Jun 5, 2013
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The Rise of Facebook
Facebook has risen from relatively humble beginnings, from the student digs of co-founder Mark Zuckerberg back in 2004, to what can only be described as world domination. Facebook now has more than a billion users, worldwide, capturing the attention of social and business networks alike. The rise of Facebook has been nothing less than phenomenal and is one of the major success stories which have arisen since the arrival of the internet.
Still less than 30 years of age, founder Mark Zuckerberg is named by Time magazine as one of the top 100 most influential and wealthy people anywhere in the world with a personal wealth estimated at more than $13 billion (you read it right–billion).
Facebook was launched in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg and four co-founders from their Harvard University student digs. After only four months Mark Zuckerberg made the decision to quit Harvard after a sizeable cash investment of $500,000 and Facebook, Inc. moved out of the digs into headquarters in Palo Alto, California. By the end of the year they had reached an incredible milestone with one million users – a mere nine months after the launch.
Further funding was quickly forthcoming when Facebook.com received more than $12 million from Accel Partners and the following year dropped the “.com” and became simply Facebook.
After further investment (corporations with an eye on the future were clamoring to ride this gravy train) Facebook became, officially, the most used and popular of all social networking sites by 2009 and by the following year (2010) had in excess of 500 million users.
By the time 2012 came and went, more than one billion people were actively using Facebook worldwide, an unbelievable number.
The incredible rise of Facebook is due to many different things. Originally aimed at young people as a means of connecting and staying in touch with friends from across the globe, the phenomenal rise in the number of active Facebook users soon came to the attention of the business world which began to recognize its potential as a media marketing tool. Facebook offered a previously untapped worldwide marketplace of customers and potential customers. It is free to use, immediate, easy to use and can unlock the door to billions of potential customers.
Facebook is now utilized in all aspects of daily life. No longer do people have to wait for the morning newspaper to see what is happening in the world around them. Facebook helps them to stay in touch with the rest of the world in real time as events begin to unfold.