St. Anthony College
Camilmil, Calapan City, Oriental Mindoro

Term Paper
(A Facebook Case Study)

In Partial Fulfillment for the Subject
SOFTWARE ENGINEERING

Presented by:

Arexter R. Male
Bachelor of Science in Information Technology

March 14, 2012

INTRODUCTION

Facebook.com is a popular online social network site providing its users with a means for representing their identities in the digital world. With the “Profile,” each user can manipulate his or her online identity that concurrently delineates personal information and converses with other online identities or “Friends.” Gender, date of birth, hobbies, interests, and relationship status are some of the identifying pieces of information that users display to fill out their Profile. The Profile not only depicts the user, but also shapes the representation of other individuals on Facebook.
Scholars have recently begun to study the Facebook phenomenon using surveys and statistical analyses, but none have used ethnography as a means for analysis. This paper draws upon ethnographic data to provide a phenomenological explanation to the Facebook experience. It argues that the digital world is a large part of the experience of young Americans and that the Internet is more social than commonly thought.
Moreover, this paper problematizes the static nature of the Profile, arguing that the Profile converses directly with others’ Profiles in a constantly changing digital context that is simultaneously recreated and interpreted.
Embodied conversation between individuals begins when they weave performance and interpretation into an intricate dance that allows individuals to consider voice and body cues. Meaning is interpreted from the context of the conversation and nuances of body and gesture.
However, embodied conversation differs from computer-mediated communication, where individuals must write themselves into being. With the Facebook Profile, multiple forms of media attempt to bridge the physical and the digital worlds and recapture some of the interpersonal cues that have been filtered out by the medium. Ultimately, the digital conversation lacks the spatial and temporal rules that govern embodied conversation, creating ambiguity and uncertainty for the users. How is context created and interpreted? How is conversation initiated and maintained? What function does it serve? How does searchability affect the ways that online users perform conversations? These are some of the questions that this paper attempts to answer by focusing on the conversations on Facebook, an online networking site.
Facebook is an online networking site that allows its users to create detailed personal Profiles that link with other users. Features such as photo posting, commenting on other users’ “Walls,” and joining groups relating to a shared interest also form a large part of the Facebook experience. Facebook distinguishes itself from other social networking sites like Myspace and Friendster because its participation is determined by offline social networks. Initially requiring membership in a university community, Facebook more recently includes members from specific high schools, regions, and companies. Social browsing is limited to the Friends that the user lists and people from the user’s offline community (e.g. a university or city). Users can manipulate their Profile’s privacy settings to control access to their entire Profile, photos, wall posts, and other social information. Facebook has become a huge Internet phenomenon, with more than 7.5 million registered members at over 2,000 U.S. colleges. It is the seventh most viewed web site with respect to total page views.[6] Facebook has achieved notoriety among college students, strongly figuring into their everyday activities and ways of speaking.

SUMMARY

History of Facebook
Facebook is a popular social network that has grown to rank with MySpace has. But what is it about Facebook that has special appeal and makes it even more popular than MySpace? What makes Facebook Facebook? And what made it a mega hit?
2003

It all got started back in 2003, as Facemash. Mark Zuckerberg created it, along with help of his friends and roommates Chris Hughes and Dustin Moskovitz. Zuckerberg was in his sophomore year at Harvard when opened it up, as a way to get his mind off his crush.
Facemash placed photos of undergraduate two side by side, and asking the viewers which one is “hotter”. The site was originally only for Harvard, but quickly grew to other colleges, then high schools and finally for anyone over age 13.
After it was initially started, it was forwarded to Harvard’s school admins and it was quickly shut down. Zuckerberg was charged and faced expulsion for breaching privacy.
2004

Later on, Harvard dropped their charges against Zuckerberg. After the charges were dropped, the following semester he recreated Facemash, and opened The Facebook in February 2004.

2005

In 2005, he dropped “the” from the name and URL. Also in September 2005, he launched the High School version of Facebook. When he first started the high school version, each high school had to be invited before being allowed to join the network. Shortly after launching the high school version he started allow companies to have their own networks on Facebook as well. Now a group of operators, a year after they launched their high school version, they opened it up to the public for everybody over the age of 13.
Syria and Iran have blocked Facebook from being accessed in their countries. Some companies have forbidden it from their offices. It has also been said that Zuckerberg had stolen the code and intellectual property from former classmates of his. They have been sued more than once and have been the subject of criticism.
2007
In Aug 2007, the code that normally creates the pages for Facebook showed instead of the content, leaving many to wonder if their data on Facebook is even safe.
2009
In February 2009, Facebook changed their privacy policy, causing an up roar along the way. They made it so that their users once upload data onto their servers, that they own all the rights. Even after the user deletes their account. Many users got upset by this, and entered a debate that was all over the internet. EPIC filed a claim against Facebook with the FTC, while Zuckerberg tried to defend Facebook’s policy change. To do damage control they switched back to their old policies, though they are in the middle of rewriting them again. They will allow users to vote on the new terms, before they are adopted officially. It has been rumored that a film about Facebook being made, though the Facebook spokesperson has said that they have not agreed to cooperate with anyone about making a film. A 1.6% stake in Facebook had been sold to Microsoft Corp. for $240 million in October 24th 2007. Facebook’s history is a mixture of trouble and success from very early on. They have seen more than their share of legal issues and likely will as long as they exist. Currently it is the number one social network with MySpace and Twitter both behind it. They have over 175 million active users worldwide currently and is growing every day. Though they may have had their share of issues, they still maintain a well kept site that hasn’t gotten lost through the Web 2.0 shuffle.

