Facebook anticipates many happy returns

Unfriend. Poke. Unlike. All have become a part of everyday social interaction thanks to the rise in popularity of one social platform: Facebook.

Okay, maybe “poke” has fallen out of favour since the early days. Not even an app specifically designed to resurrect the term – which may or may not have been released as a joke, depending on whether you believe the higher-ups at the company – has managed to successfully restart. And you’d rarely see someone throwing a sheep on Facebook these days, unlike a few years ago when it’s all people seemed to use Facebook for. But in its relatively short history, Facebook has managed to weave its way into the social fabric of our lives.

Events are organised and invitations issued on Facebook. Companies have Facebook pages where customers can contact them and leave feedback. There are whole social circles where people interact on a regular basis but have never actually met in person, thanks to Facebook.

The 10th anniversary is arguably something few thought Facebook would see. Over the years, social networks have risen and fallen in popularity according to the latest fads and trends. Friendster, MySpace and Bebo have all fallen in and out of favour with the masses. Facebook was expected to go the same way, but instead it has hung on, floated on the stock exchange, and managed to stave off competition from rivals such as Google.

More than 6,000 people now work for the Palo Alto-based company, which has offices all over the world including in Ireland. And it has more than 1.2 billion users. That’s about the same population as India, and more than the number of people living in the United States, Europe or Africa.

For a website that started in a college dorm room, it has been a dizzying climb – with one or two stumbles along the way.

Chief executive Mark Zuckerberg took to Facebook, aptly, to express his feelings on the platform's milestone, describing it as an "amazing journey so far".

Impact
"It's rare to be able to touch so many people's lives, and I try to remind myself to make the most of every day and have the biggest impact I can," he wrote.

“People often ask if I always knew that Facebook would become what it is today. No way.”

That’s not too surprising. The website was originally open only to students of the college, before expanding slightly to include other Ivy League schools. But even back then, Zuckerberg had big plans.

“I remember getting pizza with my friends one night in college shortly after opening Facebook. I told them I was excited to help connect our school community, but one day someone needed to connect the whole world,” Zuckerberg wrote.

“I always thought this was important – giving people the power to share and stay connected, empowering people to build their own communities themselves.”

By 2006, membership to Facebook was open to everyone, not just certain college or work networks. The company notched up 12 million users by December that year.

In its 10-year history, the company has moved from a desktop-only platform to mobile web and apps, shifting where the users went.

And in October 2012, the social network passed the one billion active monthly members mark, a major milestone in its development.

Facebook has managed to confound those who never really understood how it would make money. It has built up a healthy advertising revenue – including the crucial mobile sector. In May 2012, the company went public, in an IPO that would cause controversy and more than a few lawsuits.

But it has managed to turn that around, with shares gaining as it turned in solid quarterly results on the back of mobile revenue.

Attracting a large user base has, however, meant encountering some new problems. The rise of hate speech and other objectionable content on the site has been widely criticised, although Facebook has terms of service that ban such content from the site.

The changes to its functionality and how the site protects user privacy has also come under scrutiny. A number of changes over the years have left users disgruntled when changes to existing privacy controls left them, at best, baffled and, at worst, exposing information they didn’t realise was publicly visible.

It found itself back in the headlines last year when it emerged that Facebook was among the sites approached under the National Security Agency’s Prism programme and asked for information. Legally it was prevented from giving any meaningful detail on the requests until recently, when a deal was struck to allow it and other tech firms affected by such requests to release a limited amount of information on users.

Occasionally pockets of revolt break out, where users vow to delete their Facebook accounts in protest at yet another change to Facebook.

But still, the site has kept growing in popularity. Today, Facebook has everything from commercial advertising to the latest news, with its users feeding into the ever growing mound of information disseminated through the social network.

“We just cared more about connecting the world than anyone else. And we still do today,” Zuckerberg said.

Predictably, he isn’t planning on stopping here. Despite dire predictions that Facebook will be abandoned by young people and left without members in only a few short years, the chief executive thinks it has a good 10 years in it at the very least.

"The first 10 years were about bootstrapping this network. Now we have the resources to help people across the world solve even bigger and more important problems," he told his Facebook followers.

Problem solving
"Today, only one-third of the world's population has access to the internet. In the next decade, we have the opportunity and the responsibility to connect the other two-thirds. Today, social networks are mostly about sharing moments. In the next decade, they'll also help you answer questions and solve complex problems.

“Today, we have only a few ways to share our experiences. In the next decade, technology will enable us to create many more ways to capture and communicate new kinds of experiences.

How exactly will that look? Facebook has launched a new app called Paper. While that sounds like it harkens back to bygone eras, Paper is more of a high-tech nod than a return to such times.

It’s a new way of accessing your Facebook account, with a more magazine style layout, full screen and as Facebook promises, distraction free. So far though, this vision of the future is available only to those Facebook users on iOS, located in the US.

Regardless of where Facebook goes in the next few months, writing it off as a “has been” may be a little premature.