Companies of all sizes, from multinational conglomerates to mom-and-pop shops in rural communities of just a few hundred, have settled into their own niches.

Here We Present Facebook

It didn’t take long until the first version of a brand that is now omnipresent made its debut. Thefacebook.com first went up in February of 2004. This was the same basic platform under a new moniker. There was a profile section where you could introduce yourself, list your hobbies, and make friends with like individuals. It even provided a graphical representation of your social network.

Only Harvard students could join at initially, but by the end of the first month, half of the student body had joined up. But, Zuckerberg had a major issue to address right off the off. 
Zuckerberg and his schoolmates Cameron Winklevoss, Tyler Winklevoss, and Divya Narendra had previously collaborated on a venture of a similar nature. Ultimately, he left his job to focus solely on The facebook. Yet, his former partners accuse him of stealing their ideas and have demanded payment.

Interest in Thefacebook skyrocketed after its release. Membership was made available to practically all colleges and universities in the United States and Canada by the end of 2004, and students at those institutions quickly filled the waiting list.

TheFacebook’s funding increased in May of 2005. Investments of $12.7m from Accel and $1m from venture capitalist Jim Breyer’s own wealth. The audience’s interest had sharply increased.

In August, they ditched “the” and became Facebook (the facebook.com domain was purchased for $200,000). Students from high schools, as well as workers from Apple and Microsoft, are allowed in the next month. The time had come for the firm to broaden its customer base beyond universities.

Later that month of November, Zuckerberg made some major choices for himself. After taking the semester off, he declared he was quitting Harvard for good, only coming back to recruit new staff. Zuckerberg was prepared to devote himself to operating his firm as CEO rather than programmer after receiving substantial funding and witnessing a rise in membership.

Among the best in the entire globe

Many enhancements and modifications were made the next year, including the option to favourite comments and enhanced photo tagging. The company’s price skyrocketed before the end of the year, and the number of registered users exceeded 500 million in July.

Facebook was estimated to be worth $41 billion in November of 2010. But, in that time it surpassed both Google and Amazon to become the third largest online corporation in the United States. In less than five years, all of this has been completed, and there has been no letup in productivity.

A second major landmark was accomplished the following year. According to a survey by DoubleClick, Facebook hit 1 trillion page views in June of 2011. In addition, Nielsen reported that the site was the second most popular in the United States as a whole.

Facebook Messenger was also made available as a separate app in August. This followed the March acquisition of group messaging provider Beluga by the business.

By this point, Facebook was now a household name, a widely visited website, and the undisputed leader of the social media movement. This is really good for someone who was a student only a few short years ago.

Be in the habit of constantly buying and selling.

By May, Zuckerberg had prepared Facebook for an initial public offering. In total, the market put a value of $104bn on the corporation, or $38 per share (congrats Narendra and the Winklevoss Twins). Although $161 million was successfully raised through the IPO, shaky times were ahead.

Even though Facebook’s stock value was cut in half, the IPO was plagued by claims of inappropriate behaviour by underwriters and technological difficulties. Towards the end of the same month. According to the Wall Street Journal, the initial public offering was a disaster. Losses for investors totaled $40 billion as of June 6.

Thereafter, more than 40 IPO-related lawsuits were submitted. Several people have speculated that the underwriters (Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan, and Goldman Sachs) may have behaved unethically. There were rumours that they covertly lowered revenue expectations during the IPO, and there were claims that Facebook supplied the underwriters information that caused them to sell.

There were trading issues and incorrect orders, and Facebook was accused of operating its IPO like a “pump and dump.”

As a whole, this IPO wasn’t the easiest. Sure, of course. And Facebook persisted. By October, the site had attracted its one billionth user.

Breaking into the big leagues and being submerged in hatred
Despite the many challenges that followed its first public offering in 2012, Facebook finally cracked the Fortune 500 in 2013, coming in at #462. As the corporation expanded its operations across the world, there was no longer any question as to its stature as a significant institution. Its newfound fame, however, has created some difficulties.

On the surface, a platform accessible to everybody sounds like a fantastic concept. Unhappily, “everyone” includes a lot of terrible people who relish the opportunity to spread their hatred to the widest possible audience through the medium of the internet. Facebook seems unable to handle the growing abuse and hate speech on the platform.

Facebook finally took action after receiving complaints from users and campaigns from organisations like the Everyday Sexism Project. Their moderating measures “failed to function as successfully as we’d intended,” they said on their blog. They made a number of announcements intended to address the problem:

Revision and updating of criteria for investigating accusations of hate speech

Improve the education of those who conduct these assessments.

It is important to increase responsibility for those who create “cruel and insensitive” content by requiring them to expose their genuine name.

Collaboration with existing anti-hate speech groups should be strengthened.

However, as we’ll see, this was not enough to completely eliminate the issue.