Facebok.com - Online Hangout

This social networking site, launched in 2004, has become so popular in a short period of time that almost everyone knows or has heard about it. The name of the site comes from the paper facebooks including members of the campus community that US colleges and prep schools give to incoming students, faculty, and staff. In its early days, membership was restricted to students of Harvard College but was rapidly expanded to many other schools and universities, and has recently made available to anyone. The site is free to users. All you need to join Facebook is a valid email address. You can then connect with coworkers or classmates. Just use your school or work email address to register and join a regional network to connect with the people in your area. Profiles often contain photos and lists of personal interests; you can exchange private or public messages, and join groups of friends. Besides discovering the people around you, Facebook enables anyone, anywhere, to build complete applications that you can choose to use. Facebook also has taken users privacy into consideration. People can only see the profiles of confirmed friends and the people in their networks. It has recently added free classified advertisments, competing with established online companies like Craiglist. Facebook success has been such that it was named as the second most "in" thing among undergraduates, tied with beer and sex and losing only to the iPod, according to CNN.com.