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 offerin ...
s and
universities
A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States, ...
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 at
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of high ...
, created an unofficial online face book at the website "thefacebook.com", the forerunner of the
Facebook
Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Mosk ...
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 ...
*
Telephone directory
A telephone directory, commonly called a telephone book, telephone address book, phonebook, or the white and yellow pages, is a listing of telephone subscribers in a geographical area or subscribers to services provided by the organization that ...
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Face book
University and college mass media in the United States
Yearbooks