Today marks the tenth birthday of the biggest social networking site in the world. Mark Zuckerberg and his team are probably celebrating with a big thumb shaped birthday cake whilst we all continue to like, comment and share. The site is still growing even though some researchers at the University of Princeton claim it will soon begin to die off.
It’s unlikely though, we will probably all be using Facebook on its 20th birthday. It isn’t MySpace. Facebook continues to innovate.
So what have been the big milestones in Facebook’s history?
2004: Launch And Rapid Growth
Facebook launched after Mark Zuckerberg, Dustin Moskovitz, Chris Hughes and Eduardo Saverin founded the site from their dorm room at Harvard. You’ll know most of the origin story if you’ve seen the film The Social Network, but the site grew to have over a million users by December 2004.
Here’s what the site originally looked like.
2005: Facebook Launches Photos
In October 2005 the site introduced Facebook Photos. Before now the site mainly consisted of text and details about each user. Strange considering the site named Facebook didn’t actually feature a face until a year and a half after launching.
Facebook after launching Photos looked like this.
2006 Facebook Goes Mobile
In April 2006 Facebook launched for mobile devices. A big step toward world domination but the real big move from 2006 was when the site opened up to the public in September. Before now the site was only available to students.
Here’s what the site looked like in 2006.
2007 Facebook Platform Launches
In 2007 the company brought about Facebook Platform. The launch began in May that year and was a software environment so third-party developers could create apps to work with and access data from Facebook profiles. The technology is still used today on the site.
How did the site look in 2007? Much like this.
2008 Facebook Unveils Chat
Before Facebook Chat launched in April 2008, instant messaging was dominated by MSN Messenger.Today the Microsoft service has declined and some of this can be attributed to the introduction of Facebook chat where users can talk to each other privately with ease.
How did the site look in 2008? Much the same as 2007 apart from the chat features came into play.
2009 Huge User Jump
At the end of 2008, the company hit the big 100 million users. By the end of the next year, 350 million users were using the platform. The now integral like feature wasn’t launched until February 2009 year either.
Here’s how the site looked after the like button was introduced.
2010 Facebook's Big 500
In July 2010, the site had experienced another big jump in its users when it hit the big 500 million user landmark. It also brought about more privacy concerns for the company especially as the Facebook Places feature launched in August.
But how did the site look in 2010? Like this.
2011 The Social Network Cleans Up
In January 2011 the website was valued at $50 billion. No mean feat. The Social Network, a film directed by David Fincher based on the rise of Facebook, swept the board at the Golden Globes winning four awards including Best Director and Best Picture.
2012 Facebook Buys Instagram
Instagram was starting to muscle in on the photo sharing space so Facebook decided to flex its guns and buy the photo app for $1 billion. Spare change for the social network. Since then Instagram has only grown. Oh, and Facebook hit 1 billion users, no biggy.
2013 Facebook Launches The Internet.org
In August 2013 Facebook announced a new proposition called Internet.org. It is a “global partnership dedicated to making Internet access available to the two thirds of the world not yet connected.” That’ll bring in a few more Facebook users wont it!
2014 Facebook: What Next?
The company launched the Paper app for iOS devices earlier this month but other than that the company has been pretty quiet for the first month of 2014. Expect another redesign which people initially hate and then grow to love within a week and there'll probably be some other cool features along the way.
Happy birthday Facebook!
To celebrate the first decade of Facebook, the site has launched an app called Look Back. It sums up your history on the site into one handy video, you can find it here.
by jamesp via Featured Articles
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