Social Media News

With active membership in excess of 350 million global users, Facebook claims the pinnacle of new-age social media; declared the “world’s largest” social networking interface, in current existence. Utilized for sustainable socialization, by an enormous populous; when polled, by leading technological researchers, more than 70% of committed users were unaware of the story shadowing Facebook’s privately held company’s creation — even larger amounts could not guess the target age for the founder, with only 34% recalling the original audience for the company.  

Initially created in 2004 for students at the apex of continued education, Harvard; Facebook existed as the brainchild of Mark Zuckerberg — a student himself, merely twenty-years-old at the time of its creation. Dumped, in 2003, emotional Zuckerberg created Harvard’s Facemash; a college dedicated social ranking system of student’s attractiveness, similar to popular Internet website “Hot or Not” but with a great deal of differing features. Within its first four hours, Facemash generated 22,000 photo-views from a visitor list of 450, registering a success unforeseen; its popularity influenced Zuckerberg to expand his creation and his mind within the same semester. From drunken tech-orientated success, Zuckerberg begin a new semester in January 2004 writing code to a separate Harvard interface, dubbed as TheFacebook; modest in his feat, Zuckerberg released his code and notified only a few of his closest friends — reviewing the complexity of such code, it was suggested that Zuckerberg place his website on his dormitory mailing list of 300. A second web-based success was noted, in a mere twenty-four hours as TheFacebook grew to over 1200 unique members – all within the school’s network. Half of Harvard’s undergraduate population flocked to the college social network in less than a month after its campus based release.

Returning from his summer vacation, successful in his website Zuckerberg took in a new room mate, Sean Parker; Parker, former co-founder of Napster tweaked his friends code in preparedness to introduce it to Peter Thiel – Thiel, co-founder of Paypal, made the first investment into TheFacebook of $500,000. Within the same year of its creation. Word quickly spread, in the complex market of online social networking; through a tip Friendster made full attempts to buy the youngster out at a price of $10 million – an offer turned down by Zuckerberg and his co-founding cohorts — his dorm roommate and close friends, educating themselves in the profession of computer science. Quickly after turning down his first buy-out, $12.7 million was received in a second wave of website funding; as TheFacebook dropped an article off of its name to become Facebook — this chunk in web marketed funding increased Facebook’s overall value to above $100 million. Restricted Harvard solitary was lifted in late 2005, as Facebook transformed to include social connections from high school membership(s) — maintain founding objectives as a educational backed network. However; with the introduction of its largest competitor, Myspace, Facebook made a successful decision to open the network to those holders of an electronic mailing account over 13 years of age  in late 2006 – sustaining itself fully, appealing to a global market in a changing user-generated social splurge. With this exposed decision, Zuckerberg was approached next by Yahoo with an impending offer that soured to $1 billion, capturing his attentiveness a verbal agreement was made to sell his prized network to the Yahoo Corporation; prior to signed paperwork came the rapid decline in the Yahoo stockholdings. Shadowed with interest, Yahoo came back to young Zuckerberg and dropped their offer by a considerable $200,000; a offer that was met sternly with verbalized “no” –- Yahoo would come to bid a third time on Facebook, for the full offer of $1 billion; putting Zuckerberg into leading press headlines as the “kid who turned down a billion”. Wise to his innovation Zuckerberg held onto the brainchild, to be awarded the title of fifth most valuable American online company in 2007; receiving a spurt of $240 million in additional funding by computer giant Microsoft — many assumed that this grand offer was Microsoft’s response to outbid rival Google. Zuckerberg would continue to expand his creation to include businesses, in 2008 and 2009, with Microsoft and Apple becoming two of the earlier names on this spectrum; creating a social network of personal and professional roles.

Closing out 2009, Facebook is at its summit in transformed success as it integrates popular sites and institutionalizes common trends, responding to the spinning profit of revolutionized traditional ideas of social media — a growing trend started by the year’s popularization of Twitter’s micro-blogging concepts. To insure it’s growth into the future years, Facebook works with a team of over 700 to instill the values of trends members want to possess on a socialization network — recent changes to Facebook were mirrored from Twitter, with previous changes mirrored from Myspace in prior years. It’s net of over 350 million global users continues to change each minute, reflecting members influences in acceptance of successful changes; while few stride behind.

Interesting 2009 Facebook Facts

(Copyright © Social-Media-News 2009)