Technology
- Super User
- Category: Technology
- Sunday, 04 September 2016 15:46
See the changing face of facebook from 2004 when it started up to now...
Facebook, the world's biggest social network, is 12-years-old today, having been founded by now-CEO Mark Zuckerberg in his Harvard dorm room in 2004.
The original domain for Facebook — TheFacebook.com — now redirects to Facebook.com and around one billion people per day visit the website on a desktop, smartphone, or tablet.
Facebook Messenger, an offshoot of Facebook itself that lets users talk to friends, has over 800 million users on its own and WhatsApp, the messaging client Facebook acquired for $19 billion last year, has around one billion.
The design of Facebook has changed a lot over the years as the social network expanded beyond Harvard, and then to the entire world, with the exception of one or two countries where it is banned, including China.
Here's what the homepage looked like over the years:
The original Facebook homepage from 2004 with a small picture of Al Pacino in the top left corner.
The Facebook homepage in 2005 listed all of the schools the social network was in — and still included the photo of Al Pacino.
Facebook's homepage in 2006 was a stripped-back affair, doing away with the list of schools in favor of a simple login option.
Facebook's 2007 homepage contained the first instance of its now-synonymous logo and offered the "latest news" from friends.
The Facebook of 2008 continued to refine the homepage and offered options for signing up.
Facebook gained the "connected world" diagram in 2009, which lasted all the way until 2011.
Facebook changed its logo font in 2010 but left the homepage much the same.
Facebook left the design the same in 2011, but made the input boxes used to log in clearer.
Facebook swapped out the connected world diagram for a phone in 2012 as its users moved from desktop to mobile. Today, over 800 million people access Facebook on mobile everyday.
Facebook settled on a design in 2013 that it would stay with for the next few years.
Facebook built out its mobile app, especially on "dumb" phones in 2014, leaving the homepage the same.
2015 was a big year for Facebook that saw its first ever day with one billion users online simultaneously. The company had figured out how to make money from mobile too, turning it into a $300 billion (£204 billion) business.
The Facebook homepage today, on its 12th birthday.
CREDIT: Techinsider.io