By: JP Chabot
Ten years ago, Facebook began as a drunken notion proposed by Mark Zuckerberg while chatting with his friends, when he mentioned that he liked comparing photos of people to other people and animals. He set up a site to encourage people to vote on the comparisons. For the next few years it slowly rose to prominence as a website used mostly by university students who shared photos and comments with the blogging tool.
Originally Facebook was exclusive to university students and a few businesses, but in September 2006 it became available to the public. Compared to more dedicated blogging tools like Livejournal, Facebook was small potatoes and not particularly profitable. That began to change in March 2008, when it switched to using an abundance of advertising to make money.
From there, the gears further shifted and Facebook began acquiring more social networking technology from other companies, growing in size, power and utility.
Today you’re practically a non-person if you don’t have some sort of digital footprint. Major companies and public figures all have Facebook pages advertising their wares and news through the service. The handy Facebook icon is ubiquitous and can be found on the front pages of more websites than can be counted.
Ten years after its birth, Facebook rules the real world almost as much as it rules the Internet.
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