One of the most groundbreaking Internet phenomena of the twenty-first century is Facebook. It most definitely isn't the first online chat room. There were many before it, but Myspace was the most significant chat platform prior to it taking over the social media industry. However, Facebook emerged from Harvard dorm rooms to become the greatest social media platform in the world, much like Google's eventual dominance over Yahoo in the search engine industry. Similar to Google's success story, the corporation has had important time periods during which its popularity increased on a global scale as well as in Western nations. The company has seen a continued increase in daily active users since its introduction to the public. Some of the most significant milestones are discussed below.
Opening to the General Public
Facebook, having been founded under the name ‘The Facebook’ in 2004, transitioned from Harvard’s campus to other universities, attracting a user base of 800 college students by the end of 2004. The platform’s growth continued through universities and high schools across the United States in 2005, and on September 26, 2006, it was launched to the public. This is a major milestone because it showed Facebook’s promise of possible commercialization and expansion. The process of opening an account with Facebook became simpler, requiring a working email address. Three months after the launch, the company’s user base had shot to 12 million people, doubling its previous year’s numbers, at 6 million (Statista). Clearly, the company became attractive to investors who got more interested in being a part of its growth. The rise in mobile Internet technologies further accelerated its growth with numbers growing up to about 425 million on the mobile platform out of the total 901 million users by 2012 (Statista).
The Like Button
Facebook is a platform that thrived on social interaction enhancement. Nothing could be better than enabling people to endorse each other’s comments. This feature was enabled in 2009 through the introduction of the like button. Through this button, people could show their emotions for their friend’s pictures and comments. The effect of this button created the urge in many people to post photographs of themselves on their timeline doing different things. Many people would log into the platform to see their friends’ activities and read their comments and know their activities. The number of daily active users increased significantly to the extent that office hours in many companies and school periods were affected (Conner).
Facebook Goes Public
Facebook’s growth and investor interest was marked by the 2012 IPO release. This event came right after US President Barack Obama chose its site as the 2011 town hall in Silicon Valley. The company had certainly become an important organization in the United States. On 18th May 2012, Facebook went public on the NASDAQ (Hoffman). Despite its initial performance on the stocks charts, its founder and initial investors earned huge profits, which have continued to increase immensely to date. This IPO opened the company to public investments, which was a significant milestone.
1 Billion Users
The year 2012 saw many other milestones for Facebook as a social media platform and as a company. A clear difference between the company and the product was marked when Facebook, the company, acquired Instagram, a photo-sharing website, at a cost of $1 billion. This product has become one of the most popular on the Internet for smartphone users. The increase in popularity saw the company reach for 1 billion users on the Facebook platform in October of 2012 (Lee). The company has also acquired WhatsApp, a popular instant messaging platform, thus pushing its user base further. By 2015, Facebook platform had reached 1.5 billion users, WhatsApp 800 million, Messenger 700 million, and Instagram 300 million. The Internet.org also served 1 billion people across the globe. The total number of users served in that year only was 3.3 billion and the income generated was $4.04 billion in the second quarter (Constine).
The events discussed above served as the most significant milestones of Facebook as a company. It is certainly the giant of social media, commanding a user base of over 2 billion in 2017 on its parent platform and a summative of the company’s users going above 4 billion. The company is not showing any signs of deceleration in terms of growth and has no serious competitor in terms of users. The milestones above have set the company on a path of success and progress.
Works Cited
Conner, Cheryl. Employees Really Do Waste Time at Work. 17 July 2012. Online. 31 May 2017. .
Constine, Josh. Facebook Beats In Q2 With $4.04B Revenue, User Growth Slows To 3.47% QOQ To Hit 1.49B. 29 July 2015. Online. 31 May 2017. .
Hoffman, Constantine von. The 10 worst IPOs of 2012. 29 May 2013. Onlin. 31 May 2017. .
Lee, Dave. Facebook surpasses one billion users as it tempts new markets. 5 October 2012. online. 31 May 2017. .
Statista. Number of monthly active Facebook users worldwide as of 1st quarter 2017 (in millions). may 2017. Online. 31 May 2017. .
