What is Facebook, Exactly?
Think about all the people you meet and interact with in a typical day. In the morning, I get a cup of a coffee and the newspaper and chat with my neighbour Peter. If you have kids, you'll ask them what they have planned for school, or talk to your partner about who's turn it is to cook dinner tonight. You interact with your co-workers, maybe see a friend for lunch, maybe you have the same person who sells you coffee each morning at Starbucks. You get home after work, and shoot off a group chat to some friends about plans for the weekend, call your mother - she worries after all - and finish up some business by sending an email or two.
You then spend the after-dinner hours listening to anchors and late night hosts catch you up on the news, politics, sports and more. Every day you interact with many many different people in many different ways. You swap information, you enjoy company, you have a good laugh, you enrich each other's life. In a typical day, many of the decision you make and the actions you do are due to someone you know or have met.
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Imagine a network with you in the centre. The further out you zoom, the more people you see, all people you interact with - Family, friends, co-workers, local barista, that musician you like, me. Each of these people are the centre of their own networks. So is everyone they know. Each person's circle in the world intertwine with others. They interlock and build on each other, linking to form a social network. This very real changing web of human connections is one of the most powerful concepts humans have ever come up with.
The power of social networks refers to how information or ideas travel between people who are connected with each other. Facebook's function is to make these networks accessible. Facebook helps people keep track of, reach, and connect with people they know and let individual people use the power of this network by letting them connect and exchange info with anyone they want to.
Another interesting aspect of this social network is that it builds and maintains itself. Each person in the network defines his or her place in it. When you sign up for Facebook, you start by finding other people you know, and establishing a connection with them. As a user of Facebook, its in your interest to keep your network as accurate as possible, making Facebook more able to connect you to other people it thinks you may know. Facebook can really become a single point of access for all the people you know, and it gets better the more people you find that you know.
Because of how Facebook is designed, you're not the only person responsible for connecting you with everyone you know. After you make those first few connections you know, mutual friends are made aware of you on the site, and they can seek you out and build that connections.
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