by Facebook is celebrating its 20th anniversary, having grown from a university student network to one of the largest internet platforms in the world today.
Here’s a look back at some of the key moments from the last 20 years of the social network.
– The address
Facebook first launched on February 4, 2004 as a social network called TheFacebook, initially aimed at students at Harvard College, before gradually expanding to other universities across the US.
In 2005, “The” was dropped from the name, paving the way for facebook.com – and by September 2006, the site was open to anyone aged 13 or over.
– Accusations of stealing ideas
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg found himself accused of stealing the idea of fellow Harvard students Cameron Winklevoss, Tyler Winklevoss, and Divya Narendra – who claimed that Mr Zuckerberg was meant to help them build a social network called HarvardConnection .
A lawsuit was filed against Mr Zuckerberg, resulting in a settlement in 2008, which was dramatized in the film The Social Network, starring Jesse Eisenberg.
– Facebook goes public
In May 2012, Facebook went public, marking one of the largest initial public offerings (IPOs) in US history.
The company announced 421,233,615 shares at a price of 38 dollars per share, although the first day of trading had some technical issues that prevented some orders from going through.
– Buy Instagram
Facebook bought the rival social network Instagram in April 2012 for one billion dollars, which increased the presence of the social network.
Instagram has largely been kept independent, although some of it has been integrated with Facebook, such as the ability to share photos on Facebook as well, as well as Stories.
– Get WhatsApp
Facebook continued its acquisition spree in 2014, buying out messaging app WhatsApp for 19 billion dollars.
Like Instagram, the app has remained separate, with some parts able to connect to Facebook’s main social network.
– Oculus VR
Facebook made another move in 2014, acquiring virtual reality startup Oculus VR, for two billion dollars, as the company sought to expand its technological footprint beyond social media.
– A study that affects mood
One of Facebook’s previous controversies came in 2014, when it emerged that a study had been conducted on the impact of mood on the News Feed.
The posts that appeared on the homepage of 689,000 users were filtered, although Facebook said the experiment was to understand how people respond to different types of content, whether it is positive or negative in tone.
– Beat a billion users
In August 2015, Facebook announced that it had reached a new milestone, with one billion users accessing the service in a single day.
– Moving beyond Likes
Facebook introduced new reactions to accompany the famous Like button in 2016, with emotions that show love, laughter, wow, sadness and anger.
– Cambridge Analytica
One of the biggest controversies to hit Facebook was the Cambridge Analytica scandal, when an investigation claimed the data analysis firm was sending personal data from Facebook apps without individuals’ consent.
The company is believed to have accessed up to 87 million users’ data in 2014, leading to fines including a £500,000 penalty issued by the UK’s data protection watchdog, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), to Facebook.
– Data breach of nearly 30 million accounts
In September 2018, Facebook revealed that a security breach had put nearly 50 million at risk – although the number was later reduced to 30 million.
At the time, Facebook vice president Guy Rosen said attackers “exploited a vulnerability in Facebook’s code that affected ‘View As,’ a feature that allows people to see what their own profile looks like to someone else “.
– Fake news
Like many online platforms, Facebook has been plagued by fake news issues.
The social network has been criticized for its handling of the spread of misinformation, and bad actors are increasingly targeting Facebook to distribute political messages, especially in relation to crucial elections.
In response, Facebook has taken several initiatives to combat fake news. Earlier this year, it launched the UK arm of its international fact-checking effort, using Full Fact, a fact-checking charity founded in 2010, to review user flagged stories, images and videos. are rated based on their accuracy. .
– Increasing pressure from competing platforms
Facebook is also under pressure from within the social media industry, as new players emerge and try to compete with the platform for users’ attention.
The most significant and persistent competitor in that sense was TikTok, which gained users, especially among the younger generation and challenged Facebook’s status as an online news source for some.
In early 2022, as Facebook reported a decline in daily active users for the first time in its history, Mr Zuckerberg publicly acknowledged competition from the likes of TikTok and acknowledged that Facebook was struggling for attention people.
Meta is also making a strong fist of that fight, introducing a shortform video feature, called Reels, similar to TikTok with another of its apps, Instagram, in an attempt to take TikTok at its own game.
– Gaming metaverse
In October 2021, Mr. Zuckerberg announced the biggest repositioning in the company’s history as he created and rebranded his parent company as Meta and declared that he was no longer focused on social media, but building the metaverse.
The Facebook founder pledged to invest billions of dollars in the project, which aimed to make Meta the industry leader in what Mr. Zuckerberg said he believed would be the next version of the internet.
More than two years later, there is still little sign that the metaverse is becoming the mainstream internet for the general public.
And with the strong economic progress for technology firms in 2022 and 2023, after the panel, the company had to make two rounds of significant job cuts.
So far, Mr. Zuckerberg’s metaverse gamble has yet to pay off.
– Job cuts
In the four-month period between the end of 2022 and March 2023, Meta announced two rounds of major job cuts.
In the first, 11,000 roles disappeared from its global workforce of 87,000, and another 10,000 job cuts were announced just 16 weeks later – although it was not so long in the technology sector to cut jobs.
The cuts coincided with the company’s profits being hit by a range of factors, including a slump in the online advertising market, wider global economic woes and increased competition from rivals such as TikTok.
The huge investment in building the metaverse was also highlighted as putting additional pressure on the company’s finances at a difficult time for the firm.
– Increased scrutiny from regulators
The rise of Facebook and other social media apps has led to increased attention and scrutiny from regulators around the world.
Because of the fast pace of the sector, Facebook and other platforms are at the center of debates about user privacy, data collection and wider online safety as people spend more time online.
As scrutiny has increased during Facebook’s two decades in existence, the site has had to respond and evolve with it – introducing massive content moderation teams, fact-checking and safety centers to weed out misinformation and other harmful content. combat, new rules for advertising, and digital well-being. tools to allow users to limit their screen time.
Now major internet regulation is coming into effect in the EU and the UK, with Facebook and others facing billions of dollars in fines, service disruptions and even criminal liability for managers if found to have flouted online safety rules. violating them.
The need for effective moderation of Facebook’s online empire has never been more important than high pressure, and his response to legislation like the Online Safety Act will determine the company’s fortunes for years to come.
– Returning financial strength
Despite its issues in recent years, Facebook and Meta are off to a promising start to 2024, with the firm reporting some of its strongest financial results for the final three months of 2023.
Compared to the same period in 2022, revenue rose 25% and net income tripled, as the number of users increased, advertising sales recovered and costs decreased from the cuts large jobs in force.
