A face book or facebook is a common or web directory found at some American universities consisting of individuals' photographs and names. In particular, it denotes publications of this type distributed by university administrations at the start of the academic year, with the intention of helping students get to know each other.
History
College
A college (Latin: ''collegium'') is an educational institution or a constituent part of one. A college may be a degree-awarding tertiary educational institution, a part of a collegiate or federal university, an institution offering ...
s and
universities in the United States have often published official or unofficial books listing their students,
faculty, or staff, together with pictures and limited biographical data. By the early 2000s, some face books were being published online offering a number of new features, including password protection, more detailed information, more advanced indexing and searching, and the ability for people to upload and enter information and photographs.
In early 2004,
Mark Zuckerberg, a
sophomore
In the United States, a sophomore ( or ) is a person in the second year at an educational institution; usually at a secondary school or at the college and university level, but also in other forms of post-secondary educational institutions. In ...
at
Harvard University, created an unofficial online face book at the website "thefacebook.com", the forerunner of the
Facebook service, out of frustration that the university's official online face book project was taking too long.
The development of a campus-wide face book had previously been stalled by privacy concerns, many of which became prominent in November 2003 when Zuckerberg was accused of breaching security and violating copyrights and individual privacy. Zuckerberg had created a website, www.facemash.com, that used photos taken without authorization from
Harvard House-based face books, using the photos in a system to rate the attractiveness of students.
See also
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Callbook
Broadcast call signs are call signs assigned as unique identifiers to radio stations and television stations. While broadcast radio stations will often brand themselves with plain-text names, identities such as " cool FM", " rock 105" or "the ABC ...
*
Mug shot
A mug shot or mugshot (an informal term for police photograph or booking photograph) is a photographic portrait of a person from the shoulders up, typically taken after a person is arrested. The original purpose of the mug shot was to allow law ...
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Telephone directory
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Face book
University and college mass media in the United States
Yearbooks