Innovation of Facebook

Mark Zuckerberg went through his experimental phase with Facebook. Before Facebook was how we know it today, the Harvard student created "Thefacebook." Initially it was only open to people who had a Harvard email address.



In September 2006, the Facebook platform had officially become open to anyone over the age of 13 with a valid email address. The membership started growing rapidly for the early adaptors:

December 2006: 12 million
April 2007: 20 million
July 2007: 30 million
October 2007: 50 million

By the end of 2007, companies also wanted a part in Facebook. Over 100,000 companies had signed up for a Facebook Business page. Meanwhile, Facebook also opened their marketplace for users to buy and sell their items. In early 2008, Facebook released the "chat" feature, the "wall" feature, "connect", and "people you may know." Membership continues to grow:

August 2008: 100 million
January 2009: 150 million
February 2009: 175 million
April 2009: 200 million
July 2009: 250 million
September 2009: 300 million

In December 2009, Facebook became the most popular social platform in the world -- reaching its tipping point. However, Facebook didn't plan to stop there and continued to make improvements to the social media platform.

With Facebook becoming as massive worldwide as it was, there were negatives that came along with the success. Since it is a platform open to everyone, Facebook allows anyone to share even the awful things like abuse and hate speech to a wide audience.

On the flip side, Facebook hoped to take action against the negative photos/videos/posts by enhancing the guidelines used to evaluate reports of hate speech.

Today Facebook is taken for granted, something I could even say for myself. I find myself scrolling through Facebook mindlessly usually just to pass time. I created my own Facebook when I was 10 years old in the 5th grade since it was the "cool" thing to do. After school going on Facebook was the first thing I would check, since that is how my friends and I would communicate. Even though I took it for granted when I was 10, I can say that it is even more taken for granted now than ever.