Facebook celebrates its 20th anniversary on Sunday, February 4, the day that Mark Zuckerberg, then an undergraduate at Harvard University, and three roommates created the social media platform.
Over 271 million people in Africa use Facebook as of 2022, out of a total of over 2 billion active users every day. According to Statista, a research platform, the number is expected to surpass 377 million by the year 2025.
Back in 2004, Facebook was not available to anyone outside of Harvard. In the months and years that followed, the site’s user base grew to include college students, high school students, and working professionals with company email accounts.
Facebook widened its membership net in 2006 because many of its original users had outlived their initial demographics.
Read also: Facebook now supports multiple profiles
The competitiveness of Facebook
Even though MySpace and other similar networks had been around before Facebook, the 2004 launch of Mark Zuckerberg’s site proved how quickly a platform like Facebook could gain traction.
Thanks to features like the ability to “tag” individuals in photos, it gained one million users in under a year and surpassed MySpace in four years.
As the 2000s came to a close, it became par for the course for teenagers to bring along digital cameras on night outs and tag their friends in dozens of photos. One of the main attractions for early adopters was the activity feed, which was updated frequently.
After briefly seeing a dip in daily active users at the end of 2021, Facebook has continued to grow and surpassed one billion users per month by 2012.
The company has maintained and even grown the number of Facebook users by expanding into countries with less internet connectivity and providing free internet. By the year’s end of 2023, Facebook boasted 2.11 billion active users daily.
To be honest, Facebook’s youth appeal has declined in recent years. However, it has brought in a new age of online social activity and is still the most popular social network globally.
Some see Facebook and its competitors as tools that facilitate connection. For some, they are destructive, addictive substances.
How Facebook birth Meta
As a result of Facebook’s phenomenal success, Mark Zuckerberg established an unparalleled technological and social media empire with an unparalleled user base and influence.
In 2021, Facebook rebranded itself as Meta after acquiring and rapidly expanding a number of promising startups, such as Oculus, WhatsApp, and Instagram.
The company claims that over three billion people worldwide use Meta products daily.
Oculus, a virtual reality company, was acquired by Facebook for $2 billion, Instagram for $1 billion, and WhatsApp for $19 billion. As if that weren’t bad enough, Meta has been accused of emulating its competitors when it couldn’t acquire them.
In a move reminiscent of Snapchat’s prominent Stories feature, Instagram introduced Reels to counter TikTok’s dominance in the video-sharing app market, and Meta attempted to mimic X, formerly known as Twitter, with Threads.
Rising levels of competition and stringent regulations have elevated the significance of tactics to an all-time high.
Concerned about Meta’s potential market dominance, UK regulators prevented it from owning Giphy in 2022, forcing the company to sell the service at a loss.
What the future holds for Facebook
Mark Zuckerberg’s ability to maintain Facebook’s relevance is evident in the site’s rise and continued dominance. Many media outlets doubted the platform’s viability for its 20th anniversary when it was celebrating its 10th.
Whoever thinks it will never work will think twice before asking when it could end. The truth, though, is that over the next two decades, it will face an enormous challenge in retaining its status as the most popular social network.
Not only is the industry experiencing its usual rapid evolution, but Meta is also making strong efforts to base its operations on the concept of the Metaverse.
Meta also values artificial intelligence highly. As a result, Facebook is no longer the company’s primary focus. Considering its evergreen appeal, it is debatable whether the world is.