Facebook, the veteran social network, celebrates its 20th anniversary

Facebook, which was established two decades ago as a casual meeting place for youngsters, has transformed into a formidable giant that defies the notion of being solely for older generations and parents. Despite this misconception, the platform shows no signs of slowing down as it consistently expands its user base.

“I’ll never forget the day I ran into my high school’s Mac lab and logged into Facebook,” Insider Intelligence analyst Jasmine Enberg told AFP.

“At the same time, you felt like you were part of this small, exclusive community where your parents, grandparents and teachers weren’t – but also part of something much bigger.”

Mark Zuckerberg and three friends launched the site as thefacebook.com on February 4, 2004, and it was initially restricted to Harvard College students.

It became available to students at other universities in the United States before being opened to anyone in 2006.

Facebook became a place to connect with almost anyone, anywhere, and by 2023, more than 3 billion people will be using Facebook every month – a three percent increase over the previous year.

“Facebook, when it launched, was revolutionary,” Enberg said.

“It’s hard to overstate Facebook’s impact on shaping everything from pop culture to politics to online behavior.”

He pointed to Facebook’s famous “feed,” which offered photos, comments, or other “posts” that the algorithm believed would catch users’ attention.

The more engaged users are with the social network, the more it could serve monetized ads that are targeted based on the vast amount of information people share on Facebook.

To its credit, it has helped open the door for content to go “viral” and only fuel the spread of online news.

– Ad Behemoth –

Facebook gained a reputation as a buyer or copycat of would-be competitors and now boasts a “family” of apps including Instagram and WhatsApp.

Zuckerberg, who still runs the company, stuck to his strategy of investing heavily to acquire users before integrating monetization methods, which usually included targeted ads.

Along with Google, Facebook became a giant in online advertising.

In 2022 — a bad year for the Silicon Valley-based company — its profits rose to $23 billion.

According to Enberg, the platform “is part of the digital landscape,” especially for “millennials” born in the 1980s or 1990s.

“It remains irresistible to advertisers because of its reach and performance,” the analyst said of Facebook.

A business model based on using people’s personal data to provide more engaging content and targeted ads has earned Facebook complaints and fines.

Recent accusations that Russia used the platform to try to influence the outcome of the 2016 presidential election became embroiled in the Cambridge Analytica data harvesting scandal.

In 2021, it came under fire from whistleblower allegations that executives put profit before the safety and well-being of users.

Despite everything, Facebook has continued to grow.

And the tech titan’s expansion has allowed it to invest in innovations like artificial intelligence and virtual reality.

Facebook changed its parent company’s name to “Meta” in late 2021, saying it was motivated by Zuckerberg’s vision of immersive, virtual worlds called “metaverses,” the next big computing platform.

– “My Mother’s Friends” –

“We may be less engaged, but we haven’t gone away because there really aren’t any options,” Creative Strategies analyst Carolina Milanesi said of the aging social network’s persistence.

Facebook has also struck a chord with the addition of “groups” that allow users to create communities around shared interests such as sports, celebrities or farming that connect online but also in the real world.

Marketplace features that allow people to buy or sell products are also popular.

“I started Facebook because I knew my mom’s friends would be interested,” Ruby Hammer, an 18-year-old babysitter from California, said of using the social network to earn money.

“And Marketplace, too, because I’m looking for a car.”

Hammer keeps in touch with friends by sharing photos on SnapChat and Instagram, not Facebook.

Analyst Enberg called the purchase of Instagram in 2012 as part of the smartphone lifestyle shift one of Facebook’s best business decisions.

The move eliminated a competitor, provided a new platform for advertising and appealed to younger Internet users who were losing interest in Facebook.

“First of all, it gives the company an app to rival Snapchat and TikTok, which are very popular among teenagers,” says Enberg.

According to online data company DataReportal, more than half of Facebook users are between 18 and 34 years old.

But how engaged users are with the social network is still difficult to measure.

“I’m on Facebook very little, but what I post on Instagram automatically shows up on Facebook as well,” said analyst Milanesi.

“So, I am indeed counted as ‘active’… The numbers may not match the reality.”