THE TASK AT HAND.- Communicative activities.

What is Facebook?

Facebook is a social networking service and website launched in February 2004, operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc. In January 2011, Facebook ranked more than 600 million active users.

Users may create a personal profile, add other people as friends, and exchange messages, including automatic notifications when they update their profile. Facebook users must register before using the site. Additionally, users may join common-interest user groups, organized by workplace, school or college, or other characteristics.

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

The origins of Facebook have been in dispute since the very week a 19-year-old Mark Zuckerberg launched the site as a Harvard sophomore on February 4, 2004.Then, called thefacebook.com, the site was an instant hit. Now, many years later, the site has become one of the biggest web sites in the world, visited by 400 million people a month.

The controversy surrounding Facebook began quickly. A week after he launched the site in 2004, Mark was accused by three Harvard seniors of having stolen the idea from them. This allegation soon bloomed into a full-fledged lawsuit, as a competing company founded by the Harvard seniors sued Mark and Facebook for theft and fraud, starting a legal odyssey that continues to this day.

New information uncovered by Silicon Alley Insider suggests that some of the complaints against Mark Zuckerberg are valid. It also suggests that, on at least one occasion in 2004, Mark used private logging data taken from Facebook's servers to break into Facebook members' private email accounts and read their emails, at best, a gross misuse of private information. Lastly, it suggests that Mark hacked into the competing company's systems and changed some user information with the aim of making the site less useful.

The primary dispute around Facebook's origins centered around whether Mark had entered into an agreement with the Harvard seniors, Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss and a classmate named Divya Narendra, to develop a similar web site for them - and then, instead, stole their project while taking their idea and building his own.

The litigation never went particularly well for the Winklevosses. In 2007, Massachusetts Judge Douglas P. Woodlock called their allegations "tissue thin." Referring to the agreement that Mark had allegedly breached, Woodlock also wrote, "Dorm room chit-chat does not make a contract." A year later, the end finally seemed in sight: a judge ruled against Facebook's move to dismiss the case. Shortly thereafter, the parties agreed to settle.

You watched Mark Zuckerberg's interview on the Oprah Winfrey Show and you got so fascinated with the programme, unfortunately, you have heard that after 25 years running on TV, The Oprah Winfrey Show is coming to an end. Write an email to oprah@oprah.com saying you love the programme a lot and that you would like to attend the show as part of the audience before the season is over.

Remember to use the instructions given in unit 2 session 2 related to writing Informal Emails.