Twenty years after its 2004 start, Facebook is still a successful social media platform.
Facebook, which has more than 2 billion users everyday, has taken centre stage in many political and cultural discussions, giving a noticeable presence in the rapidly evolving social media environment.
With its initial exclusivity and focus on gamifying social connections through “likes,” comments, shares and friend counts, the site distinguished itself from other early social platforms.
Facebook’s success in enabling users to compare themselves to members of their peer group allowed it to capitalize on the trend of gamifying social relationships.
With time, the website grew to include high school kids, professionals with corporate email accounts, and students from various colleges and universities.
Facebook expanded its membership base in 2006 since a large number of its founding had surpassed the age range for their original user base.
Facebook’s initial emphasis on young adults established it as platform for millennials to stay updated about friends and family.
Facebook’s success can be ascribed to its robust social network, which set it apart from earlier social media platforms such as MySpace and Friendster.
MySpace, which concentrated on music, suffered a decline in monthly active users to an estimated 35 million by the middle of 2011, whereas by September of 2011, Facebook had about 800 million monthly active users.
Another short-lived website was Friendster, which debuted in 2002 and shut down in June 2015 after converting to a social game platform years earlier.
MySpace and Friendster were losing steam at the same time that Facebook was growing by innovation and acquisitions.
Friday’s closing price for Meta Platforms Inc. (META), the parent company of Facebook and other apps was close to $475.
The fact that Meta invested in messaging services like Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp, which it acquired in 2014 for $16 billion, may be partly responsible for the company’s longevity.
In 2014, the business ventured into the tech hardware market by purchasing virtual reality startup Oculus for a whopping $2 billion.
Facebook and Instagram challenge TikTok for supremacy in the social media space, Meta has remained unwavering in its leadership.
