This Day, That Year – February 4

This day in history we feature the Facebook. A mainstream online social networking site, is founded by Mark Zuckerberg and Eduardo Saverin on this day in 2004.

Trivia – Facebook

Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes, its name comes from the face book directories often given to American university students.

Membership was initially limited to Harvard students, gradually expanding to other North American universities and, since 2006, anyone over 13 years old. As of July 2022, Facebook claimed 2.93 billion monthly active users, and ranked third worldwide among the most visited websites as of July 2022. It was the most downloaded mobile app of the 2010s.

Related read – Facebook starts NFT trials with select content creators

Facebook can be accessed from devices with Internet connectivity, such as personal computers, tablets and smartphones. After registering, users can create a profile revealing information about themselves. They can post text, photos and multimedia which are shared with any other users who have agreed to be their “friend” or, with different privacy settings, publicly.

Users can also communicate directly with each other with Facebook Messenger, join common-interest groups, and receive notifications on the activities of their Facebook friends and the pages they follow. The subject of numerous controversies, Facebook has often been criticized over issues such as user privacy (as with the Cambridge Analytica data scandal), political manipulation (as with the 2016 U.S. elections) and mass surveillance. Posts originating from the Facebook page of Breitbart News, a media organization previously affiliated with Cambridge Analytica, are currently among the most widely shared political content on Facebook.

Facebook has also been subject to criticism over psychological effects such as addiction and low self-esteem, and various controversies over content such as fake news, conspiracy theories, copyright infringement, and hate speech. Commentators have accused Facebook of willingly facilitating the spread of such content, as well as exaggerating its number of users to appeal to advertisers.

The website won awards such as placement into the “Top 100 Classic Websites” by PC Magazine in 2007, and winning the “People’s Voice Award” from the Webby Awards in 2008. On July 20, 2008, Facebook introduced “Facebook Beta”, a significant redesign of its user interface on selected networks. In 2010, Facebook won the Crunchie “Best Overall Startup Or Product” award for the third year in a row.

The company announced 500 million users in July 2010. Half of the site’s membership used Facebook daily, for an average of 34 minutes, while 150 million users accessed the site from mobile devices. A company representative called the milestone a “quiet revolution.”

Source – Wikipedia