Meta (formerly Facebook)

An American company that controls the world's largest social network of the same name.

Aktivs

Social networks

By June 2020, Facebook's assets include:

• Facebook.com is the world's largest social network,
• Instagram.com,
• WhatsApp.com
• Facebook Venture Capital

Development centers

As of August 2016, Facebook has several development centers:

• in Palo Alto,
• Redmonde,
• New York and
• in London.
• Facebook Hardware Lab

Actions

Facebook has common and preferred shares. In addition, papers of both categories are divided into classes. The difference between them, in particular, is the number of votes that the paper holder has. The owner of a class A ordinary share (they were offered to investors) receives one vote, and class B - 10 at once.

Performance indicators

Main article: Facebook's financial performance

2023: On the list of companies with the largest R&D costs

2022: Rising R&D costs

2021: Third place in the list of most visited sites

2019: Revenue growth 27% to $70.7 billion, profit drop 16% to $18.49 billion

In 2019, Facebook raised $70.7 billion, which is 27% more than a year ago. Advertising revenues of the company increased by the same 27% to $69.7 billion, and the rest of the sources of earnings brought social networks about $1 billion.

By the end of December 2019, 1.66 billion users entered the social network at least once a day, which is 8% more than a year earlier. The monthly audience exceeded 2.5 billion people, also increasing by 8% on an annualized basis.

If we take at least one of the Facebook services (the social network of the same name, Instagram, WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger), then the daily audience exceeds 2.26 billion people, and the monthly audience is 2.89 billion.

According to Reuters, growing revenue figures and the number of users indicate that Facebook's audience has not turned its back on the social network, despite numerous scandals that have recently occurred due to leaks of personal data and questions about the use of the social network to influence users' political preferences.

As of December 31, 2019, Facebook had a headcount of 44,942, up 26% from the state's size the year before.

Facebook's net profit at the end of 2019 was $18.49 billion, down 16% from the previous year.

On the day of the annual earnings, Facebook shares fell 7.2% in value as investors worried that times of soaring revenue and audience growth were behind them.

Facebook CFO David Wehner said that the company's revenue growth rate will decline for several reasons, including the high maturity of the company's business, concern about the sale of targeted advertising and the introduction of legislation to regulate privacy issues around the world.^[1]

Business in Russia

Main article: Facebook in Russia

Facebook began to Russify in 2008, and in the spring of 2010 hired a development director in Russia.

Audience

Main article: Facebook audience

Fake accounts

Main article: Fake Facebook accounts

Prohibited content

Main article: Banned content on Facebook

Collecting User Data

Main article: How Facebook collects and sells user data

• Data leaks in social networks

Facebook ads

The main articles are:

• Facebook ads
• Facebook Promotion Rules

Working for Facebook

Main article: Work on Facebook

How they work, how much they earn and how employees of the world's largest social network live.

History

2023

Suite of IT services for application developers within the Meta ecosystem

As of July 2024, Meta Platforms does not have the usual ecosystem of services like AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud, but there is a set of IT services, mainly within the ecosystem of Meta itself, for example:

• Parse Platform: A platform for creating and managing mobile applications.
• PyTorch: Open Source Deep Learning Library.
• Facebook API and SDK: Tools for integrating Facebook features into apps.
• React and React Native: Tools for creating web and mobile applications.
• Facebook Analytics: A platform for analyzing user data.

At this time, Meta is promoting open source Llama to expand the developer ecosystem.

Zuckerberg sold $0.5 billion in Meta shares

Mark Zuckerberg sold nearly half a billion dollars of Meta stock in the last two months of 2023 after a two-year hiatus.

Sale of Giphy

On May 23, 2023, the American company Shutterstock announced the acquisition of Giphy, a service that allows users to search and share animated files in GIF format. Read more here.

EU record €1.2 billion fine for US data transfer

In May 2023, Meta was fined a record 1.2 billion euros EU in for transmitting data in. USA The decision was a continuation of the protracted data protection saga in the United States. Regulators said the company failed to protect personal information from the prying eyes of U.S. security services.

Increased EU censorship

in April European Union 2023, requires expanded censorship by social media, including, and Twitter Google Facebook. Europe's top internet regulator Thierry Breton said "19 online platforms and search engines have a particular responsibility to make Internet it safer."

The EU uses the same excuse as: USA preventing harm. "Companies will have to do more to combat misinformation, give users more protection and choice, and provide stronger protection for children, or risk fines of up to 6% of their global turnover," reports. Reuters

2022

Stopping the construction of two data centers in Denmark due to the crisis

On December 14, 2022, it became known that Meta Platforms (recognized as an extremist organization; activities in the Russian Federation are prohibited) suspended the construction of two data centers (data centers) in Odense (Denmark).

Since 2019, Meta has been operating a data center in Odense with an area of ​ ​ 55 thousand square meters. m. In 2020, the company announced the expansion of the local site by 30 thousand square meters. Then, at the end of 2021, Meta announced its intention to build two more data center buildings in Odense with a total area of ​ ​ 90 thousand square meters. m The corresponding agreement was signed with the general contractor Aarsleff in early August 2022. The project cost was estimated at $343 million, and it was planned to complete the work in 2025.

As part of the contract, some earthworks have already been carried out, in particular, kilometers of cable trenches have been laid. In addition, concreting was carried out. However, Meta decided to freeze the project and terminated the contract with Aarsleff. Moreover, it is reported that the construction of a new data center in Temple (Texas, USA) has also been suspended.

It is said that Meta intends to revise the architecture of the created data centers taking into account the current macroeconomic situation and due to the need to adapt to the loads associated artificial intelligence with (AI). The fact is that those data centers serving traditional Meta services, in particular, social networks, do not have sufficient efficiency to work with resource-intensive ones. AIalgorithms Therefore, the company intends to introduce innovative solutions, including liquid cooling systems: this will reduce energy consumption and reduce noise levels. Whether it is planned to resume work on stopped projects is not specified. But it is known that the construction of another data center building continues in Odense - it will be commissioned in 2023.^[2]

Payment of €265 million for data leakage 533 million users

On November 28, 2022, it became known that the Irish regulator imposed a fine on the social network Facebook (recognized as an extremist organization; activities on the territory of the Russian Federation are prohibited) in the amount of €265 million.

The reason for the monetary penalty was the leakage of personal data of 533 million Facebook users. One of the hacker sites published the names of social network subscribers, Facebook identifiers, phone numbers, dates of birth and email addresses. The leak affected users from more than 100 countries around the world.

Meta Platforms (recognized as an extremist organization; activities in Russia banned) reported that data was extracted from Facebook using tools designed to help people find their friends by phone numbers. It is emphasized that Meta worked closely with the Irish supervisory authority as part of the leak investigation. In addition to the fine, Meta will have to carry out "a number of correctional measures," the details of which have not been disclosed.

In September 2022, the Irish regulator fined Instagram (banned in the Russian Federation), owned by Meta, €405 million after it discovered that the platform incorrectly processes personal information of adolescents. In March 2022, Meta was fined €17 million due to a data breach. And in 2021, Ireland's supervisory authority fined WhatsApp €225 million for violating the rules for sharing personal data. Thus, as of the end of November 2022, the total amount of fines in relation to Meta services in Ireland alone amounted to more than €900 million. It is said that the regulator is investigating 13 more cases that are related to the functioning of various Meta web services. It is possible that new penalties will be imposed on the company for a number of them.^[3][4]

Dismissal of 11 thousand employees or staff 13% amid income crisis

In November 2022, Meta Platforms confirmed job cuts of about 13% and laid off more than 11,000 employees.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg also said the company is cutting discretionary spending and extending its hiring moratorium through Q1.

Ministry of Digital: Instagram, Ministry of Digital Development and Twitter lost 80% of Russian traffic after blocking

On June 16, 2022, the Ministry of Digital Development, Communications and Mass Media of the Russian Federation reported a sharp drop in Instagram, Facebook traffic (owned by Meta, which is recognized as extremist and banned in the Russian Federation) and Twitter after blocking these services. Read more here.

Investing $3M in Ami Mental Health Improvement Platform

At the end of May 2022, it became known about investing $3 million in Ami. A company that is Meta Russia recognized as extremist and banned, as well as a number of other investors (Goodwater Capital (which supported Kakao Coupang Viva Republica), Strong Ventures, January Capital, Collaborative Fund, etc.) More. here

Bill requiring compensation to be paid to British media for posting their articles

On January 31, 2022, information appeared that UK government he had prepared a bill according to which the American IT the giants Google and Meta (formerly) Facebook would be obliged to pay compensation for British MEDIA the use of their materials. More. here

2021

Purchase of AR and VR solutions developer ImagineOptix

Meta Platforms Inc. acquired ImagineOptix, a developer of practical solutions for augmented and virtual reality. This became known on December 21, 2021. Read more here.

