Facebook will turn 10 tomorrow. It's an incredible feat for a social network that started out as a Harvard-only online community. Since those early days in 2004, Facebook has only grown.
"Thefacebook" started out as a modest project put together by Zuckerberg and his friends Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes. The site went live on Feb. 4, 2004 and spread around the Harvard campus like wild fire. By March of that year, Zuckerberg had extended Facebook's reach to Yale, Stanford and Columbia. Shortly thereafter, all Ivy League schools, New York University, Boston University and MIT were included. Before 2004 had reached its end, Facebook had 1 million users. Now, 10 years later, Facebook is available worldwide and has some 1.2 billion active users.
After years of keeping Facebook a private company, Zuckerberg decided to take the company public. In May 2012, Facebook had its IPO with stocks starting at $38. Initially, many investors and pundits thought that Facebook wouldn't make any money as a public company, but they were quickly proved wrong. Nearly two years later, Facebook is alive and well.
"It's been an incredible journey so far, and I'm so grateful to be a part of it. It's been amazing to see how people have used Facebook to build a real community and help each other in so many ways," Zuckerberg said. "In the next decade, we have the opportunity and responsibility to connect everyone and to keep serving the community as best we can."
In spite of its incredible success, there are early warning signs that Facebook could be losing its popularity. The social network is reportedly losing popularity among one of the most important demographics for technology companies: teens. Facebook used to be filled with teenagers, posting about their daily lives and connecting with friends, but now it is full of parents posting baby pictures and harassing their twenty-something-year-old children for a phone call.
Facebook believes that it can grow to accommodate its changing user base and has ventured out into the app world with Messenger, Camera, Poke and most recently, Paper. Competing apps like SnapChat, WeChat and others are chomping at the bit, hoping to overtake Facebook as the kind of messaging, while Twitter, Instagram and other social networks aim to make Facebook obsolete like MySpace.
Although no one knows what the future may hold for Facebook, it's clear that the company needs to diversify and change with the ever-evolving mobile landscape to ensure future success.
