Tuesday, February 4, 2014

Facebook Celebrates 10-Year Anniversary

Facebook has definitely had many changes in the past 10 years, but according to Mark Zuckerberg, it’s similar to what he envisioned in 2004. In a CNBC interview (link posted below) from 2004, Zuckerberg spoke with Rebecca Quick on her Bull’s Eye show, discussing his vision for the future and its growth as a new social network.


When they first launched they were hoping for maybe 400 or 500 people, and that the company hoped to expand into 100 to 200 universities later that fall. At the time of this interview the amount of users grew to 100,000 people. The original plan was to make a bunch of “side applications” that would bring users back, which was a tactic that ended up working well. According to Facebook, the social network passed 1.19 billion monthly active users as of September 30, 2013, an increase of 18% year-over-year.

In celebration of its 10-year anniversary, Facebook personalized “Look Back” videos for all its users. Starting this morning, Facebook users received a notification that a video summary of their life so far on Facebook is ready to watch. Each video consists of 15 or so of their most-liked photos, statuses, and events to music. The videos are a reminder that for many of us, Facebook has become a large part of our daily lives.

According to The Verge, a small team at Facebook spent weeks creating the videos and ensuring that the company had the necessary resources to render the massive amounts of HD videos and send them to users. Two groups played an important role: Everstore, the team in charge of media storage, and Moonshot, the team tasked with allocating idle server power. The project is one of the company’s largest video projects of all time.

I think the personalized Look Back videos were a great tactic to remind users how Facebook has become a normal way we document our lives, and how we use the discovery site to meet new people and learn new information. 

Posted below is a link that shows the transformation of Facebook profiles over the past 10 years:

Monthly Facebook Users Link:  



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