Facebook Facts and Fiction

Estimated Completion Time
1 min
Facebook Facts and Fiction
Image: refer to hsw

About This Quiz

With more than 1 billion members and counting, Facebook is one of the fastest-growing phenomena to come out of a college dorm room. What do you know about this plot to take over the world?
Who founded Facebook?
Mark Zuckerberg
Mortimer Zuckerman
Barry Zuckercorn
Correct Answer
Wrong Answer

Facebook was founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg. Zuckerberg and a few friends created the site in their college dorm at Harvard, and he eventually dropped out to run the site full-time.

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How much did Facebook pay to get its current domain name?
$20,000
$200,000
$2,000,000
Correct Answer
Wrong Answer

Facebook was originally called "thefacebook" and was open to a network of college students, but in August 2005, the company paid $200,000 to change its domain name to facebook.com.

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Which similar social networking site sued Facebook for allegedly stealing source code?
MySpace
Friendster
ConnectU
Correct Answer
Wrong Answer

Early on in the site's history, Facebook was sued by ConnectU, another site based out of Harvard. The Associated Press revealed that Facebook eventually settled with ConnectU for $20 million in cash (cash!) and more than 1.2 million shares of stock.

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When did Facebook extend its network beyond educational institutions?
September 2005
September 2006
October 2007
Correct Answer
Wrong Answer

Initially only U.S. universities -- and subsequently U.S. high schools -- could sign up to use Facebook, but as of September 2006, anyone with a registered e-mail address can become a member.

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Which major software company bought a stake in Facebook in 2007?
Google
Microsoft
Yahoo
Correct Answer
Wrong Answer

Microsoft invested $240 million for a piece of Facebook. Doesn't sound like much, does it? That $240 million only accounted for a 1.6 percent stake in Facebook, placing the value of the company at $15 billion in 2007.

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Where are Facebook's main offices located?
Harvard
Palo Alto, Calif.
San Francisco, Calif.
Correct Answer
Wrong Answer

Facebook calls Palo Alto, Calif., home, although it does have an additional office in New York.

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What revenue source does NOT make Facebook money?
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private investment
membership fees
Correct Answer
Wrong Answer

Facebook does not make money with membership fees. In fact, anyone can maintain a profile for free, as long as they have an e-mail address. The company makes some revenue with banner ads, which you often see on the margins of the site, but the majority of Facebook's money comes from private investment.

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Which of these is NOT a first-party Facebook application?
photos application
gifts application
chess application
Correct Answer
Wrong Answer

Photo and gift applications are all developed by the Facebook team, but anyone using Facebook's application programming interface (API) can develop other third-party applications, including chess, Scrabble or even zombie games.

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About 30 million people access their Facebook profile using what?
their laptops
their mobile phones
their minds
Correct Answer
Wrong Answer

According to Facebook, more than 30 million active members access their profile using mobile phones -- with 250 million members worldwide, that's about 12 percent of the whole site. Facebook hasn't developed a telekinesis application…yet.

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A Columbia Pictures film about the beginnings of Facebook called "The Social Network" came out in 2010. Who wrote the screenplay?
Aaron Sorkin
J.J. Abrams
Aaron Spelling
Correct Answer
Wrong Answer

Aaron Sorkin, creator of "The West Wing," based his screenplay on Ben Mezrich's book "The Accidental Billionaires." J.J. Abrams is too busy with "Lost" and "Star Trek" to worry about social media, and Aaron Spelling passed away in 2006.

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You Got:
/10
refer to hsw