10 Game-Changing Moments That Made Facebook Unstoppable

Ten years ago, Mark Zuckerberg set out to revolutionize the web, teaming with fellow Harvard University students Andrew McCollum, Chris Hughes, Dustin Moskovitz, and Eduardo Saverin to create what is now the biggest social media platform in the world: Facebook. The coding project would evolve into an online communication service that immediately resonated with modern society and transformed into a cultural phenomenon—serving as a platform bringing people of all ages, colors, and sexes together to share their personal experiences. And like every one of its billions of users, the company’s had its fair share of instrumental moments that helped define the social network over the past decade. So in celebration on Generation Facebook Week, we invite you to log in and reminisce down memory lane, as we present the 10 Game-Changing Moments That Made Facebook Unstoppable.

GENERATION FACEBOOK WEEK CONTINUES HERE

Date: October 2005

At a time when MySpace was still relevant and restricted subscribers to only 300 photos on their profile pages, Zuckerberg and company launched its photo feature with no unlimited storage: including pics, links, and other content. It pretty much turned each user’s profile into a virtual photo collection, setting the standard for online photo sharing.

Date: May 24, 2007

Zuckerberg saw the future of web interaction and proceeded to launch the Facebook Platform—an API enabling developers’ access to build applications on top of the network and provide a social element to other sites. This opened the lane for companies like Zynga to dominate the online gaming spectrum and keep us glued to the social network for endless hours playing FarmVille and Texas Hold’em Poker. Till this day, the development hub hosts more than 50 million pages and 10 million apps.

Date: Jan. 10, 2008

Apple’s success with the iPhone and App Store prompted Facebook to look ahead and join the mobile revolution. The Facebook app brought the coveted social media experience to iOS, offering a bevy of features throughout the years: including IM, mobile photo uploads, and playing games. An iPad version soon followed, carrying over video chat and HD recording/watching capabilities. Facebook Chat pretty much encouraged us to utilize social media as our primary tool of communication, rendering BBM and texting useless for the most part.

Date: November 2008

The 2008 Presidential Election became known as the Facebook Election, as it was the first to sway all candidates to connect with voters via social networking. Barack Obama’s camp knew exactly where things were going and brought Facebook co-founder, a then 24-year-old Chris Hughes, onboard as one of the elect’s key strategists. Hughes organized an effect Web campaign that brought tons of attention to the site, leading Facebook to launch its own forum promoting online debates and team with ABC for election coverage. All momentum carried over to the mainstream public, and before we knew it, Facebook helped vote in the first African American to hold the office. #Salute

Date: August 2009

In an effort to win the battle for real-time search supremacy, Facebook purchased FriendFeed to enhance its search engine game. The acquisition remains of the company’s biggest and smartest moves, as the technology gave the platform a more diverse search system to produce Web-based results on friend(s) activity. It also welcomed some of the industry’s biggest players to the company such as the creator of Gmail and former head of Google Maps. Talk about a two-for-one steal.

Date: Feb. 6, 2011

Facebook's move to bring together two of the web’s most popular communication services served as a steppingstone that forged its relationship with Microsoft. The integration of Skype now offered FB users the ability to make voice calls and gave the site a necessary boost to compete against Google Hangouts, offering a more enhanced and seamless video messaging platform.

Date: April 9, 2012

Some say dropping $1 billion on a startup valued at nearly half the value is foolish spending. Well, Facebook’s buyout of the most popular mobile app in the world didn't only prove to be the company’s smartest acquisition to date, but it also served as the biggest in terms of reach. Aside from the proprietor closing in on one billion users, the subsidiary brought over 30 million users at the time of the buyout as well, which later turned to 100 monthly active users and 40 million photos uploaded per day. Still one of the hottest properties on the tech scene, Instagram continues to drive Facebook’s mobile goals heading into the future.

Date: May 18, 2012

So, the Facebook IPO launched much rockier than expected. Most financial analysts even labeled it the worst initial public offering of all time. But nearly two years later, no one is even discussing the so-called failure. Why is that? The firm seems to be trading at a healthier valuation—having accepted the price investors were willing to pay for stock and steering away from giving billions in an anticipated stock "pop." Seeing how its earnings were already valued at 35x just last year, some would say it all worked out and put the pressure on the competition to step into the public spectrum (*cough* Twitter).

Date: Oct. 4, 2012

It took Facebook a few years to log in 100 million subscribers back in 2008. Five years later, the social network increased its active user base to 1 billion, a ginormous milestone for any social network or website to achieve. What’s even crazier is the statistics show over 70 percent of the total user base accesses Facebook through a mobile device. See, the power of social media does stretch across all generations and platforms.

Date: Jan. 15, 2013

Zuckerberg learned the power and value of data during his programming years at Harvard. So, after introducing the News Feed and Timeline, he proceeded to launch the third pillar of the info-structure known as the Graph Search. The feature generates search results consisting of companies, products, and places that users share a connection to through their contacts, making it a valuable marketing tool for businesses to connect with potential customers. In other words, Facebook is ready to optimize our online shopping needs based what friends likes. Dynamism on another level.