Operation and Maintenance of Facebook
Facebook is social networking. People have been “face booking” each other for about 6 years now, making Facebook the most used social network with over 350 million users worldwide.
Facebook uses a variety of services, tools, and programming languages to make up its core infrastructure. At the front end, their servers run a LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP) stack with Memcache.
Linux & Apache
This part is pretty self-explanatory. Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system kernel. It’s open source, very customizable, and good for security. Facebook runs the Linux operating system on Apache HTTP Servers. Apache is also free and is the most popular open source web server in use.
MySQL
For the database, Facebook utilizes MySQL because of its speed and reliability. MySQL is used primarily as a key-value store as data is randomly distributed amongst a large set of logical instances. These logical instances are spread out across physical nodes and load balancing is done at the physical node level.
As far as customizations are concerned, Facebook has developed a custom partitioning scheme in which a global ID is assigned to all data. They also have a custom archiving scheme that is based on how frequent and recent data is on a per-user basis. Most data is distributed randomly.
PHP
Facebook uses PHP because it is a good web programming language with extensive support and an active developer community and it is good for rapid iteration. PHP is a dynamically typed/interpreted scripting language.
Memcache
Memcache is a memory caching system that is used to speed up dynamic database-driven websites (like Facebook) by caching data and objects in RAM to reduce reading time. Memcache is Facebook’s primary form of caching and helps alleviate the database load. Having a caching system allows Facebook to be as fast as it is at recalling your data. If it doesn’t have to go to the database it will just fetch your data from the cache based on your user ID.
Facebook’s backend services are written in a variety of different programming languages including C++, Java, Python, and Erlang. Their philosophy for the creation of services is as follows:
1. Create a service if needed
2. Create a framework/toolset for easier creation of services
3. Use the right programming language for the task
Thrift (protocol)
Thrift is a lightweight remote procedure call framework for scalable cross-language services development. Thrift supports C++, PHP, Python, Perl, Java, Ruby, Erlang, and others. It’s quick, saves development time, and provides a division of labor of work on high-performance servers and applications.
Cassandra
Cassandra is a database management system designed to handle large amounts of data spread out across many servers. It powers Facebook’s Inbox Search feature and provides a structured key-value store with eventual consistency.
HipHop for PHP
HipHop for PHP is a source code transformer for PHP script code and was created to save server resources. HipHop transforms PHP source code into optimized C++. After doing this, it uses g++ to compile it to machine code.
Key management personnel comprise Chris Cox (VP of Product), Sheryl Sandberg (COO), and Donald E. Graham (Chairman). As of April 2011[update], Facebook has over 2,000 employees, and offices in 15 countries. Other managers include chief financial officer David Ebersman and public relations head Elliot Schrage.
Sarah Smith, who was Facebook's Online Sales Operations Manager, reports that successful advertising campaigns on the site, can have click through rates as low as 0.05% to 0.04%, and that CTR for ads tend to fall within two weeks. By comparison, the CTR for competing social network MySpace is about 0.1%, about 2.5 times better than Facebook's rate but still low compared to many other Web sites. According to BizReport.com, Facebook's low CTR is because Facebook users are more technologically savvy and therefore use ad blocking software to hide advertisements, users are younger and therefore better at ignoring advertising messages, users spend their time communicating with friends and therefore have their attention diverted away from advertisements.
Benefits of Using Facebook 1. Customer Interaction – Facebook pages provide a forum for dialogue between customers and the brand, giving companies the opportunity to build better relationships with target audiences and current customers. 2. Reputation Management – Facebook allows a company to gain a deeper understanding of how the brand is perceived online – through direct feedback and also by monitoring what users are saying about the brand. 3. New Customer Acquisition – Each time a Facebook user becomes a fan of a Facebook page, a notice is posted as news item for all of that user’s friends to see. This creates an opportunity for a Facebook page to go viral and reach new viewers. 4. Feedback Mechanism – In a service-based sector like hospitality, customer feedback is vital. Facebook allows users to communicate their experiences directly and give the company the opportunity to respond. 5. Branding – Facebook can be used as a medium for creating brand awareness in addition to a company’s corporate website. It provides brand exposure to a potentially new audience and gives organizations the opportunity to position themselves in new and unique ways. 6. Drive Web Traffic – As a Facebook page grows its fan base, traffic to the company website will increase. Facebook pages also appear in Universal Search Results.

