Quiz Of The Week: Facebook

This year, Facebook lost $50 billion in share value. Fifty billion dollars! According to the Daily Mail, that’s more than Lehman Brothers lost in 2008, the year of global financial meltdown.

Beyond its problem-ridden IPO in May, Facebook is having trouble convincing advertisers that its “Likes” actually work. Then, there’s the $15 billion class action lawsuit in California, customer anger at the forced introduction of Timeline, rumours of spying on Android users, fake accounts and even divorces.

No, it’s not a good year for Facebook. But the fans shouldn’t worry yet.

Fixing Facebook

Facebook has invaded every sphere of our daily lives. It is slowly seeping from our screens and into the real world like some creation of Stephen King. Its social and cultural significance cannot be underestimated. Let’s face it: we would be lost without Facebook. And it seems that the young, charismatic CEO of the company [no spoilers here – Editor] has a plan to fix it.

How? For a start, it’s about time to make some money from smartphone owners. After all, more than half of Facebook’s 900 million users access the site through a mobile device. Pushing adverts to the newsfeeds regardless of whether the users “Like” the brand or not seems to be another, less ethical way to improve the balance sheets.

Then, it’s prime time to be buying up successful competitors, such as Instagram. Next on the agenda is the fake “Like” problem. Only time will tell if the measures taken by Facebook will really improve its advertising potential, but the promise to remove one percent of all likes is a good start.

Appeasing Greenpeace is an easier mission – just build an incredibly “green” data centre, and release the specifications for free.

As far as privacy is concerned, Facebook’s settlement with the Federal Trade Commission means its privacy practices will be monitored for the next 20 years.

While it is having some temporary setbacks, there is no doubt that Facebook will remain the biggest player in the field for years to come. So how much do you know about the social network that started it all?

Take our Quiz!

And if you like it, try some of the others.

You might also like to read our description of five disturbingly simple ways to steal Facebook logins.