A CLASSIC SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORM. THE COMPANY BEHIND INSTAGRAM. WELCOME…FACEBOOK.

Facebook has been a very popular social media platform in earlier years, but lately people have mainly switched to other apps, like Instagram and TikTok. However, Facebook is keeping up - Instagram was sold to Facebook, and slowly Facebook is hoping to dominate the Social Media universe….

Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, was an eager college student who enjoyed coding. At an early age, Zuckerberg started taking the first steps towards our beloved social media platform. The importance of coding was a bond between Zuckerberg and his father: he taught Zuckerberg basic and advanced coding strategies, which he utilised later on. After a few years, Zuckerberg had created a formidable program, which he called ‘ZuckNet.’ It was originally built as his father worked out of the house and needed a simple contact method: ZuckNet offered an instant messaging system.

Whilst he attended an elite boarding school, his creativity was just boosted further. AOL and Microsoft were soon captivated by Zuckerberg, and they wanted to invest in Zuckerberg’s Synapse, which is a software

that can learn somebody’s taste using artificial Intelligence. Zuckerberg declined their offers, and started aiming for a place in Harvard. The college was the deepest roots and the earliest traces of Facebook.

After turning down two of the most prominent tech companies in the world, Zuckerberg was looking forward to a bright future after Harvard. He studied psychology as a main topic, and also stuffed in Computer Science classes as well. If you were told ‘the founder of Facebook studied psychology as his college major’ it would seem strange - why would a social media expert study psychology?

But, actually, think of Facebook. It’s an addictive platform. Zuckerberg utilized this psychological knowledge to try and make users never want to leave - by adding in comment sections, like buttons and much more, he made Facebook addictive. Zuckerberg would have needed advanced psychology knowledge to create and design such a formidable program.

In October, 2003, Zuckerberg attracted  interest of many people when he published ‘Facemash,’ which allowed Harvard students to compare students with each other. Unfortunately, he did not receive permission to use students’ photos, and many people were furious with Facemash.

Due to this dilemma, even though in just a few hours the site had received 22 thousand views, in a few days the site was shut down. Zuckerberg was pulled in front of the Harvard Administration Board, and there was heated debate about whether Zuckerberg should be expelled or be on a strict warning. The Board considered the evidence, but concluded it would be best to avoid expulsion. After a public  apology, once he was free of prying eyes of authority, he started working on his next project.

It only took till 2004 to get a first ‘draft’ of what we now have as a renowned social media platform, Facebook. In February, 2004, Zuckerberg launched Thefacebook. Even with a tweaked title, it was very similar to Facemash - you could upload a photo, share your interests and connect with other people digitally.

At first, only people with a Harvard email address were admitted into the program, and 50% of the school had signed up by the first month. But Zuckerberg faced a problem. He. Was. Sued.

ZUCKERBERG FACED A PROBLEM. HE. WAS. SUED.

Zuckerberg had previously helped do work on a similar project to Thefacebook, with three of his classmates. Eventually, though, Zuckerberg quit in order to be able to properly work on Thefacebook. However, his ex-colleagues claimed that he had ‘stolen their concept and ideas’ and then demanded ‘recompense.’ Later on, the ex-collaborators and Zuckerberg settled on a final deal, where the three students would receive a 1.2m share in the Facebook company.

Thefacebook instantly hooked people’s attention - with expanding numbers by the minute, the business just kept growing. At the end of 2004, there was lists full of people clamouring to sign up, and most universities within North America had approval to join Thefacebook.

In June that year, Zuckerberg expanded the company’s operations to Palo Alto, California, and then secured necessary investment. Peter Thiel, Co-Founder of transactions company PayPal, joined Thefacebook’s official board, and also paid $500,000.

In May 2005, more companies invested in Thefacebook. Accel paid $12.7m and $1m from Jim Breyer. Now, Thefacebook was the center of attention.

In August, the company decided that ‘Thefacebook’ was not as effective as it was without the ‘the,’ and so they scrapped it and officially changed the name to Facebook, paying an additional $200,000 to change the domain. More high schools were allowed into this grand platform, and employees of tech majors Microsoft and Apple were also welcomed. The company had decided to move on from just a student audience.

In November, Zuckerberg was ready to have a major job in Facebook, as Chief Executive Officer (CEO) rather than a programmer.

