Facebook turned 10 last year, but it is showing no signs of slowing down. Check out how it's developed over the years.
Facebook –– next to Google –– is perhaps the biggest thing to happen to the internet since, well, the internet. Not only is it one of the fastest growing websites in all of history, but its ascent to power has created an all powerful entity, with billions of dollars and thousands of people at his command, that goes by the name of Mark Zuckerberg.
Facebook is meant to be about connecting people –– and it kind of is. But over the years the company has developed at such a rate, buying up things like Instagram and WhatsApp, it has kind of become something of an oligarchical force inside the internet, matched only by players like Google and Amazon.
And it did ALL of this in the space of 10 short years. Not bad for a college-age kid with an idea about connecting people. Over the years Facebook has been through a myriad of changes, all of which are shown below, and insisted on constantly redefining what Facebook is and what its business model consists of.
Social is big money these days and Facebook is one of the more successful players in the space, turning its billion or so users into lucrative pawns for marketeers, advertisers and publishers.
Read on to see all the changes and developments that have been made to Facebook over the years, including its latest initiative: Instant Articles (which you can read about at the bottom of the page).
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!
2014-15 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.
Take this one for instance: Facebook will now publish "quality journalism" directly into your time line. The project, known as "Instant Articles", will make accessing and reading quality journalism that little bit easier. Instant Articles will include a range of interactive features that allow Facebook users to view high-resolution photos, watch auto-play videos, explore interactive maps, listen to audio captions, and like and comment on individual parts of an article in-line.
“Fundamentally, this is a tool that enables publishers to provide a better experience for their readers on Facebook,” said Facebook chief product officer Chris Cox. “Instant Articles lets them deliver fast, interactive articles while maintaining control of their content and business models.”
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