PALO ALTO, Calif. — May 3, 2006 — Facebook, the social directory that enables people to share information, announced today that it now supports more than 1,000 work networks. Alumni are now able to register for Facebook with authenticated “.com” or “.org” email addresses. College and high school students can continue to register for the site using their “.edu” email addresses to authenticate their identity and affiliation with their school. “The number one request we receive from people is to have the ability to invite friends outside their college network,” said Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO, Facebook. “We’re committed to growing with our alumni and increasing the site’s utility and availability to them as they leave college.” One-third of college students on Facebook will have graduated and headed into the workforce by completion of the 2006 academic year. Forty-five percent of Facebook’s college alumni currently come back to the site every day. Facebook’s work networks will allow them to connect with the people around them. Alumni can join their work network from their existing accounts and then invite co-workers to join. In addition, anyone from a supported company can register at http://www.facebook.com. “Facebook’s expansion into the workplace is a natural progression for this innovative social directory,” said Howard Draft, CEO and Founder, Draft Worldwide. “Having proven its utility in the hard-to-reach high school and college markets, the move makes terrific sense. At Draft, we are looking forward to the exciting new marketing opportunities that this will create for our clients.”
Facebook’s work networks have the same privacy controls that have made the site a trusted environment for sharing information. People share information only with others in their networks and with confirmed friends. Facebook encourages accountability by authenticating people into defined networks using valid email addresses from supported schools or companies. Facebook gives people complete control over the information they share and with whom they choose to share it through the site’s detailed privacy settings.