Look on the picture above. This is how Facebook, or The Facebook because it was then identified, regarded when Mark Zuckerberg and a handful of mates launched it from their pupil digs 20 years in the past.
Since then, the world’s hottest social community has been redesigned dozens of occasions.
But its purpose has remained the identical: to attach folks on-line. And make mountains of cash from promoting.
As the platform turns 20, listed here are 4 methods Facebook has modified the world.
1. Facebook modified the social media recreation
Other social networks, equivalent to MySpace, existed earlier than Facebook – however Mark Zuckerberg’s web site immediately took off when it launched in 2004, proving simply how quickly a web based web site of this sort might take maintain.
In lower than a 12 months it had a million customers, and inside 4 years it had overtaken MySpace – fuelled by improvements equivalent to the flexibility to “tag” folks in photographs.
Taking a digital digicam on an evening out, then tagging your mates in dozens of images was a staple of teenage life within the late noughties. The continually altering exercise feed was additionally a giant draw for early customers.
By 2012, Facebook had surpassed one billion customers a month and, except for a short blip on the finish of 2021 – when day by day lively customers dropped for the primary time – the platform has continued to develop.
By increasing into much less linked international locations and providing free web, the corporate has maintained and elevated the variety of Facebook customers. At the top of 2023, Facebook reported it had 2.11 billion day by day customers.
Admittedly, Facebook is much less fashionable than it was with younger folks. Nonetheless, it stays the most well-liked social community on this planet, and has ushered in a brand new period of social exercise on-line.
Some see Facebook and its rivals as empowering instruments for connectivity. Others see them as addictive brokers of destruction.
2. Facebook made our private knowledge invaluable… and fewer private
Facebook proved that gathering our likes and dislikes is extraordinarily profitable.
These days, Facebook’s mum or dad firm Meta is an promoting big which, alongside the likes of Google, takes the lion’s share of worldwide promoting cash.
On Thursday Meta reported greater than $40bn (£32bn) in income for the final quarter of 2023, mainly from providing advertisers extremely focused advert companies. Some $14bn was declared as revenue.
But Facebook has additionally proven the place knowledge assortment can go awry.
Meta has been fined a number of occasions for mishandling private knowledge.
The most publicised case was the Cambridge Analytica scandal in 2014, which led to Facebook paying $725m to settle authorized motion resulting from a major knowledge breach.
In 2022, Facebook additionally paid a €265m (£228m) EU tremendous for permitting private knowledge to be extracted from the location.
And final 12 months, the corporate was issued with a document €1.2bn tremendous by the Irish Data Protection Commission, for transferring European customers’ knowledge outdoors of the jurisdiction. Facebook is presently interesting towards the tremendous.
3. Facebook made the web political
By providing focused promoting, Facebook has turn into a serious platform for election campaigning world wide.
For instance, within the 5 months main as much as the US presidential election of 2020, incumbent President Donald Trump’s staff spent greater than $40m on Facebook adverts, in line with Statista analysis.
Facebook has had a hand in altering grassroots politics too – by enabling disparate teams of customers to assemble, marketing campaign and plan motion on a worldwide scale.
Facebook and Twitter have been mentioned to be essential in the course of the Arab Spring in serving to to co-ordinate protests and unfold the information about what was occurring on the bottom.
But the adoption of Facebook for political ends has been criticised for a few of its penalties, together with its affect on human rights. In 2018, Facebook agreed with a UN report that mentioned it had failed to stop folks utilizing the platform to “incite offline violence” towards Rohingya folks in Myanmar.
4. Facebook kick-started Meta’s dominance
With the massive success of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg constructed a social community and know-how empire that is still unprecedented when it comes to customers and its consequent energy.
Up-and-coming firms, together with WhatsApp, Instagram and Oculus, have been all bought and turbo-charged below the umbrella firm Facebook, which modified its identify to Meta in 2021.
Meta now says greater than three billion folks use not less than one in every of its merchandise each day.
And when it hasn’t been in a position to purchase its rivals, Meta has typically been accused of copying them – as a way to preserve its dominance.
Facebook and Instagram’s disappearing Stories characteristic is just like a key characteristic discovered on Snapchat; Instagram Reels is the corporate’s reply to the problem posed by video-sharing app TikTok; and Threads is Meta’s try and imitate X, previously often known as Twitter.
Tactics have turn into extra necessary than ever, due to the elevated competitors and a extra strict regulatory setting.
In 2022, Meta was compelled to promote GIF-maker Giphy at a loss after UK regulators blocked it from proudly owning the service resulting from fears of over-dominance out there.
11 memorable Facebook moments
From poking to privateness scandals, among the highs and lows of Facebook from the final twenty years.
The subsequent 20 years?
Facebook’s rise and continued dominance is testomony to Mark Zuckerberg’s skill to maintain the location related.
On its tenth anniversary many retailers, together with the BBC, questioned whether or not the platform would nonetheless be round for its twentieth.
Naysayers will hesitate now earlier than asking when its time would possibly lastly be up.
But the truth is sustaining its crown as the most well-liked social community will probably be a monumental problem over the following 20 years.
That’s not simply because the trade, as at all times, is altering at breakneck velocity – however as a result of Meta itself is now pushing closely in direction of constructing its enterprise across the concept of the Metaverse.
Artificial intelligence can also be a giant precedence for Meta.
The firm is due to this fact, to some extent, shifting on from Facebook. Whether the world is, given its enduring recognition, is one other matter.
Additional reporting by Iman Mohammed
Main picture by Niall Kennedy.
