Social media giant Facebook turns 12 today. Here's a collection of some interesting, and a few bizarre, facts associated with the popular social networking site and it's founder...
When 1m Facebook 'likes' were demanded as dowry: In December last year, a father in Yemen asked his potential future son-in-law to provide him with 1 million Facebook as dowry before he allows him to marry his daughter. Salem Ayash, a poet from the city of Taiz, said that he requested the unusual 'payment' before agreeing to let his daughter get married as no-one in Yemen can afford to pay dowries anymore, according to news reports. Ayash added that the groom can take a month, a year, or even two years to collect the requested number of likes and if he gets impressed by the hard work, he will be willing to be flexible to see his daughter get happily married to the guy.
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Facebook's oldest user: 108-year-old, Edythe Kirchmaier, is reportedly Facebook's oldest registered user. Kirchmaier (who was 106 at the time of her record) earned the title of being the site's senior most member in 2013 when friends from the medical aid charity Direct Relief signed her up for an account on her 105th birthday. According to ABC News, Kirchmaier is also California's oldest licensed driver and the University of Chicago's oldest living graduate. At first, she couldn't enter her birth year of 1908 when she joined Facebook, a glitch that took the site's engineers one month to fix after verifying her age, as it was something they never had to do before.
'Wanted man' makes Facebook post; arrested: A man evading arrest in Pennsylvania, USA, actually shared the police's 'Wanted' message about himself on Facebook, only to be arrested 45 minutes later. Anthony James Lescowitch Jr. made a big blunder when he posted it ''accidentally'' for ''public view''. His post even received two ''likes'' and was commented on by a number of his friends, some of whom wished him good luck!
Mark Zuckerberg is not the first Facebook user! The Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg is at number four amongst the first few users on the social networking site. In fact, the first three accounts on Facebook were reserved for testing, leaving Zuckerberg at number four.
Engineer rewarded with meagre pay for finding Facebook's 'biggest' bug: A computer engineer in Brazil, Reginaldo Silva, had found one of the worst kinds of vulnerabilities in Facebook's software in November 2013 and hoped to strike the jackpot. However, Silva was paid 33,500 dollars for the discovery, despite Facebook''s security director, Ryan McGeehan''s statement made in July 2012 that if there's a million-dollar bug, the company would pay it out!
Facebook could lose 80 pc users by 2017: Facebook is likely to lose 80 percent of its users and getting largely abandoned by 2017, researchers at Princeton University said. John Cannarella and Joshua Spechler revealed that the charts produced by the Google Trends service show Facebook searches peaked in December 2012, but since begun to trail off. The researchers made the forecast by comparing the growth curve of others online social networks, like bubonic plague.
Mark Zuckerberg was the most charitable in 2013: Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg reportedly topped the giving list for US philanthropists after donating a Silicon Valley foundation with nearly one billion dollars. Zuckerberg, along with wife, Priscilla Chan, contributed the sum to the Silicon Valley Community Foundation including 18 million in Facebook shares that totaled to about 992 million dollars.
Facebook CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg
Think your wasting time on Facebook? Here's how you can find out: Those who want to congratulate the site on eating up a chunk of their last decade can take help from a new tool that estimates to the minute how much time has been spent by a user on the site. The calculator has been developed by TIME Magazine and it accesses data on when a user joined the site and how often the things have been posted to the feed.
1 dollar: Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's salary!
23 years: The age when Mark Zuckerberg became a billionaire as a result of the social network website's success by 2007.
The Facebook: Facebook's original name during the time of its initial release on February 4, 2004.
Mark Zuckerberg is popular on other social media sites as well: Apart from his own social networking site Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg also has accounts on Google + and Twitter. Zuckerberg had become the most followed user on Google+, outranking Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin for some time. He has maintained a private account on Twitter under the username 'zuck', although as of November 2014, the account's status is suspended. Another account 'finkd' also belonged to him.
Facebook was launched in a college campus: Mark Zuckerberg and his college roommates and fellow Harvard University students Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes, launched Facebook from Harvard University's dormitory rooms. The group then introduced the social networking website onto other campuses nationwide.
Facesmash: Mark Zuckerberg's co-creating Facebook was preceded by another website named 'Facesmash', written by Zuckerberg and his classmates. The website was set up as a type of "hot or not" game for Harvard students and allowed visitors to compare two student pictures side-by-side and let them choose who was "hot" and who was "not".
Zuckerberg meets 'Zuckerberg'! Mark Zuckerberg made a surprise guest appearance on the January 29, 2011 episode of the hit sketch-comedy show 'Saturday Night Live', which was being hosted by Jesse Eisenberg, the actor, who played Zuckerberg in the biopic, 'The Social Network'. Although Zuckerberg was critical of the film for his inaccurate portrayal he nonetheless had a cordial and friendly meeting with Eisenberg calling his portrayal in the film as 'interesting'.
Internet.org: In August 2013 Mark Zuckerberg launched the Internet.org project to provide Internet access to the 5 billion people who are not connected as of the launch date. In a public Facebook post, Zuckerberg mentioned that by using a three-tier strategy, Internet.org will also create new jobs and open up new markets.
The viral Facebook 'bikini' video: A fake video enticing people to click on the picture of a bikini-clad woman on a beach went viral on the site recently. Thanks to the spam link, people kept on clicking on it and the post automatically got reposted through their Facebook profile page. The post had a description, ''Look what this girl is wearing at the beach in front of thousands of people!''
Woman's weight loss picture 'too adult' for Facebook: Facebook had reportedly removed a fully-clothed weight loss picture of Marilyn McKenna, wife of former Washington State Attorney General Rob McKenna, for promoting "adult content". After losing 54kg post a lap band surgery, Marilyn, who weighed 120kg six years ago, posted a picture of herself wearing her old baggy pants that fitted both her legs inside one of its own while she held the waist-band out to show weight loss.
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