Facebook, which has enjoyed explosive growth relative to rival social networking sites since a membership crisis six months ago, is set to unveil new features on Wednesday that mark its progress from a dating site for college kids into a mainstream network tool.
The Palo Alto-based site founded three years ago by then Harvard undergraduate Mark Zuckerberg, 22, has been quietly introducing new features by soliciting feedback from tens of thousands of users, seeking to avoid abrupt product releases.
Facebook, the No. 2 U.S. social network after News Corp.’s (NWSa.N) MySpace, met with a sudden privacy backlash from its users last September after introducing a design that revealed more personal information about users than many wanted known.
But after a rapid response to online protests that involved hundreds of thousands of its members, Facebook subsequently saw its growth explode to 18 million active users from around 7.5 million active users before the membership crisis.