Buying a Meta.fi domain name from a Finnish politician

For several months before and after its rebranding, Meta actively acquired and continues to acquire domain names with the word meta. One of these names was Meta.fi. The seller of the domain was Timo Harakka, Minister of Transport and Communications of Finland, the Coordination Center for Domains.RU/.RF reported on December 16, 2021, citing the Politico resource.

Timo Harakka is a Finnish politician, journalist and writer. As specified, he registered the Meta.fi domain in 2013, when he had not yet been engaged in political activities and was not in the public service.

Commenting on the sale of the Meta.fi domain to Helsingin Sanomat, Harakka refused to name the amount for which he sold the domain name. He only said that at the end of summer, representatives of the law firm Hogan Lovells, representing the interests of many corporate clients, including Facebook, came to him. Harakka also added that the talks lasted about a month before the parties agreed on the terms of the deal.^[5]

Buying a Meta bank brand for $60 million

On December 13, 2021, it became known that Meta bought the assets of the American bank Meta Financial Group for $60 million, including its Meta brand. The transaction was brokered by Beige Key, both the bank and the owner of the social network confirmed their participation in the transaction. The agreement underscores how valuable Meta's name has become to the tech giant. Read more here.

Changing the name to Meta

On October 28, 2021, Facebook announced a change in its name to Meta. The rebranding is due to the company's desire to resist criticism, stop being associated with unethical algorithms and abuse of market position. The tech giant, whose services have 2.9 billion monthly active users, has come under scrutiny and complaints from lawmakers, regulators and human rights activists in recent years.

According to Mark Zuckerberg, the name Meta reflects its focus on building the so-called "metaverse." The businessman said that the name Facebook is so closely related to one product that it cannot reflect everything that the company does. It is expected that the change will allow combining various applications and technology giant technologies under one brand. The corporate structure of the company will not change.

The term metaverse, which first appeared in a dystopian novel three decades ago and has now attracted the attention of Silicon Valley's greatest minds, describes the idea of ​ ​ a common virtual environment that people using different devices can access.

The company has installed an updated sign at its headquarters in Menlo Park, California, in which the image of the thumbs up is changed to a blue infinity sign that will be the Meta logo.

Social network Facebook will retain the previous name. Renaming applies only to the company that owns it, as well as, Instagram, and WhatsApp Oculus other services.^[6]

Facebook sued a Ukrainian, accusing him of stealing the data of 178 million users of the social network

In October 2021, Facebook sued Ukrainian Alexander Solonchenko, accusing him of stealing the data of 178 million users of the social network. The corresponding lawsuit came from the court in the northern district of California. Read more here.

Facebook services fail

On October 5, 2021, it became known that Facebook published an official explanation for the large-scale failure of its services on Monday, October 4, 2021, and apologized to users. Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger and Oculus VR remained unavailable for 6 hours.

It was assumed that the reason for the failure of the services was the unsuccessful Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) update, and the company's official statement confirms this.

Facebook Vice President of Engineering and Infrastructure Santosh Janardhan apologized to users for the "inconvenience" caused and explained that the change in router configuration settings caused the connection between Facebook data centers to fail.

"Our engineer teams have learned that changes to the configuration of backbone routers coordinating network traffic between our data centers have led to communication failures. This failure in network traffic caused a cascading effect in our data centers and the disconnection of our services, "- reported by Santosh Janardhan.

This explanation confirms what was information previously provided by the company Cloudflare that tracked the problem to a BGP failure affecting traffic routing. There were suggestions that the cause of the failure was a common configuration error, DNS but this theory was soon discarded, since DNS services functioned but did not respond.

The outage also affected Facebook's internal tools, making it harder to diagnose and fix the problem, Janardhan reported. According to The New York Times, security engineers could not physically access the affected servers because their digital passes were not working.

Facebook dispelled hacker to the attack rumors about and stressed that the outage was caused by a problematic configuration change and user data was unaffected. ^[7]

Security costs, which are handled by 40 thousand people, reached $13 billion

In mid-September 2021, Facebook announced that since the US elections in 2016, the company has spent more than $13 billion to ensure cybersecurity and the reliability of content in its applications. The team of specialists in solving these issues consists of 40 thousand people, including external contractors.

Previously, we did not address security issues early in the product development process, Facebook said in a statement. 'But we've fundamentally changed that approach. Security teams now work directly with product development teams, allowing us to address these issues in the product development process rather than downstream.

Facebook said that the artificial intelligence technology used by the company helped block 3 billion fake accounts in the first half of 2021 alone. The company has removed more than 20 million units of false content about COVID-19 and vaccines. Facebook also said that about 3 million people use the company's advertising platform every month, the company rejected 3.5 million political or social advertising materials in the first six months of 2021 for providing users with inaccurate information.

The company said it now removes 15 times more content that violates its hate speech standards through Facebook and its image-sharing platform Instagram than when it first began publicly reporting it in 2017.

The tech giant also reported on the success of its global fact-checking network, which consists of more than 80 independent partners - they assess the accuracy of messages in the company's applications. Facebook also helped 2 billion people find reliable information about the coronavirus through its Information Center and news feed pop-ups.

The company provided such data after The Wall Street Journal published the results of investigations, which spoke of the harmful impact of content published on Facebook applications on users.^[8]

Spending on lobbying interests in the EU - €5.54 million

At the end of August 2021, the costs of leading IT companies to lobby their interests in the European Union became known. Facebook spends about €5.54 million annually. Read more here.

Another FTC antitrust lawsuit against Facebook

On August 22, 2021, it became known that the Federal trade Commission (FTC) USA filed another version of the antitrust lawsuit against, Facebook which contains additional data and evidence that social network they were messenger bought in violation of antitrust laws. The purpose of the purchase, according to the regulator, is to eliminate competitors. Now Facebook illegally dominates the market, the commission noted.

In turn, Facebook, whose response to the claims must be submitted no later than October 4, insists on their "unreasonableness." According to the company, the regulator is trying to "rewrite antitrust laws" in an attempt to cancel its deal to acquire Instagram and WhatsApp.

As previously reported, at the end of June 2021, the Columbia District Court granted Facebook's request to terminate proceedings in two separate cases in which the company was accused of violating US antitrust laws.^[9]

Payment of $1 billion to content authors on Facebook and Instagram

In mid-July 2021, Facebook announced payments of $1 billion to users who create content for this social network, as well as for Instagram. Rewards will be paid until 2022.

This Facebook initiative has become one way in which the company hopes to attract popular users to create content on its platforms, since recently competition has only been growing with other popular services on the market, such as TikTok and Twitter.

We want to create better platforms for millions of content creators so they can make a living, so we're creating new programs to invest more than $1 billion in encouraging creators for the great content they create on our Facebook and Instagram services through 2022. Investing in creators isn't new to us, but I'm excited to expand that work over time, "Mark Zuckerberg wrote on Facebook.

As part of this initiative, the company plans to launch new bonus programs around the world that will reward content authors for achieving certain indicators.

Among the upcoming bonus programs, this is Reels Summer Bonus, which will be launched in early August 2021 and will be paid to American users creating high-quality Reels content for Instagram. Reels is a full-screen, short video that was launched by Instagram in 2020 to compete with content on TikTok.

The company said it also plans to launch special sections in the Instagram app as early as October 2021, where users will be able to learn about bonuses with which they will be able to work.^[10]

Amazon bought a team of satellite Internet developers from Facebook

In mid-July 2021, it became known that Amazon bought a team of satellite Internet developers from Facebook. A group of more than a dozen Los Angeles scientists and engineers joined Amazon in April. The acquisition ended Facebook's plans to develop satellite internet and at the same time strengthened Amazon's position in this direction.

The Information reported that the deal was confirmed by representatives of the two companies. It is known that Amazon has already invested $10 billion in the development of satellites for low Earth orbit (LEO), capable of providing high-speed broadband Internet access around the world.

The Facebook team, which joined Amazon's existing 500-person unit in April, included physics scientists as well as hardware and software engineers who have experience with aviation and wireless systems, according to The Information. The deal also included the transition of some intellectual property elements developed by that team, as well as equipment and facilities, Facebook officials said. The remaining details of the deal and its timing were not disclosed.