Advantages Of Facebook Facebook is a website that provides the opportunity to socially network with others. One can become a user of facebook so long as he/she is over 13 years and has a valid e-mail address. Although facebook originally targeted adults, the youth now form the bulk of its users. Facebook’s advantages are; * Facebook provides a wall feature on every user’s page. A user’s friends can write on the wall for the user to respond to. Attachments can also be posted on the wall by a user. * Fcebook users are able to upload their own photos or other photographs and let friends and other users see. There is no limit on what amount of photo upload a user is allowed. * The status feature on facebook allows a user to inform his/her friends his/her whereabout and what he/she is doing. * Facebook has been used as News Feed. In some countries, users have used facebook to inform the international community of whatever is happening. This is when the government has stopped all forms of media coverage. * Facebook affords users the opportunity to instantly message their friends online. * Users are able to post their blogs using the facebook’s blog feature. * Facebook affords its users the opportunity to purchase virtual gifts and send the same to their friends and lovely ones. * Users are able to post free classified ads on facebook’s Marketplace. * Facebook has easy sign up process.

Importance of Facebook
There's no doubt that Facebook is too popular now and everyone knows the importance of this social networking site. for me, Facebook’s aids in strengthening bonds and bridging gaps brought by distance and lack of time. I get connected with my parents, my cousins, long lost friends, relatives and acquaintances I haven’t been in touch for a long while. We can share everything we want and even our ups and downs. I thought before that Facebook is wicked because it's an effective tool for spreading lies and gossips. Just recently I realized that FB can be an instrument to encourage one another, giving useful advices and appreciating one another.

Facebook is one of the top social networking sites, quickly gaining on Myspace in terms of total users and traffic. Facebook presents a unique marketing opportunity for businesses through the creation of Facebook Business Pages. As more people explore social media, social networking sites have become some of the key online sources they use to learn more about products, organizations, artists and world events. Marketing on Facebook has a viral effect – information spreads through networks exponentially.
There are two primary ways for companies to market on Facebook. The first is through Facebook Groups and the second is through Facebook Pages. Groups are more focused on bringing together groups of people who share common interests, whereas pages are places where users can interact around and with a particular brand or product.
Because Facebook pages are typically the best option for organizations to promote themselves on Facebook, I will focus on Facebook pages throughout this article.

Reaction

In this modern time we are right now, Facebook to some people became really important in their lives now. Some reasons are because they do have business while others because it’s been a way that they communicate with their loved ones. And of course, there's no doubt that Facebook is too popular now and everyone knows the importance of this social networking site.
For me, Facebook is aids in strengthening bonds and bridging gaps brought by distance and lack of time. I get connected with my parents, my cousins, long lost friends, relatives and acquaintances I haven’t been in touch for a long while. We can share everything we want and even our ups and downs. I thought before that Facebook is wicked because it's an effective tool for spreading lies and gossips. Just recently I realized that FB can be an instrument to encourage one another, giving useful advices and appreciating one another.
But in my point of view, social networking can now be considered part of everyday life, but not the most of it. Though we find it useful and convenient, social networking sites such as facebook isn't that important. I do remember a friend of mine telling me that he got himself a network connection w/c he will be paying for monthly ofcourse, but what echoed in my mind was his only reason why; Facebook. There could be tons of reasons for acquiring an internet connection even if it has to continuously drain money from your wallet every due date. But I never imagine someone actually had Facebook as the only reason. That doesn't sound so right.
It is very evident from everyone replies that facebook is an integral part of today’s society and its importance can never be underestimated. Despite of the obvious social benefits facebook has opened up a world of possibilities for businesses and internet promoters.

Relationship

Software Engineering is a systematic approach to the analysis, design, implementation, and maintenance software. It often involves of uses case tools. Software Engineering is intended to mean the best-practice processes used to create and/or maintain software, whether for groups or individuals, in attempt to rid ourselves of the usual haphazard methods that have plagued the software industry.
In relation to software engineering, I can figure out that the development process of software engineering is somewhat like to the development of facebook for it also goes on a cycle that starts on requirements analysis and specification. After specifying all the definitions and requirements needed, developers will come up to the next level which is designing the body of the software. Then implementation of their software will follow. While implementing the software, different kinds of system testing should be done to ensure the system’s effectiveness. When all the testing is done, the deliberation now of the software will be done. But the process and operations of facebook is not yet done in delivering it to the public. Developers must maintain the effectiveness of the software and they must meet all the dynamic needs of users. That is how facebook operation goes, just like software engineering process.

Conclusion The Facebook profile provides many social functions albeit in a digital world. It initiates, negotiates, maintains, and extends social conversation with its descriptive data, photos, articulated friendship links, and Profile comments. Digital conversation, conceived of through the interpretation and creation of contexts, negotiates unknown audiences and creates new social situations. Finally, the Profile itself acts as a medium and agent for initiating and sustaining conversation. With Facebook, the extension of the digital conversation to the physical indicates the success of online networking sites to incorporate multiple forms of expression and bridge the gap between offline and online contexts.