Happy Birthday, Facebook: 16 facts you didn’t know about Mark Zuckerberg’s billion-dollar company
Did you know that the reason for Facebook’s blue-white colour combination is that Founder Mark Zuckerberg is red-green colourblind? Take a look at more fun facts about the social networking giant.
Facebook is today a billion-dollar company. The man behind the internet giant, 35-year-old Mark Zuckerberg has an estimated net worth of $77.8 billion, according to Forbes. If you think this number is astonishing, wait for its user base. Every month, around 2.5 billion users log on to the social media platform, leading to a revenue increase of 25 percent in the final three months of last year.
Zuckerberg’s company, undoubtedly one of the leading tech companies in Silicon Valley, is counted among the Big Four with Amazon, Apple, and Google. And to think of it, it all started with a game-changing innovation from a dorm room at Harvard University.
A Harvard graduate, Zuckerberg along with a few of his friends had come up with the idea for the social networking platform some 16 years ago. What started out as a tool for university students to connect and communicate with each other, is now a global phenomenon, even inspiring an Academy Award-winning movie called The Social Network.
Officially, February 4 is recognised as the day Facebook was launched. And to celebrate the occasion, YourStory has compiled a list of 16 fun facts on Facebook’s 16th birthday.
- All you movie buffs are bound to know this – before Facebook came into being, Zuckerberg had incepted Facemash, a rather dubious platform that rated women in the campus based on their hotness.
- David Fincher’s 2010 film, The Social Network, drew a direct connect between Facemash and the early origins of Thefacebook.com or what is now known simply as Facebook (the ‘The’ was eventually dropped). But Zuckerberg has denied this claim, saying that Facemash “actually has nothing to do with Facebook." .
Behind what seemed like a cloud of binary codes, it was actor Al Pacino’s face that graced the front page of Facebook.
- The last time we checked Real Madrid star Cristiano Ronaldo held the title of the “most-liked” page on Facebook; before him, it was Colombian singer Shakira. Although of late Zuckerberg’s team has been experimenting with hiding the “Like” feature on its family of apps.
- Guess what, you cannot block Mark Zuckerberg on Facebook.
If you are in China, you won’t be able to access Facebook. The ban has been in place since 2009 and prohibits people from using the social media site along with a bunch of other US-based platforms like Google and Dropbox.
- Facebook’s “Like” button was launched in 2009, a feature that saw further addition in 2016 in the form of reaction buttons, including “love”, “haha”, “sad”, “wow”, and “angry”.
- Since it’s launch in 2004, the tech company has made a slew of acquisitions, including the news-making deal with WhatsApp (in 2014) and Instagram (in 2012). Currently, the company has even rolled out its branding on its family of apps.
- In 2018, Facebook Founder Mark Zuckerberg found himself in the eye of the storm over data misuse. He was facing slack from every corner over the controversial Cambridge Analytica scandal, which led him to testify before Congress.
- Over 600,000 attempts are made to hack Facebook every day.
- More women than men are a fan of the social media platform, with nearly 76 percent of Facebook’s user base being female.
What’s more eye-grabbing than a royal wedding? When Prince Harry and Meghan Markle got married in 2018, around 42 million people are said to have posted something or other on the occasion.
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- Cannot keep track of time when on Facebook? Then, the company's activity tracker tool is just right for you to keep a track of time spent on the site.
- Political advertising has been a major bane for the internet company. Recently, because of a “flood of false information allowed in its political advertising,” bestselling horror novelist Stephen King quit Facebook. Guess who else is not there on Facebook? Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Apple Co-founder Steve Wozniak.
Facebook is high on the use of virtual reality. With the acquisition of Oculus VR in 2014, the company has made major strides towards introducing this feature in a variety of ways, including the 360-degree videos.
- Despite a slew of controversies, the social media giant stands tall. In the coming years, the company is planning on making investments in the technology startups in India.
(Edited by Teja Lele Desai)