In July 2020, Amazon received approval from the Federal Communications Commission in the United States to launch 3,236 LEO satellites as part of a project called Project Kuiper. The company said it plans to launch its satellite internet service after 578 satellites enter orbit. In its work, Amazon has to compete with other companies developing satellite Internet, including SpaceXIlon Musk and its Starlink network, as well as OneWeb and Eutelsat, based in Europe.

Facebook's own research on satellite internet technology, which began back in 2015, has run into many obstacles. Given Facebook's lack of plans to launch its own satellite network, Amazon's acquisition will allow Facebook's team to continue operating. A Facebook spokesperson said the company will continue to work with partners in the area, such as Eutelsat.^[11]

Speaking Out Against U.S. Government Antitrust Bills

On June 24, 2021, it became known that, Apple, and Amazon Facebook Google opposed the adoption of USA antitrust bills. More. here

Facebook planned to present data breach as a common industry problem

Facebook accidentally sent an internal email to the Belgian edition of Data News, revealing a strategy to combat the tech giant with the leakage of accounts of 533 million Facebook users^[12].

The social network presumably expected more such incidents and planned to present the situation as a common industry problem.

"We expect more web scraping incidents and believe it is important to view this as a broad industry issue and normalize the fact that problems like this occur regularly," reads a section of the letter called Long-term strategy.

The email is dated April 8 - a few days before this date, there were reports of a major leak of data from millions of users of the social network. The personal data of more than 533 million Facebook users was posted on a hacker forum. The information of users from 106 countries of the world was in the public domain, including the accounts of 32 million residents, USA 11 million citizens Great Britain and 6 million residents. India The forum includes full names, dates of birth and biographies of users, as well as their real location, mobile numbers, and in some cases, email addresses.

According to the letter, coverage of this issue in the press of "leading world publications" has already decreased by 30%. According to experts, the letter "revealed Facebook's intentions - the company cares more about its reputation than informing its users."

Facebook did not notify more than 530 million of its users that their data was leaked as a result of abuse of Facebook's function and was published in the public domain. As previously reported by representatives of Facebook, the company is not sure that it has complete information about which users needed to be notified of the problem. The tech giant took into account two facts: firstly, users will still not be able to do anything about the leak, and secondly, the data was already publicly available.

Leak of complete data of 533 million users from 106 countries

Data of 533 million Facebook users from 106 countries, including 10 million users from Russia, were publicly available in April 2021.

Data includes phone number, Facebook ID, full name, geolocation, geolocation history, date of birth, email address, relationship status and background.

Perhaps this poses a critical danger to millions of cryptocurrency traders and investors who may now be vulnerable in terms of SIM swapping and other identity-based attacks.

Among the leaked data of Facebook users, Mark Zuckerberg's data, including a phone number, was even revealed.

The network sells phone numbers of half a billion Facebook users

On January 27, 2020, information appeared that networks phones half a billion users were selling numbers. Facebook Vice writes about this with reference to Alon Gala, one of the founders of Hudson Rock, a company specializing in. computer security So, according to the portal, the cell numbers of 533 million users from,, social networks , and USA Canada Great Britain another 15 Australia countries of the world are sold in the community engaged in. cybercrimes

"It is extremely alarming that such a large one database is being sold in cybercriminal communities. This seriously harms the inviolability of personal data and, of course, will be used for - and SMSphishing other fraudulent actions, "the publication quoted Gala as saying.

As specified, they came to the disposal of an unknown attacker several years ago, but "still pose a danger." The cost of one telephone number is from $20 to $5 thousand.

Facebook and Instagram will open representative offices in Turkey

Facebook and Instagram will fulfill the requirement of the Turkish authorities to have a representative office in the country within the framework of the law on the regulation of social networks adopted in the republic. This was announced on January 18, the deputy head of the Turkish Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure Omer Fatih Sayyan^[13].

"The day before the advertising ban is introduced, I want to give our citizens good news. Facebook and Instagram announced that they will open representative offices in our country in accordance with law 7253 (on the regulation of social networks), which entered into force on October 1, 2020, "Sputnik.Turkey.

We are talking about a bill adopted in July 2020 by the Turkish parliament, according to which large social networks with more than 1 million users are required to have representation in Turkey, the head of which must be its citizen. The number of Facebook and Instagram users in the republic exceeds 30 million people.

In November 2020, these social networks, as well as Twitter, YouTube, Periscope and TikTok, were fined 10 million Turkish lira (about $1.2 million) by the Turkish authorities for not opening representative offices on time.

In addition, according to the law, messages of an offensive and defamatory nature will be deleted without a court decision within two days. Also, companies undertake to store all the data of their Turkish customers in the country.

Blocking Trump's account after Washington riots

On January 6, 2021, Donald Trump's Twitter, Facebook and Instagram accounts were blocked after riots began at the Capitol. Read more here.

2020

Lobbying costs

At the end of January 2021, it became known that Facebook and Amazon in 2020 spent record amounts on lobbying, with Mark Zuckerberg's company topping the list of companies trying to influence Washington. Read more here.

Facebook has invested $19.7 million in lobbying - much more than in 2019.

Closure of all holding companies in Ireland over allegations of $9bn tax evasion

At the end of December 2020, Facebook closed all its Irish holding companies, which it used to store intellectual property in order to avoid paying taxes in the United States, Britain and hundreds of other countries. A few months earlier, the American tax accused Facebook of the fact that the company, thanks to Ireland, underpaid taxes by $9 billion, and now Facebook is returning this money to its homeland. Read more here.

Facebook offered the United States help in creating an alternative social network

Facebook has told US authorities that it is ready to offer help in developing an alternative social network. Thus, the tech giant is trying to show that it does not violate antitrust laws and is not against competition, but the authorities refused this proposal. This was reported by The Washington Post^[14].

The company is ready to provide a third-party developer or company with its own program code to help create a new social network. Facebook made this proposal to state Washington and federal investigators, but they did not support the idea. That's not enough to set aside all their concerns about competition, officials said.

Lawsuit from US authorities over WhatsApp and Instagram acquisitions

The US authorities have sued Facebook over the acquisition of WhatsApp and Instagram. This became known on December 10, 2020.

The allegations against Facebook relate to the company's acquisition of WhatsApp and Instagram apps and could force it to sell those assets.

Facebook has pursued a systematic strategy, including acquiring its promising rival Instagram in 2012 and mobile messaging app WhatsApp, the FTC said in a news release. According to the regulator, the company imposed "non-competitive conditions on software developers in order to eliminate threats to its monopoly. This behavior damages competition, leaves consumers with limited choice of social media and deprives advertisers of the benefits of competition.

According to the commission, which has been investigating Facebook for more than a year, Facebook management, including the founder and head of the company, Mark Zuckerberg, saw on Instagram "an innovative social network and a threat to the existence of Facebook's monopoly power."

The FTC notes that the company first tried to compete with the application, but then decided to buy Instagram for $1 billion. Meanwhile, WhatsApp by 2012 had become a clear global leader among mobile messengers, the FTC said in a press release. According to the statement of claim, Facebook chose to buy the app rather than compete with it and announced in February 2014 that it would buy WhatsApp for $19 billion.

Facebook's actions to protect and maintain its monopoly deprive consumers of the benefits of competition. Our goal is to end Facebook's uncompetitive behavior and restore competition so innovation and free competition can thrive, "said FTC Competition Management Director Ian Conner.

Facebook called the FTC lawsuit a "revision of the history" of two deals that the US authorities approved several years ago.

The most important fact in this case is that the commission in its 53-page complaint does not say it approved the acquisitions, Facebook senior counsel Jennifer Newstead said. The government now wants to play back by sending a chilling warning to American businesses that no deal is final, she said.

A group of states led by New York Attorney General Letitia James filed a separate lawsuit from the FTC. James said at the briefing that attorneys general support the FTC lawsuit, however, she noted that "states are independent in law enforcement." Prosecutors in their lawsuit drew attention to the significance of data collection to maintain Facebook's monopoly. State authorities argue that Facebook uses this data for its own business interests, and users have no other alternatives, even if they would prefer other practices^[15].

Purchase of CRM Kustomer developer

At the end of November 2020 Facebook , she announced the purchase, Kustomer but did not name the value of the transaction. According to, and CNBC, The Wall Street Journal Bloomberg the acquisition of a startup cost the world's largest social network more than $1 billion. More. here

Disclosure of a large-scale fraudulent scheme

An unsecured database has revealed a massive fraudulent scheme on Facebook. This became known on November 17, 2020.

Security researchers from vpnMentor have discovered a data Elasticsearch public access base on the Web that contained information more than 100,000 hacked social network Facebook user accounts. The size of the database exceeded 5.5 GB, it contained a total of 13,521,774 records, and remained available from June to September this year.

