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Enterprise Featured Article
July 20, 2007
Facebook Acquires Parakey
By Raju Shanbhag TMCnet Contributing Editor
According to a Reuters report, fast growing Silicon Valley social-networking site Facebook has acquired Internet start-up Parakey, run by two of the co-creators of Firefox.
Parakey is described as a company that seeks to bridge the gap between the immediacy of information stored on local desktop computers and the collaborative power of data stored on Web sites. Founded by Blake Ross and Joe Hewitt, the company wishes to makes consumers’ lives easier. The company feels that even after so many years after the invention of PCs, operating a computer is still tedious for the common man. Everyday computer related activities like creating documents, finding files, sharing information are cumbersome and counterintuitive.
On the other hand, Facebook was founded by then-undergraduate Mark Zuckerberg in 2004. In the initial stages, the web site was a social site for fellow Harvard University students. But after its success, it was soon opened for users of all ages. Within years, Facebook was a major force to reckon with in the international social networking arena.
A major reason for the site’s phenomenal success is the control that the site provides to users on the visibility of their profile. In other words, users can decide who sees which part of their profiles.
Details about Parakey products or services are still not available. Both Parakey and Facebook officials reportedly declined to be interviewed about the deal.
Since September 11, 2006, Facebook has been made available to any email address. Users can select to join one or more participating networks, such as a high school, place of employment, or geographic region.
As of July 2007, the website had the largest number of registered users among college-focused sites with over 30 million members worldwide (also from non-collegiate networks). In June 2007, it was ranked between top 10–20 web sites, and was the number one site for photos in the United States, ahead of public sites such as Flickr, with over 8.5 million photos uploaded daily. It is also the seventh most visited site in the United States.
Raju Shanbhag is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To see more of his articles, please visit his columnist page.
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