by Cskoyles

Created on: April 17, 2009

Unless you've been hiding under a colossal rock for the past year or so, you'll probably be familiar with the name Facebook'.

Revered by some as the premier place to keep in touch with friends and family round the clock, reviled by others for everything from privacy issues, the corruption of youth and turning the global population into a breed of anti-social hermits, whichever side of the fence you sit on, there's little doubting that Facebook has become the de facto king of social networking.

But what is it? What does it do? And what on earth is all the fuss about?

At itsheart, Facebook is a platform for bringing people together.

Want to keep in touch with friends, family and even colleagues? How about finding long lost school chums or tracking down distant relatives? Get yourself on Facebook, chances are they'll already be there waiting for you.

By searching for people you know and befriending them at the click of a mouse, you'll soon find your network building up, full of people eager to tell what they're doing at any given moment.

What's more, you'll soon find yourself doing exactly the same thing.

Having chicken and pasta for dinner? Heading out for a jog or coming back from a concert? Tell the world, or at least those in your network, by using a nifty little gizmo known as status update'.

Within an instant, your profile (that is, a webpage which represents you and all your Facebooking activities) will updated with such wonderfully banal phrases as

"Johnny Facebook is doing the laundry" or

"Billy Bluebum is tired."

Your friends won't necessarily have to visit your profile to find out what you're doing. Facebook feeds anything you do on the site through to your friends' homepages, so they'll see what you're doing almost as soon as you post it online.

That said, there's more to the site than simply keeping a running log of everything you do and think through the course of day.

One of Facebook's more popular features is the ability to share photographs, videos and even links to favourite websites.

With photographs, you have the ability to tag' your friends, creating something of a who's who' footnote to accompany each image.

It's the same with the notes' feature.

Almost like Facebook's answer to the blog, notes allow you to write down your thoughts, ideas, general ramblings on everyday life or anything else you can think of.

And if you happen to mention Cousin Johnny in your latest note, why not tag him to let him, and everyone else, know that he's been the subject of your

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