Featured Image Credit: Dan Kitwood/ Staff/ Facebook
Topics: Facebook, Social Media, World News, Mark Zuckerberg, Money, US News, Viral, Twitter
Poppy Bilderbeck
Topics: Facebook, Social Media, World News, Mark Zuckerberg, Money, US News, Viral, Twitter
Facebook has officially turned 20 years old today and people have mixed emotions about it.
I mean, the story doesn't really need much more of an explanation than the headline, does it?
Although, if you wanted to feel even more old, when The Facebook - as it was known back then - was first created back in 2004, George W Bush was elected for a second term in office, Eminem released 'Just Lose It' and I was the grand old age of three.
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While most of us were dossing around in our dorm rooms drinking, clubbing, puking and well, you know the rest, Mark Zuckerberg was sat with friends getting to work on what has become one of the biggest social media platforms in history.
Zuckerber, alongside several other Harvard University students including Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes, founded TheFacebook on 4 February, 2004.
While the social media platform was initially just for other Harvard students, they widened it to other colleges, universities and corporations and well, you can see where it is today.
The name of the platform was later changed to just Facebook in August 2005 and by September 2006 everyone who had an email address and was aged 13 and over could sign up too.
In December, 2005, it was reported Facebook had six million monthly active users and 20 years later by 2024?
Well, the platform is now reported as having 3.049 billion monthly active users, according to Back Linko.
And Facebook, of course, has also gone on to expand not just in the amount of users it has, but also in its acquisitions - think Instagram, WhatsApp and Oculus VR - the parent company of Facebook later changing its name from such to Meta Platforms Inc in 2021 to focus on its 'focus on building the metaverse'.
Safe to say, the platform has come out on top, maintaining its status as the king of social media platforms and as of February 2024, as per Companies Market Cap, Meta Platforms (Facebook) has a market cap of $1.210 Trillion.
And people are flooding online to weigh in on the social media platform being around for a whopping 20 years.
Flooding to X to mark the occasion - which must really rub salt in Elon Musk's wound - a user wrote: "Facebook is 20 years old,??? Now I feel old."
"Facebook is 20 years old today. How many of you were the first to sign up? Cocoa butter train? Seeing what dorm room ppl were logged into? Pokes?! The Honesty Box?!" another added.
And a third commented: "My Facebook page turns 20 years old next year. That page is older than I was when I started it. I'm going to throw up!"
UNILAD has contacted Meta for comment.