Facebook, a ubiquitous part of most of our online lives, turned 20 on February 4. Started in 2004, Mark Zuckerberg launched 'thefacebook.com' from his Harvard dormitory. 20 years later, the company is still thriving and has more than 3 billion active daily users. Celebrating the milestone, Mr Zuckerberg took to Facebook to share a picture of his Facebook profile from 2004.
He shared a screen grab of his old Facebook profile with his details like his date of birth, education details, home town and more. The profile picture shared by Mr Zuckerberg showed his status as a "student" at Harvard. He also updated his current Facebook profile picture to one he first used on the platform.
Check out the picture here:
Before this, the 39-year-old tech mogul took to Instagram to share a montage video of photos and videos from the last 20 years. He wrote, "20 years ago I launched a thing. Along the way, lots of amazing people joined and we built some more awesome things. We're still at it and the best is yet to come."
Notably, ''TheFacebook”, was launched by 19-year-old Mark Zuckerberg and his college roommates at Harvard University. It was named after the physical student directory distributed at universities at the start of the academic year, commonly known as a “face book”. The social network which was originally restricted to Harvard College students, soon spread to other college campuses across the United States and was a huge hit.
By the end of 2006, anyone above the age of 13 with internet access could join. In 2008, Facebook toppled MySpace to become the world's most popular social networking website and launched its first mobile app the following year.
Slowly, Facebook became an integral part of the daily lives of billions, influencing communication, relationships, and even the way news is disseminated.
The platform "is part of the digital landscape", particularly for "millennials" born in the 1980s or 1990s, according to Insider Intelligence analyst Jasmine Enberg.
Facebook changed its parent company name to "Meta" in late 2021, saying it was due to Zuckerberg's vision of immersive, virtual worlds referred to as the "metaverse" being the next major computing platform. In July 2023, Meta launches its text-based app Threads, intended to be a rival to X, formerly known as Twitter.
