources of spam attacks.


Max Kelly is Facebook's Director of Security.

Sharing on Facebook isn't just about family news or vacation pictures; it's also about your favorite stores and restaurants, helping you and your friends find great new choices and resources. It's also an important part of how a young business gets established. Earlier this week, I had the opportunity to talk directly with entrepreneurs and small business owners about how they're using the Web at a conference on entrepreneurship hosted by Governor Schwarzenegger. I was impressed at how the emergence of the Web as a social hub is helping... businesses connect with their customers more efficiently.

People increasingly rely on Facebook to find and share their experiences with local stores and restaurants. Over 100,000 small businesses now have their own Pages on Facebook with which you can visit and interact. Among them is TCHO, a specialty chocolate company owned by one of the conference participants, Louis Rossetto. In addition to being a founder of Wired Magazine, Louis recently opened TCHO's first store -- in San Francisco. Within 24 hours of creating a Facebook Page, TCHO already had dozens of fans on the site.

There are so many more examples of people engaging with their favorite stores and restaurants on the site, including my wife, who recently became a fan of Fraiche Yogurt, our local frozen yogurt shop in Palo Alto. Her action appeared in my News Feed, so I decided to become a fan, too. Word kept traveling to my friends, and Fraiche Yogurt now has more than 750 fans on Facebook, allowing fans, the store's owner and its employees to share information such as customer reviews and special discounts.

As this week's conference with Governor Schwarzenegger reminded us, entrepreneurs and small business owners have contributed a lot to our economy. Local stores like Fraiche and TCHO are the cornerstones of our community; and our local communities reach far beyond our street corners. As the Web grows to reflect our everyday lives, we hope that this growth revives optimism in a time of economic difficulty.


Dan Rose, Vice President of Business Development and Monetization, likes vanilla frozen yogurt with olallieberries.

Facebook's birthday reminders enable thousands of birthday greetings every day. Whether a message, a Wall post, a greeting sent through applications like Birthday Cards, Birthday Calendar, and Birthday Greeting Cards, or an old-fashioned phone call, people have found it easy to keep track of their friends' birthdays thanks to a little box in the right hand column of the home page.

To make it even easier—even if you don't check Facebook every day—this week we released a new feature that can remind you of upcoming birthdays via an email... notification. If you opt in, you will receive an email on the weekend summarizing the upcoming birthdays of your friends for the next week. Here is how to enable it from the Account Notifications page:

1. Under the "Facebook" section, click "Show More"
2. Turn on "Has a birthday coming up"

Harry is a Facebook engineer who will never forget a birthday ever again.

We need your help to make Facebook even better. We're in the last stages of a competition to select the top five next-generation applications. Applications on Facebook make it easier for you to explore your interests and share and connect with your friends. Through fbFund, Facebook's program to award grants to talented entrepreneurs who we think will build successful, meaningful businesses on Facebook, we are awarding $225,000 to each of the top five teams. And we need your input.

We've narrowed the list down from 600 teams of developers and... entrepreneurs to these top 25 candidates. We made the first-round selections, but for the second round we want you to help by voting for your favorite applications. The finalists' ideas touch on everything from sports, games and parties to education, productivity and religion. View each team's 30-second overview and try out their application before voting.

Cast your vote by Sunday, November 30th. We expect to announce the winners the week of December 8th.


Cat hopes you'll help us choose.

Today is Election Day in America, when all attention focuses on democracy's essential moment: voters stepping into polling booths and making their choices. As many as 130 million people, perhaps even more, are expected to cast ballots, in what many experts predict will be the highest level of voter turnout in the U.S. in at least 40 years.

Our new Election 08 Page helps you be part of the Election and enhance your experience on Facebook. Use our map tool to find your polling location, give an Obama or McCain gift to a friend and update your... status to encourage your friends to get out to the polls. Use the "I Voted" button at the top of your News Feed and watch as the Facebook vote dashboard tallies voters in real-time.

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.

It was an extraordinary day.

Election Day in the U.S. brought Americans to the polls in record numbers. The election of Barack Obama as America's 44th President was both historic and emotional. It was an unforgettable finish to the campaign; a moment to be shared in homes, schools, workplaces -- and on Facebook.

By the time polls closed, more than 5.4 million of you had shared that you voted with your friends by clicking the "I Voted" button on Facebook, taking accountability for your contribution to the democratic process. All day long, the... running tally of votes kept climbing on Facebook. So, too, did the number of status updates about friends voting, and the flurry of comments and encouragement about picking the next President. The national energy was palpable and contagious; we hope it spurred people on the fence to become an active part of this historic day by heading to the polls.

Candidates and their campaigns used Facebook as a means of engaging in an active dialogue with millions of their supporters and encouraging participation in the electoral process. You clearly heard their message and were active with wall posts, notes, status updates and Election day activities.

• More than 5.4 million of you shared that you voted with your friends on Facebook


• More than 15 million of you of voting age in the U.S. logged into Facebook on Election day


• More than 1.5 million of you mentioned Obama, McCain, Palin, Biden or Election on your Facebook wall


• More than 2.4 million of you joined the Facebook Election Day event to spread the word and encourage your friends and loved ones to vote


• More than 1.7 million of you donated your status and joined the election rally through the Causes application


• You gave over 2 million Election-related gifts

And it's not over yet. Visit the gift shop today to send your friends one of the limited edition commemorative New York Times newspaper gifts, bearing the headline, "Obama Wins."

Congratulations to Barack Obama, the next President of the United States of America, and congratulations to all of you who've participated in organizing, supporting candidates and strengthening political expression and discussion, on and off Facebook.


Randi thinks the Obamas should name their new dog "Joe the Puppy."