Here’s a look at social media giant Facebook.
Facts:
Facebook has 2.01 billion monthly active users around the world as of June 30, 2017.
The company estimates that it has an average of 1.32 billion daily active users.
According to Pew Research national survey, 79% of adult Internet users used Facebook as of April 2016.
It is blocked in North Korea and most of China.
There are 20,658 employees at Facebook, and it is headquartered in Menlo Park, California.
Facebook introduced words such as “friending” to the lexicon.
Timeline:
February 4, 2004 – “The Facebook” is launched by Mark Zuckerberg, Dustin Moskovitz, Chris Hughes and Eduardo Saverin at Harvard University.
March 2004 – Students at Stanford, Columbia and Yale universities are allowed to join Harvard students on Facebook.
June 2004 – The company moves to Palo Alto, California.
September 2004 – The Facebook “Wall” is added.
December 2004 – One million users are active on the site.
September 3, 2005 – High school students are allowed to join Facebook.
September 20, 2005 – The company drops “the” from the name and becomes Facebook.
December 2005 – The number of Facebook users reaches six million.
May 2006 – Facebook allows people in work networks to join.
September 5, 2006 – The “News Feed” is introduced on Facebook.
September 26, 2006 – Facebook becomes open to everyone 13 or older.
July 2007 – Former Harvard classmates Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss sue Zuckerberg, alleging that he stole the idea for Facebook from them.
October 2007 – Microsoft buys a 1.6% stake in Facebook for $240 million.
January 5, 2008 – ABC News and Facebook co-sponsor a debate between presidential hopefuls.
March 2008 – Facebook hires Sheryl Sandberg to be the company’s chief operating officer.
2008 – The Winklevosses settle their suit with Facebook for $65 million.
2009 – Facebook settles a lawsuit with founder Eduardo Saverin out of court.
February 9, 2009 – Facebook introduces the “Like” button.
June 2009 – Facebook becomes the number one social network in the United States, surpassing MySpace.
October 2010 – The movie “The Social Network, ” a fictionalized account of the start of Facebook, is released.
Spring 2011 – People throughout the Middle East and North Africa use social media, such as Facebook, to communicate during the “Arab Spring.”
September 2011 – Facebook introduces the Timeline feature.
November 2011 – Facebook settles charges brought by the Federal Trade Commission that it engaged in deceptive practices concerning users’ privacy.
February 1, 2012 – Facebook files the paperwork for its initial public offering.
April 9, 2012 – Photo sharing site Instagram is purchased for $1 billion.
May 18, 2012 – The initial public offering of Facebook stock takes place.
October 2012 – Facebook reaches one billion active monthly users.
June 2013 – Leaker Edward Snowden releases documents on the NSA’s Prism program. Snowden claims that the NSA has monitored the users of Facebook and other internet companies. Facebook denies cooperating with the NSA.
February 19, 2014 – Facebook announces that it is purchasing mobile messaging service WhatsApp for $19 billion.
March 25, 2014 – Facebook announces that it is purchasing virtual reality company Oculus VR, Inc. for $2 billion.
June 17, 2014 – A study by researchers at Cornell, the University of Southern California San Francisco and Facebook, and published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science reveals that for one week in early 2012, Facebook changed the content mix in the news feed of approximately 690,000 users and manipulated the content to gauge the user’s emotional response. According to Facebook, the experiment worked. However, many users react with anger at what they say is a dangerous social experiment.
June 23, 2015 – Facebook stock rises 3% to reach an all time high. The company’s market value is close to $245 billion, making it worth more than WalMart, a $235 billion company.
August 27, 2015 – Facebook hits a milestone when 1 billion users log in to the social network in a single day.
September 15, 2015 – Mark Zuckerberg announces that Facebook will be introducing a “dislike” button, so users can express sympathy for people in their network sharing sad news.
February 24, 2016 – Facebook adds “Love,” “Haha,” “Wow,” “Sad,” and “Angry” reaction buttons that people can click when responding to a post.
April 27, 2016 – Facebook shares rise almost 9% to hit an all-time high of more than $118 after the company reports first-quarter profit almost tripled and sales jumped 52%. There are now 1.65 billion people using Facebook each month, up from 1.59 billion at the end of last year.
October 30, 2016 – A ProPublica report says Facebook’s “Ethinic Affinities” ad-customization option can be used to discriminate against users with housing-related ads — which is forbidden under the Fair Housing Act.
November 11, 2016 – Says it plans to disable an option that lets advertisers target or exclude users based on their “ethnic affinity” if those ads are for housing, employment or credit.
November 15, 2016 – Facebook says it will not place ads from fake news publishers on third-party apps or websites, because the content falls under the broader category of “illegal, misleading or deceptive” content. Zuckerberg earlier had rejected the idea that fake news on the site influenced the US presidential election.
April 21, 2017 – Says it has cracked down on 30,000 fake accounts in France ahead of the country’s pivotal presidential election. The accounts were spreading fake news stories, spam, misinformation or other deceptive content, Facebook says.
August 3, 2107 – Begins rolling out a “Related Articles” feature that provides additional perspectives and information on stories shared on News Feeds, including articles fact-checked by third-party sites such as Snopes and PolitiFact, which employ editors. The related stories are intended to help users think twice about whether a story is true and stop the spread of fake news.
September 7, 2017 – Facebook reveals that it sold about $100,000 worth of ads during the 2016 presidential election cycle from inauthentic accounts and pages “likely operated out of Russia.”
September 15, 2017 – The company says it “immediately removed” anti-Semitic advertising categories after ProPublica reported that Facebook’s platform allows advertisers to target users who entered terms such as “jew hater” in the education or employment fields of their personal profiles.
September 21, 2017 – Says it will share the content and related information of the more than 3,000 ads it sold to Russian-linked accounts with the House and Senate intelligence committees.