Fraudsters used stolen credentials to access Facebook accounts and distribute spam comments to messages. The comments were all ultimately trade linked to a fake bitcoin marketplace that was used to defraud people of more than €250.

The perpetrators included links to fake news sites, hoping to circumvent and confuse Facebook's fraud and bot detection tools, experts said. If hacked accounts posted the same links to fraudulent resources over and over again, they would quickly be blocked by the social network.

Scammers tricked Facebook users into providing credentials by offering a tool that allegedly reported visitors to their profiles. Data in the archive to establish the identity also included email addresses, names and phone numbers of victims who registered on the fraudulent bitcoin site. Experts have discovered dozens of domains controlled by criminals.

The researchers notified the social network of their findings, and also confirmed that the database is real and valid. On November 17, 2020, after the discovery of an unprotected database, it probably became the target of a so-called meow attack, as a result of which all data was deleted. Soon, the owners of the database disabled it.

Previously, dozens of unprotected databases available on the Web became victims of automatic cyber attacks. Hackers replaced all indexes in public databases Elasticserch and MongoDB with a random set of characters with the word meow at the end^[16].

Plans to remove content "that denies or misrepresents the Holocaust"

Facebook announced that he would remove everything from his platform that "denies content or misrepresents the Holocaust information." This became known on October 13, 2020. The measure, "expanding the FB's anti-hate speech policy," comes in response to the world's "well-documented rise in anti-Semitism and alarming levels of ignorance about the Holocaust issue, particularly among young people." The company said that the application of such rules "cannot happen overnight," it will take time to train reviewers. By the end of 2020 social network , it will begin to redirect users to reliable information about the Holocaust.

According to the founder of the social network Mark Zuckerberg, posts that praise hate crimes or massacres have long been deleted on Facebook.

The head of the social network admitted that when making this decision, he was tormented by the contradictions "between the need to maintain freedom of speech and the harm caused by downplaying or denying the horrors of the Holocaust."

Drawing the right line between what is and is not permissible speech is not easy, but with the state of the world, I believe it is the right balance, "he wrote.

The leadership also hopes that this will help spread the right information and fight anti-Semitism, especially among young people who are often poorly aware of the Holocaust - the persecution and mass extermination of representatives of various ethnic and social groups during the Nazi period. Germany

In the summer of 2020, Holocaust survivors launched the# NoDenyingIt campaign to urge Zuckerberg to start blocking messages denying the mass extermination of different ethnic groups by Nazi Germany.

In 2018, the head of Facebook was at the center of a scandal when he said that the social network should not delete publications that deny the fact of the Holocaust. He argued that Facebook moderators cannot decide which statements are true and which are not.

Earlier, Facebook said it would remove any group or page openly identifying with the far-right conspiracy theorist movement. Facebook also announced restrictions on deliberate misinformation about the coronavirus^[17] of banned ^[18].

France's €100m tax refund after searches

At the end of August 2020, Facebook agreed to pay more than 100 million euros in favor of the French authorities. This amount includes unpaid taxes and the corresponding fine. The company went to a settlement after searches of the French office.

France has long pushed for an overhaul of international tax rules for digital companies like Facebook, and Google Apple Amazon because she believes big tech groups pay too little tax in a country where they have captured significant market share. Current international tax rules legally allow companies to direct sales made in local markets to Europe their regional headquarters. Some tech companies, including Facebook, have European or international headquarters in countries with comparatively low corporate tax rates, such as in. Ireland

A Facebook spokesman said French tax authorities audited Facebook accounts between 2009 and 2018, which resulted in the French subsidiary agreeing to pay a total of €106m. A Facebook spokesman would not elaborate on the agreement. France The tax administration also did not provide more details.

A Facebook spokesperson also said that since 2018, the company has decided to include advertising sales in France in its annual accounts for the French sector. As a result, Facebook's total net revenue nearly doubled in 2019 from 2018 to €747m. Facebook France cites a French tax review report that said the tax adjustment was about €105m. This amount also includes a fine of about 22 million euros.^[19]

Purchase of Mapillary mapping service

In mid-June 2020, Facebook announced the acquisition of Mapillary. Read more here.

Facebook, Zuckerberg and Trump: The main thing

In early June 2020, it became known that Facebook employees were declaring a virtual strike due to Zuckerberg's inaction. They oppose the "policy of non-interference" and demand the removal of Trump's post of readiness to use military force in response to the actions of protesters. This is what employees write on social networks.

"I work on Facebook and am not proud of how we show ourselves." "I am ashamed to work for Facebook as the company has failed to act and has not removed a Trump post calling for violence. I strongly disagree with that. In my work, I like the technical aspects and the smart/kind team, but doing so is wrong. Silence means complicity. "

According to a transcript of Mark Zuckerberg's conversation with employees at the disposal of The Verge^[20]

1. Facebook could adopt temporary restrictions on statesman posts in the US if civil unrest escalates. The company removed misinformation about COVID-19 because it represents a public health emergency, and police abuse of authority can also be seen as an emergency that requires a review of moderation rules;

2. Only one African American decided to participate in the decision-making on Trump's publications. Mark Zuckerberg added that many departments of the company also employ African Americans. (* I understand that this is in response to employees pressuring him on why more of their votes were not included in the discussion);

3. Facebook has a plan to address concerns about Trump's posts and content moderation in general. Zuckerberg said the company:

• revise the policy on figures who threaten the use of force;
• revise policies that could allow people to use the threat of COVID-19 infection to suppress the voice;
• will consider adding new labels for content that does not formally violate community norms, but somehow causes contradictions that will be reviewed by employees;
• will take new initiatives to promote racial justice on Facebook.

4. Keeping Trump's Facebook posts likely hurt public perception of the company, Mark Zuckerberg said. He stated that he was upset by the posts of the American president, one of which warned the protesters that "when the looting begins, the shooting begins." "But I knew I needed to separate my personal opinion... from what our policies and the principles of the platform we run, understanding that the decision we made will lead to a lot of people within the company being very upset and we will get a lot of criticism in the media ";

5. Zuckerberg noted that the original video of the murder of George Floyd by the police was published on Facebook, this story was not silent on the social network. 'About giving people a voice that couldn't have made the news before. And so that abnormal things are visible. I think that matters, too ";

6. The red line that Trump still cannot cross exists. For example, the social network removed Trump's ads that misled users: the campaign poll actually turned out to be a US census. Trump has never commented on this situation;

7. Zuckerberg is concerned that the expression and presentation of his rights will only intensify, and stated that we will regret it someday. "Every time there is something contradictory, your instinct is: OK, let's limit everything. Then you end up limiting a lot of things that I think ultimately suited everybody "

Purchase of Giphy service for $400 million

In May 2020, Facebook bought the Giphy GIF search and forwarding service. The transaction amount is $400 million. The service will be built into Instagram, the brand is retained and users won't notice the difference.

The social network has been using the Giphy API for several years to search for GIFs in Instagram, Messenger and the main application of the social network. According to The Verge, 50% of Giphy's traffic comes from there.

Giphy was launched in 2013 as a service for searching for GIF animations. According to Crunchbase, the company has raised $150.9 million since its inception. During the last round in October 2016, the company was valued at $600 million, the Wall Street Journal claimed. The service processes more than 10 billion pieces of content daily for more than 700 million users, according to the Giphy website.

267 million Facebook accounts are sold on the dark web for $540

On April 20, 2020, Cyble analysts reported the discovery of 267 million Facebook accounts on the darknet. They purchased them from hackers for $540, that is, 0.0002 cents per account. The data contained a unique Facebook identification number, phone number, full name and timestamp and mainly concerned users in the US.

Cyble has imported data into its AmIbreached.com platform, allowing users to check if their accounts are on the compromised list.

For the first time, a database with information about Facebook users was indexed by search engines in December 2019. And then published on a hacker forum. 2 days after the publication, the data was discovered by information security expert Bob Diachenko. It immediately notified the ISP serving the server. After 5 days, access to the server was closed.

In March 2020, a similar database was indexed by the BinaryEdge search engine. In addition to the previous 267 million accounts, it contained data from 42 million new ones.

25 million records of these 42 million contained the same types of data as in the original version of the database. The other 17 million contained additional information, such as personal information from the profile and email address.

Dyachenko discovered this base 2 days after indexing and also notified the Internet provider, which limited access to the resource in early March 2020.

