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FaceMash Launches
Mark Zuckerberg's first social network, FaceMash, was an illegal network allowing users to rank women by their physical attractiveness. Users compared photos of two women and clicked on the sexiest one. Illegal because of its unauthorized use of photos from university directories, FaceMash had over 450 visitors within its first 24-hours. Harvard University forced Zuckerberg to delete the network permanently for violating privacy, copyright, and security of individuals (World News Today, 2021). -
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20 Years of Social Media Dominance
The Creation and Evolution of Facebook -
TheFacebook
After permanently deleting FaceMash, Zuckerberg and his college roommates launched TheFacebook.com. Intended to be used by college students as a direction of information, the network was originally exclusive to students at Harvard University (Rothman, 2015). TheFacebook.com expanded to other Ivy League schools and over time the network spread to most universities in the United States and Canada. -
Facebook.com
If you had a working email address, you were in! Becoming a member of the social network Facebook.com was open to anyone with a valid email address, but not before they changed their name again. In 2005, TheFacebook.com dropped the "the" from their name after purchasing the Facebook.com domain name, which was already in use, for $200,000. Facebook.com was open to anybody but had an age requirement of 13 years of age or older (Drobnjak, 2017). -
Group Chat & Video Chat
In 2011, Facebook added two new features, group chat and video chat. Group chat allowed groups of three or more people to chat. Video chat was already available on Google+ which made group video chat with up to ten people possible. Facebook, paired with Skype, only allowed video chat between two people (Boutin, 2011). People were using the video chat feature just because they could, even if they did not have anything to talk about. -
Facebook Messenger App
2011 also saw the launch of Facebook Messenger for Android and iOS. A stand-alone App that lets you send instant messages to anyone in your phone contacts, your Facebook friends list, and even groups of friends. Not only can you send messages, but you can send pictures too! When the App launched some people thought it might pose a problem for Apple's iMessage that was set launch with iOS 5 (Hutchinson, 2011). -
Facebook Acquires Instagram
Facebook acquired Instagram for $1 billion in cash and stocks. Instagram is a photo sharing social network allowing people to share photos and videos that can be edited with filters and grouped together with hashtags. Facebook, only five years old at the time, had only raked in $4 billion dollars the year before (Segall, 2012). Instagram creators had no interest in selling, yet the purchase became Facebook's biggest acquisition ever, and doubled Instagram investors money instantly. -
Friend-to-Friend Payments
As a convenience feature on Facebook Messenger, people with Facebook accounts were given the option to send and receive money amongst the people on their Facebook friends list. Facebook offered this free of charge, which some people saw as a competition with PayPal's Venmo App. Facebook decided to only accept debit cards for this feature because accepting credit cards meant they would have to charge fees (Constine, 2015). -
Marketplace... Part II
In 2007 Facebook introduced Marketplace, but it was not the Marketplace we know now. It was a type of classifieds section of the network much like the classified section in a newspaper. It failed to gain popularity and was shut down in 2014. In 2016 Facebook launched the new Marketplace which gave people the ability to browse local listings, post items to sell, and search for specific items or categories (Constine, 2016). Marketplace is another feature Facebook does not charge a fee to use. -
Facebook Scandal
Global Science Research collected data from 50 million users and sold the information to Cambridge Analytic who used it to deliver Pro-Trump material to individuals. Cambridge Analytic received the information legitimately, but Global Science Research violated Facebook standards by selling that information. A whistleblower told Congress about it, also sharing this information with media reporters, and uncovering the Facebook scandal. -
Facebook Fined $5 Billion
The largest penalty the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) ever imposed on any company for a violation of consumer privacy, Facebook is charged $5 billion. One of the biggest penalties ever assessed by the United States Government and twenty times greater than the largest penalty ever imposed worldwide for a privacy or data security penalty (Federal Trade Commission, 2019). -
The Metaverse
In 2021 Mark Zuckerberg announced that the corporate name Facebook has been changed to Meta. The metaverse does not exist yet, but Zuckerberg plans to create a virtual world where people are just viewing the internet, they will be in it. This idea originated from the Sci-Fi novel "Snow Crash" (npr, 2021). -
Facebook Turns 19
February 4, 2023, Facebook turns 19 years old.
Happy Belated Birthday Facebook!