EOTO: Com Tech Timeline

 Facebook was created mainly by Mark Zuckerberg on February 4th, 2004, while he and his colleagues Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dylan Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes were students at Harvard University. This story, popularized by the movie The Social Network, is a story of betrayal and deceit that actually landed Zuckerberg and associates in legal trouble after he was accused of misleading a group of other Harvard students to take a website idea that they had made and turned it into his own idea. This would later lead to an investigation of his website by the Harvard newspaper The Crimson, which led Zuckerberg into a series of lawsuits that were later settled.

Facebook was originally supposed to be a way for Harvard students to connect with each other, almost like a digital phonebook programmed specifically for Harvard students. Zuckerberg was credited with the original idea, which is why his name is the most recognizable. Zuckerberg was approached by Cameron Winklevoss, Tyler Winklevoss, and Divya Narendra about creating the same kind of app for them entitled HarvardConnection, which gave Zuckerberg the original idea for Facebook. He was working on both apps at the same time and was planning on lowering the standard on HarvardConnection to make Facebook the superior website for connecting.

When Facebook launched to the general public in 2006, it quickly skyrocketed in popularity. It was already immensely popular among students at Ivy League universities, which gained access to the technology in March of 2004. It became a way for people to share their lives on a common platform so that everyone who followed them or was interested in their lives could see what they chose to share with the click of a button. In December of 2005, there were about 6 million users and in April of 2023, there were 2.989 billion users.

Other famous social media platforms around that time such as MySpace and Napster were slowly cut down in popularity due to Facebook's sudden and rapid success. This technology makes communication between individuals much easier. Instead of taking the time to text and reach out to someone, you could simply make a post on Facebook for everyone to see. To this day, Facebook is still a very popular platform, but along with the early 2000s is being left to the millennials. Most of the users on Facebook are parents who want to post about their child's achievements and to keep in touch with their friends who they are not as close with as they once were. Platforms such as Instagram, Twitter, and Snapchat have slowly taken over in popularity, but Facebook still remains a strong force as a social media platform.

Learning about the history of Facebook and its rise and fall allowed me to learn about the rise of social media as a technology, and how it skyrocketed in power. Enabling people with the power and access to communication, and a way for people to easily connect with people that live across the world or even just the country is extremely beneficial to people. The power of social media as a whole is important to the success of this country. Most people in younger generations turn to accounts on TikTok and Instagram for their daily dose of news and without this, most of the younger generation would not view the news at all, they would not be paying attention to an action that is vital for our society.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2007/jul/25/media.newmedia

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/facebook-launches-mark-zuckerberg