According to experts, the data was obtained by cybercriminals by hacking a third-party API. Moreover, before Facebook limited the access of developers to the phone numbers of its users. Another possible option for obtaining records is scraping (automated collection of open data from users' pages). Most likely, the information received by hackers is currently being used to send spam and phishing, experts warned.^[21]

Facebook bought a 9.9% stake in Jio Platforms for $5.7 billion

On April 21, 2020, Facebook announced the purchase of 9.9% of Jio Platforms for $5.7 billion. As a result of this transaction, the American social network becomes the largest minority shareholder in India's largest mobile and Internet service operator. Read more here.

2019

Data 267 000 000 Facebook users found in the public domain

On December 25, 2019, INFORMATION SECURITY expert Bob Diachenko and Comparitech reported the discovery of an unprotected user bases Elasticsearch data 267 140 436 (Facebook most of the information belonged American to users). So, in the database you could find user identifiers, phone numbers and names, and anyone could access all this data, without a password or any. authentications

Comparitech analysts stressed that this data could be used to conduct large-scale spam and - phishing SMS pampings, as well as other malicious operations.

Experts believe that the base belonged to a certain criminal group from Vietnam. Therefore, for help, the specialists turned not to the owners of the base themselves, but directly to the provider, who closed access to information immediately after the warning received from the researchers.

According to experts, the database was in the public domain for at least two weeks (it was first indexed on December 4, 2019), and during this time it was discovered by cybercriminals, since on December 12, 2019, the database dump was already published for download on a hacker forum.

The researchers write that the information contained in the database was probably collected using scraping or obtained by abusing the Facebook API. Access to the API was limited in 2018, but attackers allegedly could have discovered a vulnerability and continued to abuse the API. So, in November 2019, Facebook already admitted that more than 100 third-party application developers had access to user data through the group API, despite the fact that access to this information was limited last year.

Representatives of the social network reported that they are studying a fresh incident, but suggest that the information in the database was collected even before the changes that the company made over the past few years.

Purchase of virtual reality developer Beat Games

At the end of November 2019 Facebook , it announced the acquisition, Beat Games but did not name the value of the transaction. More. here

The average price of a paid publication is growing

Allocation of $1 billion for the construction of cheap houses in California

In October 2019, Facebook announced that it would send $1 billion to build affordable housing in California. Thanks to this investment, it is planned to create 20 thousand houses for teachers, employees of medical institutions and emergency services, as well as for other "vital workers."

The company will spend $1 billion to solve the housing problem in California and San Francisco, in particular, over 10 years. The following expenses are planned:

• $250 million - for the construction of houses for people with different income levels on  land owned by the state;
• $150 million  for affordable housing, including for the homeless, in the Bay Area;
• $225 million - to build more than 1.5 housing units for people with different income levels on land owned by Facebook;
• $25 million - for the construction of houses for teachers and other important specialists in Santa Clara and San Mateo counties;
• $350 million - as additional obligations related to the implementation of housing initiatives.

According to  TechCrunch, San Francisco is considered one of the most expensive regions to live in. Locals have a hatred of tech companies that they believe are driving up prices. The city's shortage of affordable housing is particularly acute for low- and middle-income people.

According to Facebook CFO David Wehner, in San Francisco, even a family earning more than $100,000 a year is considered low-income. Although the state has high wages, more people cannot afford to live in certain quarters due to the rapid rise in real estate prices, he stressed.

California authorities say it is imperative that other big companies follow Facebook's lead. Solving the issue of high real estate value is possible only with the full support of companies.^[22]

Purchase of software developer for controlling computers with the power of thought CTRL-Labs

September 23, 2019 Facebook announced the acquisition of a developer ON to control computers by the power of thought. CTRL-Labs More. here

Buying a service developer to create Servicefriend chatbots

In mid-September 2019, Facebook acquired the startup Servicefriend, which creates chatbots for a company with a large number of customers. At the same time, the deal was not advertised. Read more here.

Breastfeeding mothers sell milk via Facebook

By July 2019, several groups appeared on Facebook where breastfeeding mothers can sell or give other mothers surplus milk free of charge. This alternative to breast milk banks has not been approved by the American Academy of Pediatricians. Read more here.

US presidential candidate proposes splitting Apple, Google, Amazon and Facebook

In mid-March 2019 USA Elizabeth Warren , the senator and Democratic presidential candidate proposed breaking up tech companies like,, and Apple. Facebook Amazon Google The senator's campaign received support on social networks. More. here

2018

Revenue growth by 37% to $55.84 billion

Facebook finished 2018 with revenue of $55.84 billion, up 37% from the previous year. Almost the entire turnover falls on the advertising business: its volume increased by 38% and reached $55.01 billion. Advertising posted on mobile versions of Facebook accounted for 93% of this business, and in 2017 this share was measured at 89%.

In 2018, the company's net profit amounted to $22.11 billion, surpassing the one-year-old figure by 39%.

By the end of December 2018, 1.52 billion users logged into Facebook at least once a day, which is 9% more than a year earlier. The monthly audience of the social network also increased by 9% during this time - to 2.32 billion people.

About 2.7 billion people used Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger every month by the end of 2018. Of these, 2 billion people launched the service at least once a day.

In the United States and Canada, which remain the most profitable markets for Facebook, monthly audience grew to 242 million at the end of 2018 from 239 million a year earlier. In Europe, the figure for this period increased to 381 million from 370 million.

At the same time, Facebook was able to significantly increase revenue from each user in the United States and Canada - to $34.09 from $26.26 in 2017.

Our community and business continue to grow. We have fundamentally changed the way we run our company to focus on the biggest social issues, and we are increasing investment in creating new and inspiring ways for people to communicate  , "said Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, whose words are cited in a press release.

The stock market reacted very positively to Facebook's performance in 2018, which was overshadowed for the company by scandals surrounding users' personal data. After the publication of the statements, the company's shares rose in price by more than 10%. In 2018, social network quotes fell by almost 20%.^[23]

Lobbying costs of $12.6 million

At the end of January 2019, a US federal lobbying report was issued, according to which in 2018 the five largest technology companies in the country spent $64.3 million on lobbying government officials. Facebook's spending for these purposes amounted to $12.6 million. Read more here.

Zuckerberg shifts Facebook top management to Android smartphones over Apple conflict

In mid-November 2018, it became known about the requirement Mark Zuckerberg for use - Androidsmartphones by top managers. Facebook Managers are forbidden to use iPhone after a conflict with. Apple

The fact that Zuckerberg is forcing Facebook directors to switch to Android devices at the heart was reported by The New York Times (NYT). According to him, this decision followed an interview with Apple CEO Tim Cook on MSNBC in March 2018. Then he condemned Facebook for the fact that the social network collects user data.

Privacy for us is a human right. This is civil freedom, "Cook said, adding that Apple would never find itself in such a situation.

In March 2018, Facebook was at the center of a scandal. It turned out that employees of the social network transmitted the data of millions of users to a third party - the analytical company Cambridge Analytica, which was closely connected with the presidential campaign headquarters. USA Donald Trump

Mark Zuckerberg responded by calling the criticism from Cook extremely superficial. He also stressed that it is important to avoid Stockholm syndrome and not allow companies that want to make more money from customers to convince users that they are more cared for.

Facebook itself confirmed to the NYT that employees are indeed being urged to use Android smartphones, but the company explains this by the popularity of the operating system.

Not all top Facebook executives follow Zuckerberg's ban. The Verge has verified the Twitter accounts of senior Facebook employees, and judging by the latest reports, some of them are still using the iPhone. It is possible that the head of the company does not insist too much on his ban or top managers use Android gadgets only for work.^[24]

Plans to switch entirely to renewables

The American Internet company Facebook on August 28, 2018 announced plans for a complete transition to renewable energy in 2020.

We commit to reducing greenhouse gas emissions on 75% and providing 100% renewable energy to our global operations by the end of 2020, the company said in a statement.

Facebook has been using renewable energy for several years. So, since 2013, when the company first bought electricity derived from wind power, Facebook has signed contracts for more than 3 gigawatts of solar and wind power, which includes more than 2,500 megawatts over the past 12 months.

In addition, the company noted that in 2015 it was set to provide renewable energy sources with 50% of its facilities by 2018. The company managed to solve this problem earlier, reaching back in 2017 an indicator of 51%.^[25]

Facebook speeds up MRI scans 10 times thanks to AI

In August 2018, Facebook announced a research project aimed at increasing the speed of MRI scanning using artificial intelligence technologies. Read more here.

Lockdown in Papua New Guinea

In late May 2018, the Papua New Guinea government announced a ban on Facebook. The country plans to create its own network.

