Facebook

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Website
Name: Facebook
Owner/Maintainer: Mark Zuckerberg
Dates: February 4, 2004 - present
Type: Social network
Fandom: Multifandom
URL: Facebook.com
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Facebook is a wildly popular social networking site.

Fan Use

Groups

One of the earliest features of the website was the ability to create groups, an area on Facebook where members can connect with one another without necessarily being friends. Fans created groups dedicated to their favorite media and the related fandoms. The groups allowed fans to promote their fannish interest and connect with other fans.[1] Some groups were simply places to discuss the source material, but others became places to develop meta and share fan art, fan vids and memes.

The original fan groups were created by fans, but due the overwhelming popularity of Facebook and its exponential growth in the late 2000s some officially sanctioned groups arose. However, these tended to disappear when Facebook restructured and made it easier for businesses and content creators to have official pages.

Pages

Some fanwork creators have pages dedicated to sharing and promoting their fan creations. This is most often used by creators of visual media like fan artists and cosplayers.

Roleplay

Some fans used Facebook as a platform for roleplaying. They would create Facebook accounts under the name of a well known character in order to interact and play games with other roleplayers. However, this became a problem in the early 2010s when Facebook started deleting what it viewed as "fake" accounts.[2] There was a fan petition, with over 17,000 signatures, asking that Facebook allow sanctioned roleplayer accounts, but Facebook never changed their policy or modified their platform.[3]

Quizzes

There were third party apps where users could make there own quizzes, fans used these to make fandom related quizzes like "Which Character Are You?" or "Which Hogwarts House Would You Be In? "

References