Facebook: Looking Back and Looking Forward

It would be difficult to find anyone who hasn’t heard of Facebook. It’s become so integrated into our lives that when we do come across someone who says they don’t have an account, we pause in surprise, and these people are usually still tied to Facebook in another way, either through WhatsApp, Instagram, or Messenger. It’s connected people together like never before. With Facebook, you can easily stay in contact with friends and family that live on the other side of the world far easier than in pre-internet days. It’s changed how many people research businesses they’re thinking of using, how people invite others to social events, and even how employers decide who to hire. Facebook has shaped how we live our lives, in both good and bad ways, and it continues to grow and change as our needs and interests change.

Percentage of people who use Facebook

This social media platform has such a massive membership that it’s hard to think of any adult not having an account. In fact, Facebook can boast that there are 1.84 million users who log into their account daily. Even more astounding is that 2.8 million log into the site at least once a month. Most of these people are on the go, logging in wherever they are. Over 98% use the mobile version of the popular site and it’s the second most downloaded app. Facebook places a high priority on their mobile app, making sure it functions just as well as the desktop version. This has accommodated the shift in how people use the internet. More people are online on their phones or tablets than on a desktop computer and Facebook has managed to not only stay on top of this change, but also make it work for them.

History of Facebook

Facebook was started as TheFacebook.com in 2004 by a group of Harvard College students, Andrew McCollum, Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz, Chris Hughes, and the most well known of the group, Mark Zuckerberg. The social platform grew quickly, overpowering the online social platform trailblazer, MySpace. In 2012, Facebook reached over one million monthly active users as more and more people became dependent on the site. About five years later they had reached two million active monthly users. Through the years, Facebook has managed to acquire multiple competitors and other services, technologies, and companies that have put it at the forefront of almost everything we regularly use.

Acquiring the competition and building profitable alliances

Staying on top has meant acquiring other companies and ideas to continue providing the newest and most popular services that people use. The same year the online giant reached one million active monthly users, it also bought one of its growing competitors, Instagram for about $1 billion in cash and stocks. Not long later it acquired an Israeli mobile analytics company called Onavo in October of 2013. About four months later February of 2014, Facebook took over another mobile competitor for $19 billion called WhatsApp. Continuing their company shopping spree, they bought Oculus VR, a rising star in virtual reality, within the same year for $2.3 billion.

After this, they took a break for a few years until 2019. Then, despite facing antitrust investigations, they acquired a virtual reality game developer called Beat Games and in 2020 they purchased 10% of a digital media and services entirely called Jio Platforms, a part of Reliance Industries. Only about a month later they took over Giphy for $400 million in cash and later the same year they bought Kustomer to increase the number of businesses using their platform. Kustomer is a customer management specialist. This allows a more streamlined and convenient way for business owners to contact their customers through the multiple platforms that Facebook owns.

How many businesses are on Facebook?

Small businesses are taking advantage of Facebook’s easy and widely spread services in more ways than one. Not only can posts be shared easily over and over, but it’s a great way to get the news out to potential buyers. They can also schedule appointments, create live events, and make sales all in one place. It’s so well used that over 200 million small businesses use Facebook’s business tools. These business owners are in the right place. In fact, 78% of buyers discovered new products or services on Facebook, making it one of the best options for reaching new customers.

Facebook revenue and stock

There’s no question that Facebook makes a great deal of money. Even though they have free membership, they have still seen continual and steady growth since their beginnings. The vast majority of their earnings comes from advertisements. Showing an increase of 21% of ad revenue from the previous year, Facebook saw $84.2 billion in 2020. This is surprising since they faced a drop in ad demands from the impact of the pandemic.

Facebook has consistently made smart decisions when it comes to purchases and investments, and has remained primarily debt free. This means they can handle any unfortunate dips and unforeseen issues that may arise, such as lawsuits. Because of their sound and safe financial decisions, and the acquiring of several popular and profitable competitors and technologies, they remain the second most popular social platform, with YouTube being the first. Their position is so solid that they saw a stock increase of around 80% in the last twelve months.

