Happy Birthday Facebook! Changing Face Of The Social Network Through 9 Years

| Updated: Tuesday, February 5, 2013, 12:07 [IST]

Facebook, the world's largest and fast growing social networking site turns nine today - February 4, 2013. The site began as Facemash - a closed user group wherein students from Harvard University could rate each other based on photographs.

The astronomic rise of Facebook is mainly due to its rapidly increasing user base,which accounts to 1.08 billion totally. Moreover, in the recent years, the social networking giant has started spreading its supremacy over the mobile platforms greatly. With the increasing demand of smartphones, Facebook has gained more users from such handsets.

It is known that Facebook has the largest user base as compared to the other social networking platforms and that it is subjected to a plethora of controversies. But, how about the penetration of Facebook in India? Well, of the 1.08 billion Facebook users in the world, 61.7 million users originate from India positioning the country at number 3 in the world (US and Brazil in number 1 and 2 positions). When it comes to penetration rate, the network has 5.26% of penetration among the population and 67.18% of penetration of total online population.

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Considerably, all of you would be interested to take an insight on How the Mark Zuckerberg's social network changed through the years. Over the 9 years, the network has underwent several transformations in order to become the most popular social networking platform in the world. Let's take a trip down the memory lane from 2005 to have a look at the evolution and changing layout of Facebook. Hit the slideshow below:

Facebook 2004

When launched Facebook was restricted to colleges and universities to find people at the institution, in class and to search for friends of friends. The network thefacebook started with 1 million users initially.

Facebook 2005

TheFacebook came Facebook and started penetrating among high school students. Also, the photos applications debuted and the network crossed 5.5 million user base.

Facebook 2006

2006 marked a year of growth with 12 million users, partnership with Microsoft, launch of Facebook platform, Facebook Mobile, Notes application, News Feed and privacy settings. Further, the network became open to all users only in this year.

Facebook 2007

In 2007, the Facebook Platform and Facebook Apps were launched at the Facebook D8 Developer conference. Also, the network released iPhone optimized site and Facebook Platform for Mobile. Remarkably, Facebook touched 50 million users in 2007.

Facebook 2008

It was in 2008, when Facebook added privacy controls to the Friend List, launched Facebook Chat, Facebook Connect and Facebook for iPhone app. The network marked a user base of 100 million in this year.

Facebook 2009

Facebook introduced Like feature, TOS changes that brought in controversy, launched Facebook usernames, acquired FriendFeed, changed its privacy policy and reached 350 million users.

Facebook also unveiled a provocative, experimental and interesting layout of its Facebook platform called, "Facebook Lite." Facebook Lite's layout revolved around simplicity, speed and ease of use.

Facebook 2010

After launching Open Graph API, issuing privacy reach overdrive and crossing 500 million users across the world, Facebook launched Facebook Places and rave reviews amidst increasing privacy concerns. Further, in 2010, Mark Zuckerberg was named "Person of the Year" by Times magazine.

Facebook 2011

In 2001, Facebook was valued at $50 billion and the social network was one of the big winners at the 68th Annual Golden Globe Awards.

Facebook 2012

In 2012, the social network was criticized a lot by users for the introduction of Timeline feature for profiles. The feature was revealing a lot of personal information to all users with posts updated from the day one. At the end of the year, Facebook launched Year in Review, which showcases the activities made over the year.

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