Facebook Site Features

From Wikipedia
The Wall
The Wall is a space on each user’s profile page that allows friends to post messages for the user to see. One user’s wall is visible to anyone with the ability to see their full profile, and different users’ wall posts show up in an individual’s News Feed. Many users use their friend’s walls for leaving short, temporal notes. More private discourse is saved for Messages, which are sent to a person’s Inbox, and are visible only to the sender and recipient(s) of the Message, much like email.

Photos
One of the most popular applications on Facebook is the Photos application, where users can upload albums of photos, tag friends, and comment on photos. According to Facebook, there are:

* 1.7 billion user photos
* 2.2 billion friends tagged in user photos
* 160 terabytes of photo storage used with an extra 60 terabytes available
* 60+ million photos added each week which take up 5 terabytes of disk space
* 3+ billion photo images served to users every day
* 100,000+ images served per second during our peak traffic windows

Gifts
In February 2007, Facebook added a new gift feature to the website. Friends could send “gifts” — small icons of novelty items designed by former Apple designer Susan Kare — to each other by selecting one from Facebook’s virtual gift shop and adding a message. Gifts given to a user appear on the recipient’s wall with the giver’s message, unless the giver decided to give the gift privately, in which case the giver’s name and message is not displayed to other users. Additionally, all gifts (including private gifts) received by a user are displayed in the recipient’s “gift box” (right above their wall on their profile), marked with either the first name of the user (for public gifts) or the word “Private.” An “Anonymous” option is also available, by which anyone with profile access can see the gift, but only the recipient will see the message. None will see the giver’s name, and the gift will go in the recipient’s gift box but not the wall.

Marketplace
In May 2007, Facebook introduced the Facebook Marketplace allowing users to post free classified ads within the following categories: For Sale, Housing, Jobs, and Other. Ads can be posted in either available or wanted format. The market place is available for all Facebook users and is currently free.

Pokes
Facebook includes a “poke” feature which allows one user to send a “poke” to another. According to Facebook’s FAQ section on the Poke Feature, “a poke is a way to interact with your friends on Facebook. When we created the poke, we thought it would be cool to have a feature without any specific purpose. People interpret the poke in many different ways, and we encourage you to come up with your own meanings.” In principle this is intended to serve as a “nudge” to attract the attention of the other user. However while many Facebook users, as intended, use the feature to attract attention or say hello, some users construe it as a sexual advance. This interpretation of the feature inspired a popular Facebook group titled “Enough with the Poking, Lets Just Have Sex”, which, as of December 2007, has more than 340,000 members.

Status
The “status” feature allows users to inform their friends and the Facebook community of their current whereabouts and actions. Facebook originally prompted the status update with “User name is…” and Facebook users filled in the rest. However, on December 13, 2007, the requirement to start a status update with “is” was removed, and all status updates read “User name …” Status updates are noted in the “Recently updated” section of a users’ friend list.

Events
Facebook events are a way for members to let friends know about upcoming events in their community and to organize social gatherings. Events require an event name, tagline, network, host name, event type, start and end time, location & city, and a guest list of friends invited. Events can be open, closed, or secret. When setting up an event the user can choose to allow friends to upload photos, video, and posted items.