Have you ever wondered how the tech giant Facebook came about? Most of us know it was the brainchild of Mark Zuckerberg, a Harvard student with coding skills who decided to create an online communication platform for Harvard students to interact. This early application was very limited when compared to the Facebook we all know and love, with a ‘hot or not’ activity that posted two pictures of students and users were asked to comment ‘hot’ or ‘not’.
TheFacebook
In 2004, Zuckerberg set about creating TheFacebook and spurred on by the belief that a centralised website would greatly benefit the students, he asked a few other students to each invest $1,000 in the project. Zuckerberg quickly realised that other universities could also join the network and within 12 hours of TheFacebook going online, they had between 1,200-1,500 students who had registered.
Multiple Universities
By March of 2004, they had expanded to include Stanford, Columbia and Yale and Zuckerberg’s informal advisor, Sean Parker became the president. In June 2004, the company dropped “The” from their name and Facebook was born, while they moved their HQ to Palo Alto, California and in 2006, they acquired the domain name Facebook.com and the rest is history.
Millions of Users
By 2006, Facebook had 6 million users, with almost all UK universities participating, while the company launched a high school version, something that Zuckerberg said was ‘the next logical step.’ What followed was a steady rise in popularity and today, anyone over the age of 12 can create a Facebook account.
Profitability
Around 2011, Facebook decided to prioritise profitability and they brought in Sheryl Sandberg as the new CEO and her first focus was on how the company can generate revenue and after brainstorming with key employees, they came to the conclusion that advertising would be their prime source of revenue. There are specialist companies that offer Facebook advertising in Perth and other major Australian cities and by using an industry professional, you can expect to see a healthy return on your investment.
Why is Facebook So Popular?
The platform enables users to see what their Facebook friends are doing and with voice and video call options, you can have a real-time conversation with people from all over the world. It is nice to watch video clips of your cousin’s recent holiday in Mexico and when any of your friends post, this will appear on your Facebook feed.
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