According to the BBC, citing Papua New Guinea Communications Minister Sam Basil, Facebook will be blocked for a month to watch citizens use the service to spread false information and pornography. Users creating fake accounts will also be identified. They face prosecution for breaching a cybercrime law introduced in 2016.

In addition, the authorities intend to study how other states interact with Facebook, as well as the importance of the platform for the state located in Oceania. It is allowed to completely disable Facebook in the country and create a national social network in which there will be no fake accounts.

If necessary, we can gather our software developers to create a site that would be better suited for Papua New Guinea to communicate both domestically and abroad, "Beisil said.

Facebook's ban in Papua New Guinea is unlikely to be a big issue for the local population and the social network itself, with no more than 10% of the country's 8m residents having access to Facebook's audience exceeding 2bn Internet users by the end of May 2018, according to the World Bank. How many of them are Papua New Guinean citizens is not specified.

The authorities of various countries began to show concern about the work of Facebook and initiated investigations after earlier in 2018 it became known about the leakage of personal data of 87 million users of the social network.^[26]

According to Sam Basil, the personal data of Facebook users must be protected.

Our government, taken by IT globalization, did not have time to study the pros and cons, the minister added.

Fine of $33 million for refusing to help in corruption investigations

In early April 2018, it became known that Facebook was fined $33 million for refusing to help in the investigation of corruption.

According to Reuters, the Brazilian court ruled that Facebook is obliged to pay 111.7 million reais (about $33.4 million at the exchange rate as of April 4) for the fact that the company refused to cooperate in the investigation of the corruption case. A Facebook spokesman replied that they were "considering all options for action within the legal framework."

According to a statement from prosecutors, the essence of the charge is that in 2016 Facebook did not provide access to correspondence on the WhatsApp messenger used by individuals under investigation for alleged health care fraud in Amazonas state, Brazil.

In a comment obtained by Reuters via email, Facebook called the fine unfounded.

Facebook provides the necessary assistance to law enforcement agencies. At the request of the authorities, we provided data in accordance with the current legislation. We understand that this fine has no grounds, and we are studying all the options at our disposal within the legal framework, the Internet company said in a statement.

In April 2016, a Brazilian judge ordered Facebook to give authorities access to the WhatsApp messages in question, according to federal police data.

The fine was R $1m plus interest for every day Facebook failed to comply with the order, starting when it came into force in mid-June 2016 and ending in September 2016, when a corruption investigation was publicly announced, police said.

As a result of the investigation, which has been dubbed Operacao Maus Caminhos or Operation Wrong Way, federal police have exposed the embezzlement of tens of millions of reais of public funds^[27]

Lobbying costs

At the end of January 2018, it became known that the American IT giants Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Google in 2017 spent a record amount on lobbying their interests and trying to influence the American authorities - almost $50 million.

Facebook in 2017 spent a record amount of about $11.5 million on lobbying, trying to resist tougher legislation regulating online content and advertising. Read more here.

Buy Confirm

January 23, 2018 Facebook announced the acquisition of a developer ON for identity identification. Confirm The value of the transaction was not disclosed, as well as the buyer's plans to use Confirm technologies in their products. More. here

2017

The error of the translator built into Facebook turned into a terrorist charge and arrest for the user

Israeli police mistakenly arrested Palestinian Halavim Khalawi after he posted a message on Facebook in Arabic wishing good morning, the Fastcompany.com portal reported on October 23, 2017.

Halawi, who worked as a builder, accompanied the post with his photo with a cup of coffee in the background of a bulldozer, which, among other things, were used in the region to carry out terrorist attacks.

Subsequent events came as a complete surprise to the author of the report: the Israeli police accused him of preparing a terrorist act and arrested him.

It turned out that the computer translator built into Facebook, working on the basis of a neural network, tragically incorrectly translated the harmless wish of a good morning into Hebrew as "attack them" and into English as "harm them." And the bulldozer in the photo only aggravated the incorrect interpretation of the original meaning of the message.

As it turned out, the Arabic common expression "good morning to everyone" and the phrase "harm them" differ in just one letter, which is why the neural network made a fatal mistake. After several hours of interrogation, the police still released the Palestinian. The post, which prompted the arrest of an innocent man, was removed from Facebook. There was no comment from Facebook on how such a mistake could have happened.

In August 2017, Facebook announced that a machine translator using neural network technologies was introduced into the social network, which automatically translates site content from one language to another. Many technology companies, including Microsoft and Google, are gradually introducing machine translators, which accelerates and improves the result. However, the above example shows that so far the translation using neural networks is still very far from perfect.^[28]

Hiring former officials and intelligence officers

In October 2017, it became known about Facebook's plans to recruit people to its staff who have access to classified information. Thanks to this, the company intends to fight against possible attempts by foreign countries to influence public opinion and future elections in the United States through a social network.

According to Bloomberg, citing knowledgeable sources, Facebook is ready to hire former employees of the government and intelligence agencies. Although their access to confidential information was lost after the termination of work in the authorities, it can be restored to work on behalf of Facebook. The publication notes that hiring people with access to classified information is considered a common practice for private business.

It is assumed that such employees will have to receive secret information from the state about threats coming from outside, and this information will be taken into account when analyzing advertisements ordered on the Facebook platform.

The need to check ads on Facebook arose after the social network estimated the volume of political advertising ordered from fake accounts. According to the leadership of Facebook, all of them were connected with Russia. The "divisive" messages were seen by at least 10 million American users.

In September 2017, Facebook said it had identified approximately 470 inauthentic accounts the social network links to Russia and through which thousands of political messages were circulated between June 2015 and May 2017.

A Facebook spokesperson declined to comment. The office of the director of U.S. National Intelligence and the Department of Homeland Security did not respond to requests for comment at Bloomberg's request.^[29]

European Commission fines Facebook 110 million euros for hiding information during WhatsApp purchase

Facebook messenger WhatsApp ^[30] European Commission found guilty of hiding information during a purchase in 2014 and imposed a fine of 110 million euros on the social network^[31]

In 2014, according to the regulator's decision, Facebook indicated in the documents for approval of the deal to buy WhatsApp that it would not automatically combine the accounts of social network users and the messenger. However, two years after the purchase, this was done.

Facebook faced a fine of up to 1 percent of annual turnover - up to $276 million, based on the company's 2016 accounts. However, the social network actively collaborated with the regulator, and the amount of the fine was reduced, the European Commission announced.

The European Commission called the 110 million euro fine "proportionate."

Lithuanian stole more than $100 million from Google and Facebook

In March 2017, the media reported that Google and Facebook were affected by a phishing attack organized by a fraudster from Lithuania. The names of the companies were not disclosed, but it was noted that the attacker managed to deceive more than $100 million. Read more here.

2016: Opening a manufacturing laboratory to speed up production of new devices

In early August 2016, Facebook announced the opening of the Facebook Hardware Lab, through which the company plans to accelerate the development and testing of new devices. Read more here.

2014

FB celebrates a decade

Facebook to launch office social network

From the publication of The Financial Times on November 16, 2014, it became known that it was Facebook developing a business social network. A new service called Facebook at Work is expected to compete with Google Drive, Microsoft Outlook  and LinkedIn.^[32]

According to the sources of the publication, the project in development since 2013 is intended for employees of companies: they will be able to conduct business correspondence in the chat, establish new professional contacts and exchange documents.

Data from personal pages on Facebook will not be displayed in the new service, which will allow employees of organizations to separate personal information from corporate information. At the same time, Facebook at Work will receive a number of similarities with the world's largest social network. In particular, the newspaper writes about the presence of a news feed and a section with user contacts.

Facebook tests social network for business communication

Facebook at Work will be free, but there will be advertising on which Mark Zuckerberg will be able to earn. The project of a single corporate social network seems very promising, since many companies block social services in the internal network so that workers are not distracted from office tasks. Facebook has an active audience of more than 1.3 billion people. For comparison, the largest professional social network LinkedIn has this figure of only 90 million with a total user base of 300 million subscribers.

It is noted that Facebook employees have been using Facebook at Work in their daily work for a long time. In addition, some other companies have begun testing a new internet service. At the time of this writing, Facebook did not provide comments on the new social network, which was reported in the media.

Earlier, the TechCrunch technoport, citing an ex-Facebook employee, wrote that the company uses the FB @ Work project to communicate between colleagues, which in the future should replace corporate users with email and fast messaging services.

