We are addicted to Facebook here at UKMums.TV. We love to scroll through our newsfeed and see what’s happening in the world, watch foodie videos till we drool and get the scoop on Saturday’s big night out from our Facebook friends, old and new. We especially love the posts that say “tag your partner and if they don’t reply in 10 minutes they owe you a Nandos.”
We share so much personal info with Facebook but how much do we know about it? Today Facebook is celebrating its sweet sixteen birthday and we thought we’d join in on the party by sharing some facts with you about Facebook. We’ve had a Google, stalked Mark Zuckerberg and ‘Facebook app’ on Facebook so here goes;
- Let’s start with the basics – 16 years ago today (February 4th, 2004) Mark Zuckerberg and his peers launched “The Facebook” as it was originally known, from his college dorm at Harvard University. The service was initially only available to Harvard students but soon expanded to regional universities, the Ivy League and further colleges before opening up to high school students and global users aged 13 or over.
- FaceMash, Facebook’s predecessor, was launched back in 2003. It was developed by Mark Zuckerberg, who wrote the software for the FaceMash website when he was in his second year of college. The website was set up as a type of “hot or not” game for Harvard students.
- Facebook is one of the biggest social media giants out there. According to Statista, there were almost 2.5 billion monthly active users as of the fourth quarter of 2019. In the third quarter of 2012, the number of active Facebook users surpassed one billion, making it the first social network ever to do so.
- Facebook’s mission is to “give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together.”
- There’s a movie out about Facebook called The Social Network (2010) which stars Jesse Eisenberg as Mark Zuckerberg, Rooney Mara as Erica Albright and Andrew Garfield as Eduardo Saverin.
- At the beginning of Facebook, there was no News Feed. For more than two years, Facebook was just a collection of profiles. Spending time on there meant hopping from one friend’s page to the next, looking up some basic details about them. There was no way to see updates from all your friends or be sure they saw yours. When News Feed launched back in September 2006, you could all of a sudden share with all your friends at once.
- Facebook owns WhatsApp and Instagram.
- Facebook made a huge change in 2016 and launched ‘reactions’. You can now respond to posts with a “Love”, “Haha”, “Wow”, “Sad” or “Angry” reaction. Or you can hit the “Like” button which was introduced in 2009.
As seen on Wired
Facebook has come a long way since its launch in 2004. Have you got any Facebook facts you’d like to share with us? Let us know by commenting down below or better yet… over on Facebook @UKMums.TV!