Possible problems Facebook may face in the future

Plateauing

One of the more common issues social media platforms and other types of online services tend to have is plateauing. Eventually, everything hits its peak and is no longer producing enough useful services to maintain growth. This doesn’t always mean that its value and revenue drop, but that it levels out. Once this happens, there is a danger of it dropping as newer and different competitors work to come out on top. It’s a constant battle of who will introduce the next interesting and profitable service, and a company that’s stuck will likely fall behind. However, Facebook has managed to maintain its growth mainly through acquisitions. They’ve managed to add a variety of other online services to their arsenal and continue to do so with their acquisition of Oculus and the development of Virtual Reality technology.

Laws and regulations

Another issue the social platform giant is facing is with proposed regulations that will limit its operations. Facebook’s massive membership and influence have raised concerns recently. Many are pushing for the company to be split, stating that they hold far too much influence and power. During the recent 2020 elections, Facebook was accused of bias and discriminatory censorship, causing a large number of people to turn to other social media platforms like Parler and MeWe. This has caused a great deal of discussion and debate over regulations that would stop platforms like Facebook and Twitter from manipulating content to influence people. Many believe there need to be new regulations as currently, Facebook could fall under several different categories, each with unique and very different regulating standards. Sometimes Facebook acts as a broadcast station, in other ways it’s a platform, and in others it’s more like a publisher. The amount of censorship and control over advertisements are the biggest differences and these are what people are most up in arms about.

Regardless of how Facebook is classified, there is no doubt to be future changes in what is allowed and what isn’t, and these changes could negatively impact Facebook’s operations. Another area in which laws are costing Facebook is with the recent Australian law that passed this year. It requires Facebook to pay the news industry for journalism content. Because of the overpowering influence and usage of Facebook, it was argued that news outlets weren’t seeing the revenue they should and that Facebook was gaining a disproportionate profit. Australia’s not alone, and other countries are seriously looking into following in their footsteps.

Controversy

Facebook has had its share of controversy from the very beginning. Only six days after it launched, a group of fellow Harvard College students came forward and claimed that Mark Zuckerberg tricked them and stole the idea of the social media platform. They had been working on HarvardConnection.com and Mark Zuckerberg was supposedly helping them to do so, but instead used their ideas to build a competing site. When the site officially launched, they sued Zuckerberg and it was settled for 1.2 million Facebook shares and $20 million.

Another occurrence that’s caused suspicions and controversy was when one of Facebook’s fellow founders, Eduardo Saverin filed a lawsuit against Facebook and Zuckerberg and it was privately settled outside of court with Saverin signing a nondisclosure and the details sealed from the public.

Throughout the years, not only have concerns over the content on some user made Facebook pages raised major concerns, but also issues of Facebook addiction and emotional stress has stemmed from the usage of the site. Pages dedicated to everything from pro-anorexia to showing graphic videos of violent war crimes have drawn negative media attention more than once. Many times these pages and videos are not removed because they don’t directly violate Facebook’s terms of use. This long history of allowing offensive and disturbing content only fueled the fire of offended people when Facebook seemingly began to target certain political groups and posts during the recent campaign. The reports of groups being taken down or locked and posts being removed or labeled as containing false information while others also containing false information remained untouched were so widespread that it drove more concern towards Facebook’s amount of control.

A further concern is the fact that the online giant spent $19.7 million on lobbying adds to the controversy. The censorship doesn’t end there. They’ve also been accused of censoring images of breastfeeding mothers, pages and text considered blasphemous by the Pakistani government, and pages and posts concerning a territorial dispute of the Kashmir region.

There has also been a great deal of concern over intellectual property. There have been countless issues of someone copying and sharing someone else’s content without permission. Facebook has, for the most part, worked to fix this, but with such a massive number of users, they can’t catch everything.

