Facebook Celebrates 5 Year Anniversary
Social Networking site Facebook is celebrating its 5th birthday by giving its 150 million users a mystery virtual gift.
Users of Facebook can access the site’s gift shop to send virtual presents to their friends. The gifts usually range from cuddly bears to a pint of beer.
"In the spirit of celebrating connections between people, we encourage you to use this gift to give thanks to [those] you are connected with on Facebook," said Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.
Facebook is now the world leader in the social networking battleground. Zuckerberg acknowledged the company’s hard work in achieving its place as the biggest social network to date.
Zuckerberg stated on his blog: "As we celebrate Facebook’s 5th birthday, we continue to work hard to evolve Facebook and make it as simple as possible to communicate with and understand the people and entities that matter to you."
Zuckerberg also shared old images of how the site has changed since it was launched in 2004.
Facebook’s 150 million active users currently tops rival MySpace’s 130 million users, an impressive feat for a project that started in Zuckerberg’s college dorm room.
Jeremiah Jowyang of Forrester Research spoke of how Facebook has gone from a pet college project to a global communications platform.
“It’s a place where you can communicate with people you actually know. It’s different from other places on the web where those people may not be truly your friend – like on MySpace where there are a lot of celebs and fictional characters created by PR companies.”
Jowyang, who is conducting research on the future of social networks, said Facebook is about people you really know and trust and it has great crossover appeal to your real life, family and work.
"Facebook has changed how people view the world. Today, a friend from any country is just a few clicks away. It brings the world together as one trusted place," said Professor B J Fogg, who ran a course called the "Psychology of Facebook" at Stanford University.
Zuckerberg launched "The facebook", as it was then known, from his Harvard dorm room in February 2004. With the aid of some friends, the aim was to help students keep in touch over the Internet and get to know each other better.
He said 1,200 Harvard students had signed up within 24 hours and soon after that the network was quickly extended to other colleges and universities.
An internal study showed that by 2005 around 85% of students in the network had a Facebook account. Another survey by Student Monitor revealed that Facebook was the most "in" thing after the iPod.
Facebook hit the UK by the end of 2005 and today the site is translated across 35 languages with another 60 in development.
Today the fastest growing demographic is 30 years old and above and more than half of the 150 million unique users are not at college.
Over 15 million users a day update their status to tell their friends what they are doing. The site also lets users upload photographs and videos, chat, make friends, meet old ones, join causes, groups, have fun and throw virtual sheep at one another.
Analyst Rob Enderle of the Enderle Group told BBC News that social networking is nowhere as big a deal as it’s going to become.
“Right now Facebook is the predominant social network, the one the other social networks want to be.”
Social networks like Facebook and MySpace are constantly pitted against one another for supremacy.
Brand consultant Phil Edelin of Wolff Olins said MySpace is like the messy teenager’s room, whereas Facebook is where people will find their parents, cousins and friends hanging out.
But he suggested Facebook needed to continue to innovate as a brand.
"It’s been through the faddish phase and is now in a sticky phase. But there are so many other social networks, it needs to stay true to its brand and innovate and create," said Edelin.
Zuckerberg, however, seems to agree.
"The challenge motivates us to keep innovating and pushing technical boundaries to produce better ways to share information," he wrote.
Facebook is still figuring out how to cash in on its 150 million users who critically spend more than two hours each day on-site. But as the pressure mounts on the Facebook team to make money, the job becomes harder amid the present economic downturn.
U.S. advertising spending on Facebook is expected to fall by 20% to $208 million, according to market research company eMarketer.
But Zuckerberg is in no particular hurry to come up with a business strategy that will translate into dollars and cents.
"We’ve thought about a number of different things, but that’s not something we’ve figured out. It’s pretty clear that we haven’t figured out the optimal way for us to do this yet."
Enderle says eventually the economic model has to grow with the rest of the firm.
"Investors will want a return on their money and in this market, investing in vapor can be very difficult. Their time is up for doing this without making money.”
Facebook needs to develop a business model soon before they find their funding sources start drying up, he added.
But Fogg believes the genius of Facebook isn’t the technology or the interface.
“Facebook is winning because it puts friends first. Our relationships shape our online experience. No technology is better than our friendships.”
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