10 Years of Facebook

Can it really be just 10 years since Facebook launched? It feels like it’s been around forever, and many of us use it daily – often several times on a day thanks to apps on our smartphones and tablets.

Today Low End Mac’s staff takes a look at Facebook, what it does right, where the competition has an edge, and more.

Screen Shot 2014-02-04 at 15.32.15Simon Royal: What did we fill our time with before Facebook? I joined back in 2007 and then it was still a bit nerdy. Over the last 6 years it has exploded in to one of the most integrated social media sites. It has become a brilliant way to keep in touch with family and friends worldwide.

The way it links to other pages, the way you can share information and the way you can use it to join groups for discussion has propelled it from geek to cool. Companies also jumped on it and use it for advertising and promotion purposes.

Bringing it to mobile devices was a swift move. I for one instantly answer each notification as it pops up on my phone. The chat feature has made a move in to the SMS market, with most devices having a data connection when out and about, you can use it as messaging service reaching people without knowing their telephone number.

My kids has recently adopted it as a method of speaking to their friends without incuring SMS costs.

Where other media sites such as MySpace and Bebo have risen and faded, Facebook shows no sign of slipping with Google+ beings it only real competition, but try as I might I just cannot get to grips with it. Twitter is a different style, more of a news feed provider.

I love Facebook  – whether its sharing pictures of cats with captions or chatting to overseas friends I spend a lot of my day using it in some form.

Dan Knight: I’ve been on Facebook since November 10, 2008. It started as a way to keep in touch with friends from church and family – and Low End Mac staffers. I added a Low End Mac page on December 8, 2008, and the Low End Mac group page for discussions (Facebook won’t let me determine the date the group was formed).

Facebook and Twitter are the primary methods we use to promote Low End Mac. We also use LinkedIn, Google Plus, and sometimes Pinterest, but none have the impact of Facebook and Twitter. I jokingly refer to Google Plus as anti-social media. :-)

Facebook helped me get in touch with friends from the past, including some college friends from 30+ years ago. It’s a wonderful tool, especially when you learn how to set your privacy settings and block the mean people.

What do you think about Facebook on its 10th anniversary?

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One thought on “10 Years of Facebook

  1. It’s only been ten years? Ugh.

    Maybe the next decade will show us some actually useful technology that lets us stay in touch rather than the veneer of communication that social networking gives us.

    Social networking is like the the public transportation of the internet, really. It has some benefits (I have a facebook profile so I can use the universal login) but relying on it feels cheap to me. You can only go where it takes you and you can’t drive in your underwear.

    The interwebs used to be democratizing, but thanks to this crap it’s more mess spoonfed by corporate beancounters.

    Meh. Here’s to ten years that all those talented engineers could have been doing something worthwhile.

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