Facebook turns 20 on Sunday. On February 4, 2004, when he was 20 years old, Mark Zuckerberg launched “Thefacebook”, a project designed to connect Harvard students. The platform grew rapidly, spreading to other departments and high schools, before expanding globally to become Facebook.com in August 2005. Since then, the most popular social network in the world has been changed dozens of times, the BBC writes.

Facebook ranks first in the list of the most popular social networks in the world as of January 2024 by the number of monthly active users – 3.049 billion.

Four ways Facebook has changed the world in 20 years:

1. Facebook changed the social media game

Before Facebook, there were other social networks such as MySpace, but Mark Zuckerberg’s platform “blew up” instantly when it launched in 2004, proving just how quickly such an online platform can take off.

In less than a year, it amassed a million users, and in four years it surpassed MySpace thanks to innovations such as the ability to “tag” people in photos. Grabbing a digital camera on a night out and then tagging your friends in dozens of photos was a staple of teenage life in the late 90s.

By 2012, Facebook’s user base surpassed one billion monthly users, and aside from a brief blip in late 2021 when the number of daily active users dropped for the first time, the platform has continued to grow.

By expanding into less connected countries and offering free internet, the company has retained and grown Facebook users. At the end of 2023, Facebook reported 2.11 billion daily visits.

Admittedly, Facebook is less popular among young people than it used to be. However, it remains the most popular social network in the world and has ushered in a new era of online social activity, writes the BBC.

Some see Facebook and its competitors as tools of government to bring people together. Others see them as destructive, addictive elements.

2. Facebook has made our personal data valuable… and less personal

Facebook has proven that collecting likes and dislikes from us is extremely profitable.

Now Facebook’s parent company, Meta, is an advertising giant that, along with Google, holds the lion’s share of the world’s advertising dollars.

On Thursday, Meta reported more than $40 billion in revenue for the final quarter of 2023, mostly from offering highly targeted advertising services. About $14 billion was declared as profit.

But Facebook also showed where data collection can go wrong. Meta was fined several times for improper processing of personal data.

The most high-profile case was the scandal with Cambridge Analytica, which worked for the Donald Trump campaign and stole the personal data of tens of millions of users, as a result of which Facebook was forced to pay $725 million after a lawsuit. In 2022, Facebook also paid a fine of €265 million to the EU for allowing the removal of personal data from the site. And last year, the Irish Data Protection Commission fined the company a record €1.2 billion for transferring European users’ data outside the jurisdiction. Facebook is now appealing the fine.

3. Facebook has turned the Internet into a political tool

By offering targeted advertising, Facebook has become a major platform for election campaigns around the world.

For example, according to a Statista analysis, in the five months leading up to the 2020 US presidential election, Donald Trump’s team spent more than $40 million on Facebook advertising.

Facebook also helped change mainstream politics by allowing disparate groups of users to come together, campaign and plan action on a global scale.

Facebook and Twitter were seen as crucial during the Arab Spring, helping to coordinate protests and spread news of what was happening on the ground.

But the use of Facebook for political purposes has been criticized for some of its consequences, including its impact on human rights. In 2018, Facebook agreed with a UN report that said it had failed to prevent people from using the platform to “incite offline violence” against the Rohingya in Myanmar.

4. Metadominance

Thanks to the enormous success of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg has built a social network and a technology empire that is unprecedented in terms of the number of users and its power.

Growth companies including WhatsApp, Instagram and Oculus were acquired and activated under the umbrella company Facebook, which changed its name to Meta in 2021. Meta now says that more than three billion people use at least one of its products every day.

And when it couldn’t buy its rivals, Meta was often accused of copying them to maintain its dominance.

The Stories feature, which is disappearing from Facebook and Instagram, is similar to Snapchat’s key feature. Instagram Reels is the company’s answer to the challenge posed by the video-sharing app TikTok. And Threads is Meta’s attempt to imitate X (formerly Twitter).

Tactics have become more important than ever due to high competition and a tighter regulatory environment.

In 2022, Meta was forced to sell loss-making GIF maker Giphy after UK regulators blocked its right to own the service over fears of excessive market dominance. (Source: BBC/ Photo: Dreamstime.com)