10 years ago today, on February 4, 2004, the social network site TheFacebook launched on the campus of Harvard University by site creator/mastermind Mark Zuckerberg. At the time, TheFacebook was a social network that was only accessible to people who had a @harvard.edu email address and was not meant to be a financially profitable service (it wasn’t until 2006 that Facebook was made available to the non-collegiate public and it wasn’t until 2009 that the site started making a profit). 10 years later, Facebook is one of the most profitable companies in the US and is the social networking home of billions of people … outlasting and supplanting in popularity other once social media giants like Friendster and MySpace. To me, 2004 doesn’t seem like that long ago particularly since Pink is the new Blog also launched in 2004 (June) but yes, an entire decade of Facebook has been reached … and the site is showing no signs of letting go of its superiority.
On Feb. 4, 2004, in his Harvard dorm room, Mark Zuckerberg launched thefacebook.com, a website where college students could post information about themselves, trade messages, and become virtual “friends” with one another. It was entering an already-crowded field of social networks. Friendster was the world’s most popular at the time, but it was about to be overtaken by a one-year-old upstart called MySpace. Google had launched Orkut just weeks earlier. Facebook was different because it was only for college students, featured a clean layout devoid of spam, and had no immediate plans to make money. It was an instant hit. “I assume I’ll eventually make something profitable,” Zuckerberg shrugged in a June 2004 interview with the Harvard student newspaper. (It took him a while, but Facebook turned its first profit in 2009, and last year it reported a profit of some $1.5 billion on nearly $8 billion in revenues.) By December the site had 1 million users, and it hadn’t even added its photo-upload feature yet. Over the years it piled on the features. Some, like News Feed and the like button, changed the Internet forever. Others, like Facebook Gifts, not so much. For its 10th birthday, Facebook has put together a timeline of significant events in its own history. It reflects a bit of a selective memory—you won’t find Gifts, Beacon, or the site’s short-lived experiment with majority rule on this timeline. But then, that’s part of what made Facebook so appealing in the first place: the ability to edit your own image to your liking.
Here’s Zuckerberg’s statement on the eve of his brainchild’s 10th birthday: It’s been an incredible journey so far, and I’m so grateful to be a part of it. It’s been amazing to see how people have used Facebook to build a real community and help each other in so many ways. In the next decade, we have the opportunity and responsibility to connect everyone and to keep serving the community as best we can.
Wow. 10 years of Facebook … it doesn’t seem like it’s been that long. But, in some ways, I guess it also feels like there’s always been Facebook. If YOU would like to look back at your 10 years on Facebook (or less, depending on when you joined … I wasn’t able to join Facebook until 2006, when it was made available to the public/non college students) you can visit the Look Back link HERE to see a video created by the site that highlights your biggest moments on Facebook.
While we look back at the start of Facebook today, the company wants to also keep us looking forward. Yesterday they launched a new mobile app called Paper that is hoping to take Facebook usage in a bit of a new direction:
Is it possible that Facebook created a better mobile app for perusing its social network than, well, Facebook? On Monday, Facebook launched Paper, an app that combines key features of the social network with a news reader, packaging it all together in a Flipboard-style layout. Paper is drastically different than the standard Facebook app available on the iPhone, and in some ways, it might be a lot better. When you launch the free app, a video kicks in to give users a sense of what they’re getting themselves into with Paper. Because Paper is so different from the traditional Facebook experience on mobile, voice tips follow every move to help users get comfortable. Then, users select a series of sections to go along with their Facebook News Feed. Categories include Headlines, Tech, Score (Sports), Pop Life (Entertainment) and Flavor (cooking). In total, users choose between 19 sections … It’s hard to believe, but Paper makes the Facebook News Feed more interesting to explore. The Flipboard-style emphasis on photos makes thumbing through images shared by Friends more appealing. It’s like reading a newspaper, only your friends’ activity is mixed in with the stories of the day. There are a few things Paper could do to make the news reader portion of the experience more inviting. There doesn’t seem to be a way to customize the sources for each section, outside of just hiding stuff you don’t like. It would also be nice to have an option to create your own, personalized sections. There are also some limits to what you can update through Paper. For example, users can’t update their cover or profile photos within Paper, so it’s best to hang on to that Facebook app just in case. Paper might not be for everybody. If you’re not a fan of Flipboard or similar apps, you can always stick with the official Facebook app. But Paper is a gorgeous alternative.
I remember hearing about TheFacebook when it launched in 2004 but because I was not a college student, I wasn’t able to create an account. By the time it launched publicly, I had already moved on from Friendster to MySpace — which was THE biggest, most popular social network site on the Internet. I made a Facebook profile when it went public but, again, I wasn’t really impressed. It was sparse, not customizable and IMHO didn’t offer an easy way to access the information that your or friends posted to your profile. MySpace was where it’s at. Obviously, over time, Facebook took over as the most popular social networking site and despite my resistance, I started using it more (honestly, tho, for many, many years I just never really used the site … primarily because I had a direct link to my friends via PITNB). It is significant to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Facebook, tho. The site changed the Internet forever. It may not remain as popular as it still is but, then again, the possibility remains that 10 years from now, we’ll be talking about how much bigger Facebook has gotten. Did you have a Facebook account back in 2004? Do you have any memories of the site that you’d like to share? What has 10 years of Facebook meant to you?
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