In May 2007, Facebook initiated its ‘Marketplace,’ allowing users to advertise and sell products. The Facebook Application Developer was also launched, allowing users to create apps and games that linked with Facebook.

Facebook was also searching for ways businesses could also use their services: by launching special pages for businesses, they had over 100,000 companies hooked.

Then, in April 2008, a huge, revolutionary Facebook-release took place. The Facebook Chat was initiated, which allowed people to contact others online. Really, it was just a version of ZuckNet built-in to Facebook, and yet it had an unimaginably huge boost to the company.

Then, finally, in December 2009, Facebook earned a well-deserved milestone. With three hundred and fifty million registered users, the company was declared to be the most popular social media platform in the world. But, Facebook was still looking further. They weren’t ready to stop just yet.

The following year, no major updates occurred: however, Facebook made subtle improvements, like the ability to like comments and more accessibility for photo tagging.

In November, 2010, Facebook had an official value at a colossal $41 billion. It became the 3rd largest web company in the United States, close behind Google and Amazon. All of the above has been achieved in just five years, and it was still progressing.

Another huge celebration was in order, as Facebook had received 1 trillion page views, accordingly to a study conducted by DoubleClick. And then, at the end of the year, Nielsen found that Facebook was the 2nd most visited site in America.

Now we’re in 2012, the stakes are getting larger. In April, Facebook made it’s most important purchase in all of it’s history:  Instagram. If the world was torn between two main social media platforms, it was allegedly Facebook and Instagram. Spending $1 billion, Facebook had proven how many resources and capital it had stored in it’s arsenal.

In May that year, Zuckerberg was finally ready to turn Facebook public. The company was officially valued at $104bn, and they charged $38 per share. The IPO (Initial Public Offering) raised over $160 million, but trouble was looming ahead.

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL CATEGORIZED THE IPO AS A ‘FIASCO.’

Accusations of ‘improper behavior by underwriters’ and ‘technical issues,’ and during the process, Facebook’s stock value dropped by a quarter. The Wall Street Journal categorized the IPO as a ‘fiasco,’ and this was all happening by the end of that same month. When June 6th came around, investors in Facebook had lost around $40bn, if you were to combine the amounts.

The IPO faced over forty lawsuits. Morgan Stanley, J.P Morgan and Goldman Sachs were accused of acting ‘inappropriately’ as Facebook’s underwriters. Reports revealed that they secretly deleted revenue estimates mid-IPO.

But, Facebook continued moving forwards, and in October the one billionth user registered.

Facebook had been facing ‘fake news’ posted on their platform. ‘Fake News’ was never common language - but even so, social platforms, including Facebook, were bombarded with fake stories and false information everywhere. Some companies created these false stories to attract attention, to boost ad revenue or traffic around where ads are placed. They didn’t care about the truth - if their ad was viewed, lies were perfectly fine for them.

This was a major issue for Facebook, as over a billion users used their platform regularly - sometimes on a daily basis. Exposing millions of people to lies could be a major downfall for them - exactly why their next step must be perfect.

In January 2015, Facebook initiated a feature which allowed users to mark articles as a ‘false piece of information.’ If an article is flagged fake too many times, it would send a signal to Facebook, and a note would be sent to the writer to inform them that their article had been reported fake.

Unfortunately, this system didn’t work and fake news just became common terminology. But Facebook still didn’t give in - they just pushed harder.

In July, a study from the Pew Research Centre added emphasis to why fake news on Facebook had to be stopped. 68% of all Americans, it read, got their news from Facebook - Facebook immediately started working harder on the project to stop false information.

In September, Facebook was criticized for publishing misleading posts. The company was forced into publicly apologizing.

Many more political allegations, claims that Facebook had misled people and repeating profit numbers occurred since then, but to this date Facebook is still going strong. Even if it’s not behind the name ‘Facebook,’ they’re still in control of other programs (i.e Instagram), and they’re a major company in the social word.

Years later, Facebook created a larger company, which is now known as Meta. Facebook became a part of Meta - Zuckerberg decided that he needed a larger company to encompass all of the other companies he was soon going to acquire. Soon after, Instagram and Whatsapp joined Facebook in Meta, and they became the three main components of Meta.

In conclusion, Facebook is an amazing company, but has lots of history behind it - in other issues of NTS NEWS, the company of the month is typically two pages - this time, it was five.