In 2004, as broadband was replacing dial-up internet and mobile phones with colour screens were gaining popularity, on February 4, a social network, named “TheFacebook”, was launched by 19-year-old Mark Zuckerberg and his college roommates at Harvard University.
Facebook was named after the physical student directory distributed at universities at the start of the academic year, commonly known as a “face book”.
Within a few years, the platform exploded in popularity, becoming the world’s largest social media network, with more than three billion monthly active users today.
The blue-themed app is still recognizable, although it has come a long way.
Facebook now falls under the umbrella of Zuckerberg’s company Meta, which also owns Instagram and WhatsApp, and Meta is worth more than $1 trillion, making it one of the most valuable American corporations, based on its share price.
On Thursday, it reported $39 billion in profit for 2023 and 3.07 billion monthly users of Facebook alone, sending the share price up 20.3% the day after.
What’s The Come Up Of Facebook?
Zuckerberg first formulated the site in 2003 when he infamously created a website that encouraged its users to rank the attractiveness of his fellow classmates.
The website was quickly disbanded after being accused of privacy violations. Shortly after in 2004 he built thefacebook.com to connect students at Harvard.
The site expanded to include other students across the country and by June of that same year, 250,000 students were signed up from more than 34 colleges.
By the end of 2005, Facebook had 6 million active users and advertisers.
Facebook then became available internationally and began to prove its importance in the arena of politics.
In 2012, the company went public and bought Instagram, introducing a new era of diversification.
Later, it bought WhatsApp and Oculus VR. In 2021, the company rebranded to Meta to emphasise the company’s future in driving the metaverse revolution and its dozens of acquisitions.
In those 20 years, a lot has changed in our society, partly because of companies like Meta.
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