The most prominent feature of Facebook is the ability to connect with friends. Using Facebook, you can make connections to people you have met in real life but also people you know only through the internet. If you are friends with someone, you can see their posts (including photos, videos and text) and status updates. Another way to interact with friends is to like their posts and leave comments. A problem with this ability to leave comments is that people can leave negative comments on a person’s post (depending on what audience the post was directed to) that could negatively impact the poster especially if they are sensitive to people’s opinions on the internet.

One good thing about connecting with friends using Facebook is that Facebook will automatically provide friend suggestions to you based on your mutual friendships with another Facebook user; Facebook is good at connecting people together.
A downside of connecting with people using Facebook is that interactions with people over Facebook will be different than interactions in the real world, people could be offended by a post or a message that they don’t understand the context of.

Another widely used feature of Facebook is the ability to create groups. A user can add multiple people to the same ‘chat’ – this allows everyone added to send messages as if they were in a one-on-one chat. This feature is useful because multiple people can communicate simultaneously.
Groups also include features like the option to create polls within the group to gage the other users’ opinion about something. However, a possible issue with groups on Facebook is that every time someone in the group posts something the user will be sent a notification, unless they have explicitly turned off notifications for that group.

Targeted ads are advertisements that companies send to Facebook users who have indicated in an interest in their products or similar companies’ products (This is also related to the use of cookies when browsing the internet).
For example, a Facebook user likes the page of a shoe company they like the look of. Very soon after they receive ads that are directed specifically towards them. The ad is tailored to someone who is the same age as the user. On one hand, this ad may be very useful to the user who has an interest in the shoes. On the other hand, it may be unrelated products that the company also sells but the user has no interest in. This can be a large downside for many people, because, their newsfeeds are swamped with ads for products they are not interested in.