Another major concern is how Facebook has used its power and size to limit any upcoming competitors and stifle them. This has been an ongoing issue with the social media platform.

Possible improvements

VR

Virtual reality as a form of entertainment is a common and still strange concept for many people. It feels so futuristic and draws in the fans of technology and fantasy alike. VR gaming is growing quickly and people can easily use VR headsets to achieve a more in depth gaming and viewing sensation. With Facebook’s acquisition of Oculus, they’ve become the largest VR company and once again have a tight hold on this growing technology. Their first consumer headset came out in 2016 and in a short time, they’ve continued to impress gamers and non-gamers alike.

Increased online purchasing overall

There’s no question that online shopping is becoming the normal way to make purchases. It was growing rapidly even before the pandemic hit, but became overwhelmingly commonplace during the lockdowns. This has forced people who were normally uncomfortable with it to become more familiar and therefore more confident. With grocery, clothing, ready to eat foods, appliances, and household needs all becoming increasingly available through online purchasing and delivery, there is no doubt it will continue to grow. Facebook has recently made a push to increase its online business presence with Facebook Shops, a sort of online mall, and has made it even easier to buy and sell on their platform. They’ve also made it possible to connect an Instagram account in order to combine business across the platforms.

Multiple online connections

This ability to connect multiple platforms is one of their strengths and is primarily possible because they own so much of the popular social media available. We can assume that this ability to work across platforms will only grow. This will encourage people to use Facebook’s various services, rather than using competitors. It will also allow business owners to create a solid and profitable online presence.

Zuckerberg

When most people think of the face behind Facebook, they think of Mark Zuckerberg. He’s the genius behind the software and the one instantly recognized as its primary founder, though he certainly didn’t do it alone. His name has been in the news more and more recently for both positive and negative reasons.

Early life

Born into a Reform Jewish home to a psychiatrist and a dentist, Mark Zuckerberg had three sisters and lived in a quiet area of New York State. Zuckerberg began building software as a middle schooler. Recognizing his skills, his father hired a software developer to privately tutor him and build on his skill. In high school, he built an instant messaging program that allowed messages to be sent from his home to his father’s dental office. While some kids were satisfied playing video games, Zuckerberg would build games based on artwork done by friends. He did have other hobbies as well, such as becoming his prep school’s fencing team captain and having an interest in historical Greek and Roman literature.

The start of Facebook

Like many college students, he had a focus on his peers, creating a program called CourseMatch to allow students to choose classes and study groups based on what their friends and crushes chose. This was well received and led him to create Facemash, a very vain and superficial program that allowed students to compare two pictures of fellow students and vote on who they considered more attractive. Facemash was taken down in only a few days due to the number of people accessing the site and crashing a network switch. After receiving criticism for the stunt, Zuckerberg apologized publicly. After this, he began his work on TheFaceBook.com. Despite others coming forward to accuse him of stealing ideas, he proceeded with his project and eventually dropped out of Harvard to dedicate all his time to build his new site. After proving a huge success, Harvard awarded him an honorary degree in 2017.

Recent criticism

In 2018, Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal raised concerns and resulted in Zuckerberg testifying in front of the United States Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. The scandal involved the collection of personal data from countless users without their permission for political advertising. It created a severe lack of confidence in Facebook’s privacy.

In 2020, the US Senate Commerce Committee issued subpoenas to force Zuckerberg, as well as some other big tech CEOs, to appear and testify about how Section 230 of the Communications Act affects them and the result in abuse of power and unfair bias and censorship of political viewpoints and persons.

Good deeds

Mark Zuckerberg isn’t only known for the controversies that follow him. He’s also known as a giving person with a focus on education. He’s one of the signers of The Giving Pledge and has donated an amazingly large amount to various foundations and medical developments in order to create cures, vaccines, and aid for those in need. He’s certainly proved to be more than one dimensional and while some may view him in a less than favorable light, he has certainly proven to have a focus on helping certain causes as well.

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