Facebook: The journey from a startup born in a Harvard dorm room to a `billionaire giant` is facing the risk of running out of time 1
Facebook is currently the most popular social network in the world.
Facebook launched on February 4, 2004, co-founded by Mark Zuckerberg and a few college friends.
From there, Zuckerberg began building a website as a place for Harvard students to communicate.
In just 4 hours since it was created, this page had 22,000 views from 450 users.
After that, Zuckerberg and three friends, Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes, founded a social network among Harvard students called `FaceMash`, the predecessor of today’s Facebook.
Within just 1 month of its launch, half of Harvard students became members of Facebook.
The company left its dorm room to move to a small office in Palo Alto, California.
Mark Zuckerberg’s wealth increased rapidly thanks to the rapid growth of Facebook.
That same year, Facebook settled a lawsuit with Mark Zuckerberg’s former classmates Cameron Winklevoss, Tyler Winklevoss and Divya Narendra.
In 2012, Facebook first issued shares on the New York Stock Exchange.
By the end of 2014, Mark Zuckerberg’s net worth had reached $30 billion.
In 2017, Facebook came under intense scrutiny for its role in spreading inaccurate news and misinformation during the 2016 presidential election. Scandal continued to surround Facebook when in 2018, the private company
In November 2018, Mark Zuckerberg’s leadership ability was once again questioned when a New York Times report said Facebook knew about Russia’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 US election but
At the end of 2018, Mark Zuckerberg’s net worth hit a 3-year low of $49.4 billion.
Facebook has launched many projects and products to attract users and diversify revenue.
Even the attorneys general of 40 states in the US have asked Zuckerberg to abandon plans to launch this application on the grounds that American teenagers are `not fully equipped to overcome the challenges of having a social network account.`
The Diem cryptocurrency (formerly Libra) also faced a wave of opposition when it was announced in 2019. At that time, it was expected to be backed by a series of international businesses, expanding Facebook’s connectivity capabilities.
However, in February this year, the organization managing the Diem cryptocurrency project announced that it would cease operations.
Another difficulty Facebook encountered was changes to WhatsApp’s terms of service, which were designed to help Facebook turn the messaging app into an e-commerce platform.
For a business that operates with the motto `moving fast` like Facebook, all of the above negative feedback is more than inconvenient.
As a network of platforms with a total of 3.45 billion users and many key users unwilling to adopt existing or upcoming products, Facebook faces a `doom` problem.
Authorities can prohibit one company from acquiring another, and large businesses often suspend mergers and acquisitions while under supervision.
Besides, the new privacy policy on iOS is also a headache for Facebook because it significantly limits their advertising ability to iPhone users.
It can be said that Facebook has built one of the most terrible money-making machines the world has ever seen.
That was one of the comments about Facebook’s situation last February, when Facebook’s parent company Meta announced an alarming income report.
Facebook said that Apple’s change to how advertising works on iOS apps – specifically that it is now more difficult for app makers and advertisers to track user behavior, will cost Facebook up to
However, Facebook is still making huge amounts of money from advertising.
Another issue that is probably also causing Facebook concern is the fact that young users tend to leave the platform.
Although the above decrease is not too huge, it is considered a sign that it seems that Facebook has grown to a level of saturation globally, the number of users has reached its `peak` and cannot increase anymore.
The generation of users who have been with Facebook since the early days are now in their 30s. The lack of appeal to young people is a not very good sign for a platform like Facebook that always wants to grow.
According to the Economist, a part of young people now see Facebook as a platform for middle-aged people.
This newspaper commented that Zuckerberg has shifted from reviving Facebook to developing multi-disciplinary technology, from metaverse, VR headsets to smart watches.
