Facebook celebrates 15 years: the moments that have marked the history of the most famous social network – 04/02/2019

This Monday, February 4th marks the 15th anniversary of the day young Mark Zuckerberg created Facebook at Harvard University (USA). What in 2004 was a new way of connecting people, over the years It has become the largest social network in the world with 2,320 million active users per month.

Since its inception, Facebook has experienced several moments that have marked what it is today as a social network and as a company, since its beginnings during which it was not yet open to the public privacy scandals like Cambridge Analyticagoing through the purchase of other services on the rise such as WhatsApp and Instagram.

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2004: a network of university students

In an interview with US broadcaster CNBC in 2004, Zuckerberg described his platform, then known as thefacebook.com, as "an online directory that connects people through universities." Facebook was born at Harvard University and has gradually expanded to other US universities., reaching 800 centers then institutes.

At that time, Thefacebook had only 1,200 users, and Zuckerberg was surprised because his initial goal was to reach 400 or 500 people., as he confessed in the interview. In the first moments, to create an account, it was necessary to be invited by another user, and this was limited to the academic field.

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One of first milestones in the original story of Thefacebook was the Introduction of the "wall" only seven months after its creation, in September 2004. Thanks to this feature, it began to be possible leave public messages in the profiles of other users.

2006-2011: from "as" to global expansion

On September 26, 2006, Facebook (which had already adopted its current name since 2005) was opened as a portal for users around the world. In this way, no matter which user (people and companies) he could open his own account for the first time without the need for an invitation.

In the following years, Facebook has grown and consolidated as a platform, with key moments such as the introduction of the button "I love" in 2008. Previously, Facebook's mobile application was launched (October 2007) and videos were added (June 2007).

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The expansion has been completed with the arrival of Facebook in other countries and in other languages. The Spanish was the first to be integrated with the original English, in February 2008, and gathered 1,500 volunteers. Shortly after, French and German followed. Currently, Facebook is available in 140 languages.

2012-2014: purchase of WhatsApp and Instagram

Facebook's growth as a social network also led to the expansion of the company, which began to buy other applications. The first was the social network of images Instagram, extended among the young public, in April 2012.

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Facebook paid $ 1,000 million for Instagram and has maintained it as an independent service, which is still the case today, despite the fact that Zuckerberg plans to integrate the company's messaging services (Messenger, WhatsApp, Instagram ).

The email application WhatsApp It was precisely another big Facebook move at this point, with its purchase in 2014 for $ 22,000 million. With 600 million users at that time, WhatsApp was the most used messaging service and remains the most used at the moment, chosen by users from 131 countries around the world.

2018: The Cambridge Analytica and Research scandals are revealed

The expansion has also resulted in some of his biggest scandals. In March 2018, the case of Cambridge Analytica, a consulting firm that had illegally obtained data from 50 million users and used them for the benefit of political campaigns such as Donald Trump in the US presidential election of 2016, had been unearthed.

Those data, obtained via an application that voluntarily installed only 270,000 people, They have also been used in the Brexit campaign in the UK. The use of Facebook as an interfering tool of foreign countries, such as Russia in the US elections, forced the appearance before the Congress of that country of the company's head of operations, Sheryl Sandberg, who acknowledged that Facebook had been "very slow to detect" foreign propaganda.

Currently, Facebook has been splashed by other controversies, including that of its market research program on Facebook Research. With this software, it took between 13 and 35 years to pay a user to install a virtual private network (VPN) allowing the company to access all data on your device.

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After learning about the existence of Facebook Research and finding that the company had paid teen users for their personal data, she was forced to close this program at the end of January, but not before to have vetoed Apple.

Despite the criticisms received, Facebook, 15 years after its creation, continues to grow in number of users. According to the latest data, its total figure reached 2,320 million monthly active users, representing an increase of 9% over the previous year. One in four people in the world already use the Zuckerberg repository created in 2004, which already asked "who knows what will happen next".

Source: Portaltic / EP.