2013: Mail.ru sells $525m of Facebook shares

Mail.ru Group announced the sale of 14 million shares (0.5% of the total) of the social network Facebook. These are the latest Facebook shares owned by the Russian company; they were sold for $525 million. Mail.ru Group became a shareholder of Facebook in 2009, at that time the company was called DST and was actively buying up shares in various Russian and foreign Internet projects. Before going public IPO in 2010, Mail.ru Group divided minority stakes in foreign assets between itself and its shareholders from the DST Global group of funds (its main investor is the controlling shareholder of Mail.ru Group Alisher Usmanov, and the manager is Yuri Milner).^[33]

2012: Successful IPO and stock collapse

In early February 2012, it became known that Facebook filed an application with the US Securities Commission (SEC) for an initial placement of its shares on the stock exchange. This event was expected for a long time. It was expected that Facebook's IPO could break all previous records for the amount of money raised^[34] its^[34].

The application indicates the desired placement amount of $5 billion, but the actual amount is likely to be higher, most experts believe. According to WSJ, during the initial placement, Facebook can raise up to $10 billion, which will estimate the entire company at $75-100 billion.

Facebook has two types of stock - Class "A" (with one vote per share) and Class "B" (with 10 votes). Zuckerberg, 27, himself, owns a 28.2% stake in Class "B." The IPO could make him the fourth richest person in the US with a capital of $28 billion.

The IPO application revealed Facebook's financial performance for the first time (see Performance, above).

• The value of Facebook shares, which the famous musician, leader of the U2 group Bono, acquired through a private investment fund, as of February 2012 amounted to 1.1 dollars^[35] made^[35] in the^[35]

If the IPO goes ahead, U2's leader would be the richest rock star in the world, eclipsing even Paul McCartney. Bono intends to use part of the proceeds to finance his charitable projects, in particular, to provide humanitarian assistance to Africa.

Meanwhile, many were skeptical when in 2009 Bono spent over $90 million to buy shares in the company. The fact is that then the rock star had a reputation as a failed investor: several projects in which he invested ended in collapse. However, Bono will now be more than rewarded for past failures.

• According to unofficial data, it became known that the company plans to start a road-show on May 7 - a series of presentations for investors in which the top management of the social network will talk about plans for the further development of the company. This stage lasts, as a rule, one to two weeks, after which trading begins.

According to unofficial information, since the beginning of April, Facebook has banned alternative exchanges organizing trading in shares of private companies from conducting transactions with its securities. It was assumed that this decision would allow Facebook to more accurately assess the circle of its shareholders on the eve of the IPO, as well as give investors a clearer understanding of the real value of the social network shares.

The main organizer of Facebook's IPO will be Morgan Stanley investment bank. In addition, the social network attracted 30 more banks to organize the placement of shares, including Goldman Sachs, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Barclays Capital, JP Morgan and others.

• On May 17, 2012, Facebook placed its shares in an IPO of $38 per paper, the upper limit of the price range announced by the company a few days ago (the lower limit is $34). It turns out that the entire social network is valued at $104 billion (taking into account shares to be issued in the future), and the amount raised is $18.4 billion (taking into account the option for underwriting banks - if it is exercised). The company itself and its shareholders raised $16 billion. In total, 421.2 million Facebook shares were sold as part of the IPO, of which 180 million were sold by the company itself, and 241.23 million - its shareholders^[36].

Facebook's IPO is the largest among tech company placements and the largest in the United States since the placement of Visa, which raised $19.7 billion in 2008. The IPO of the world's largest social network caused a real stir both among professional investors and among ordinary people who decided to buy Facebook shares at all costs. As a person close to the participants in the placement told Vedomosti, the application book was re-signed more than 5 times - closer to 10. Initially, Facebook set the price range for its shares at $28-35 per share, but in the wake of rush demand, it first increased the price to $34-38 per share, and then the volume of placement - by 25%.

The decision to increase the offer was made by a majority of Facebook shareholders. The company's management agreed to sell 62% more shares than planned, the Accel Partners investment fund - 28%, one of the first Facebook investors - Peter Thiel and Goldman Sachs - 2.2 times more. Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg did not put up additional securities - he sold 30.2 million shares, which will bring him $1.03-1.15 billion.

Russian shareholders of the social network - DST Global and Mail.ru Group - made good money on Facebook's IPO. DST Global sold 45.7 million shares (19.4 million more than it was going to) and will earn $1.55-1.74 billion - $660-737 million more than planned. All this money, according to the charter of the funds, will be distributed among their investors, including Alisher Usmanov, Yuri Milner, Goldman Sachs investment bank and many others. Mail.ru Group increased its offering by 8.33 million shares to 19.6 million and will earn $283-317 million more than it expected - $666.4-744.8 million.

10 of Facebook's most prominent shareholders

№	Shareholder	Value of the sold block of shares during the IPO, $ billion	Value of the remaining block of shares (based on the offering price), billion $
1	Mark Zuckerberg	1,14	19,11
2	Dustin Moskovitz	-	5,09
3	DST Group (all funds)	1,73	3,23
4	Sean Parker	-	2,62
5	Eduardo Saverin	-	2
6	Mail.ru Group	0,74	1,4
7	Microsoft	0,25	1
8	DST USA (Yuri Milner Foundation)	0,34	0,68
9	DST Global (Alisher Usmanov Foundation)	0,23	0,42
10	Mark Pincus	0,04	0,16

Source: American Securities Commission

Buying patents

In early 2012 Facebook , she bought out more than 750 patents of the corporation, IBM which cover various technologies in the field of networks and. This was software reported by the agency with reference to "informed sources." Bloomberg According to the agency, this may indicate Facebook's attempts to defend itself in the future from presenting "patent claims" similar to those recently filed against the social network by the company. Yahoo! This acquisition will significantly increase Facebook's patent portfolio, which now consists of 56 issued patents and 503 filed patent applications.

In early March 2012, the search engine Yahoo accused Facebook of violating ten patents. In particular, the statement of claim says that the entire model of the social network, which allows users to create their profiles and come into contact with other persons and companies, is based on Yahoo's patented network social technologies.

Moving headquarters to Menlo Park

Until 2022, Facebook will pay $8.5 million - $800 thousand a year to the budget of Menlo Park in the first five years and then $900 thousand a year. According to Mercury News, this is a kind of compensation for lost profits in the form of sales tax, which could be subject to companies located on the Facebook campus.

The Facebook business, founded by Mark Zuckenberg in 2004 in a Harvard university dorm room, is growing at a very fast pace, and since recently, space in an office center in California's Palo Alto has not been enough for it. As of December 31, 2011, the company had 3,200 employees worldwide. In the second half of April 2012, it became known about Facebook's intention to change its location and move to the nearby town of Menlo Park. As the largest social network agreed with the municipal authorities, an example is worthy of imitation for many large domestic holdings. Equally, for government officials.

The city council has already approved a document that describes in detail what actions Facebook should take to develop the municipal district. In particular, in the next five, in addition to the above financial obligations, the company will pay $1 million on an annual basis, with the possibility of adjusting this amount upward, depending on the change in the value of the consumer basket (CPI - Consumer Price Index). At the same time, Facebook will invest $1.1 million in capital construction projects in the city. Finally, another $500 thousand social network will spend on advanced training courses for local personnel, internship programs and initiatives aimed at developing business in the region. Part of the funds will go to the development of the public transport system and the construction of affordable housing.

In exchange, the company receives guarantees from the authorities to speed up the process of all necessary approvals to expand the business as much as possible and not impose any additional payments other than those indicated in the signed agreement.

Stock price crash

On July 29, 2012, Facebook shares collapsed 12%, showing the most significant decline in their short stock history. Since the May IPO, the market capitalization of the social network has decreased by 38% - to $56.3 billion, according to Bloomberg data. No major company that has passed the IPO procedure has lost its value so quickly.

Removal of the ban on the sale of shares and the mood of investors

On August 16, 2012, the ban on the sale of shares for companies that entered Facebook's capital before the IPO in May of this year ends.

Investors were disappointed by the second-quarter report, in which Facebook showed a slowdown to 32% from 45% a year earlier. According to Bloomberg, citing unnamed sources, investors intend to gradually leave the company by selling their packages.

One of Facebook's shareholders is Microsoft, which has announced its desire to keep its stake in 1.7% of the internet company, which it considers its strategic asset and privileged partner.

In 2007, Microsoft bought a 26.2 million or 1.7% stake in Facebook for $240 million. As of August 2013, this package was estimated at $572 million.

2011

Hiring a PR agency to smear Google

May 2011. Facebook was caught in black PR against Google. The world's largest social network Facebook has used the services of public relations agency Burson-Marsteller to smear Google's reputation, according to The Daily Beast.

"Something strange has been going on in Silicon Valley over the past few days," writes Dan Lyons, author of an article in The Daily Beast. - The feeling that someone hired Burson-Marsteller, a major public relations agency, to send various stories to news publications, pushing them to study in detail how Google is invading privacy. Moreover, Burson invited one of the authoritative bloggers to write poignant articles about Google, which were planned to be posted in The Washington Post, Politico and The Huffington Post. "

This blogger revealed the agency. Instead of taking advantage of the offer, he published an e-mail correspondence with PR people on the Internet. After that, the story gained fame thanks to USA Today, which wrote that Burson deliberately took up "spreading false rumors, acting in the interests of an unknown client."* * *

The first suspicions fell on Microsoft and Apple, however, as The Daily Beast found out, Facebook turned out to be the customer - which no one expected. The publication refers to the official representative of the social network. He explained that Facebook decided to use Burson's services for two reasons. First, because Google is careless about user data and second, because it tries to use Facebook data on its social services.

Facebook use can cause mental health problems in teens

During his speech at the American Psychological Association conference in August 2011, University of California psychology professor Larry Rosen stated that the use of Facebook and other social networks can lead to the emergence of serious mental disorders in adolescents and youth, leading to narcissism, aggression and anti-social behavior. Instead of communicating with friends and relatives in person or by phone, young people prefer text messaging on social media sites. Today, 42% of teenagers type blindly, and many regularly check for updates on sites at night or immediately after waking up. According to Rosen, excessive fascination with social media contributes to the accumulation of negative emotions. True, to date, nothing has been heard about registered cases of mental disorders in Facebook users.

Raising $1.5 billion from investors. The company's valuation is $50 billion

On January 21, 2011, Facebook announced that it had raised $1.5 billion from investors who valued 100% of its shares at about $50 billion. That's more than the estimated value of the likes of Yahoo, eBay and Time Warner. The first stage of the transaction took place back in December 2010, when DST Global, Goldman Sachs and funds managed by this investment bank purchased Facebook class A ordinary shares for $500 million. The contribution of DST Global at that stage amounted to $50 million, which is equivalent to 0.1% of the shares of the social network, a source close to the deal and a manager of a large investment bank told Vedomosti.

At the second stage, Goldman Sachs sold investors shares in a fund that invested $1 billion in Facebook shares of the same category, the social network said. Earlier, sources from The Wall Street Journal and Vedomosti reported on the plans of Goldman Sachs and DST Global (organizers of the second stage of the deal) to attract $1.5 billion to Facebook in this way. The terms of the transaction assumed that Facebook could choose any amount of financing between $375 million and $1.5 billion, as a result, the company limited it to $1 billion - despite the fact that the volume of subscription to the fund's securities was exceeded (and only investors outside the United States were allowed to the transaction). Now Facebook's shareholder count is close to 500, and it will be required by law to publish open financial statements. The first such report will appear no later than April 30, 2012, the company promised. Just by this time, its IPO may take place, Reuters sources suggest .

True, so far Facebook does not have an urgent need for money. The company does not even have immediate plans to use the $1.5 billion raised: these funds only improve the cash situation and increase Facebook's financial flexibility, says its CFO David Ebersman.

Until December 2010, DST Global and its sister Mail.ru Group (the largest co-owner of both - Alisher Usmanov) owned a total of slightly less than 10% of Facebook (including Mail.ru Group owned 2.38%). Under the terms of the second stage of the transaction, DST Global had the right to redeem an additional stake in Facebook for $75 million. Thus, in general, following the transaction, DST Global could increase its share in the social network by about 0.25%. Whether she exercised this right, the representative of DST Global does not say.

DST Global and Mail.ru Group have already made money from investments in Facebook. They bought the first 1.96% of the company's preferred shares in the spring of 2009, based on an estimate of 100% of only $10 billion. In February 2010, buying 0.8%, DST (the predecessor of the Mail.ru Group) estimated 100% of Facebook at $12.5 billion. And at the end of last week, the SharePost secondary market trading system estimated the value of Facebook (based on transactions made with its shares) at $76 billion (on January 19, transactions were made based on an estimate of the entire company at $62-136 billion).

From the point of view of a financial investor, Facebook is a very expensive company, notes Alexey Kurasov, head of the Finam corporate finance department. But while there is no public trading in its shares, small packages are put up for sale, so even a small deal affects the valuation, he explains. Perhaps even Facebook itself buys back the shares in order to reduce the number of shareholders and delay entry into the public field, he admits.

2010

Greenpeace demanded to transfer Facebook data center to environmental energy sources

An official petition sent to Facebook by Greenpeace chief executive Kumi Naidu contains a demand to abandon the use of electricity generated by the operation of the coal-fired power plant. The electricity generated by this station is used to operate Facebook's new data center, located in Oregon (Prainville).

Greenpeace employees suggest using solar and wind energy instead of coal to reduce carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere. As an example in the petition, Google Corporation was used, which transferred its data center in Iowa to power from a wind farm. Another example was Hewlett-Packard, which developed a project for the operation of servers using electricity obtained during the processing of cow manure.

Web designer demands 84% stake in company

A New York court has issued a temporary injunction against any transfer of assets to Facebook over a lawsuit by a man who says he should own 84% of that social network.

The lawsuit in the Allegheny County Superior Court in New York on June 30 was filed by Paul Ceglia. According to him, Chelia signed a contract with Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg in 2003. According to the terms of this agreement, he owns most of the company, and is also entitled to monetary compensation. Facebook officials said they considered the lawsuit unfounded and demanded it be taken to federal court, the Wall Street Journal reported.

According to Chelia's statement, he signed a contract with Zuckerberg on April 28, 2003 to develop and create the design of the website, paying $1,000, but gaining the rights to 50% of the final product.

Also, this contract allegedly provides that Paul Chelia will receive an additional 1% of the company every day after January 1, 2004 until the contract is completed. "We believe this lawsuit is absolutely unfounded and will vigorously fight it," a Facebook spokesperson said. Plaintiff and his lawyer declined to comment to the press.

To date, it is still unclear exactly how Chelia was associated with Zuckerberg, the Wall Street Journal notes. According to a copy of the contract presented in court, it is compiled to "acquire and develop a suitable website for a project already started by Seller (Zuckerberg), created to offer Harvard University students access to the site under the working title The Face Book."

According to analysts, the date indicated in the contract clearly contradicts previously known information about the creation of a social network. So, Zuckerberg created the predecessor of Facebook called Facemash in October and November 2003, but registered the domain name thefacebook.com only in January 2004.

It is also known that in 2009 Paul Chelia was accused in the case of deceiving customers of his company supplying wood fuel pellets. According to the case file, the company of the newly-minted owner of the world's largest social network raised more than $200 thousand from its clients, but never delivered them the ordered wood pellets, and did not return the funds. Now this trial is still ongoing.

Russia's DST buys 5% of Facebook, increasing its stake to 10%

In May 2010, the Russian DST bought a 5% stake in Facebook, bringing its stake in the social network to 10%. The increase in DST's share in Facebook was reported by Businessweek magazine, citing two sources close to the owners of the network. The information was confirmed by a source close to one of the negotiators; This was heard by a source familiar with DST shareholders. Vedomosti interlocutors did not disclose the amount of the transaction and when the shares were bought.

DST entered Facebook capital in May 2009, having bought 2% of the network's preferred shares in an additional issue for $200 million. Soon, the fund announced the purchase of 1.5% of ordinary shares from employees for $97.5 million. Then DST acquired the same amount, by the fall bringing its stake in Facebook to 5%, said the shareholder of the investment company.

DST also bought the next 5% of the shares from the network's employees, says a source close to one of the buying participants (Businessweek writes about the same). A DST spokesman declined to comment. Facebook does not comment on deals between shareholders, its spokesman said. However, in April, the social network banned its employees from selling shares in the secondary market.

2004-2007: Early stage of funding

Facebook was created on February 4, 2004 and almost immediately raised $0.5 million from one of the founders of the PayPal payment system - Peter Tiel. In the middle of the same year, Facebook received $12.7 million from Accel Partners, which estimated the entire social network at $100 million.

In 2006, the same Accel Partners with partners, including Greylock Partners and Meritech Capital, as well as Tiel, gave Facebook another $25 million based on a 100% estimate of $525 million.

And in 2007, 1.6% of Facebook's preferred shares were bought by Microsoft, valuing 100% of these shares at $15 billion. Microsoft counted on a partnership with Facebook in the sale of online advertising, its CEO Steve Ballmer explained to Vedomosti earlier, and is pleased with the purchase.

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