Anesa Opijač
Case study: Facebook.com
Facebook is a social-networking website free of charge created to make people’s lives easier and to help them socialize better. Users can share their photos, personal information, post comments and links to other web content, chat live and more. It became the largest social network in the world having more than one billion users as of 2012, from which half of that number uses Facebook on a daily basis. The company’s headquarters are in Menlo Park, California.
Facebook headquarters
Early years
A 23-year-old psychology student from Harvard, Mark Zuckerberg, founded “The Facebook” in the year of 2004. Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes are considered co-founders.
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Zuckerberg was very interested in computer programming and had already developed numerous applications and (social-networking) websites for his colleagues. Some of the websites are “Coursematch” – it allowed users to see which people were taking their degree, and “Facemash” – a site with a purpose of rating people’s attractiveness.
Zuckerberg’s net worth is 63.4 billion USD
The Facebook, as it was originally known, was founded on the 4th of February 2004. Within 24 hours, 1,200 Harvard students had signed up, and a month later, over half of the undergraduate students had a profile. It was solely created for Harvard students and only those having a Harvard email address were able to sign up. Those who signed up could post their photos and personal information, such as their class, clubs they were a part of, and schedules. Later on, as its popularity increased, the network was extended to other Boston universities, the prestigious Ivy League, and eventually all universities in the United States.
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Less than five months later, more than 250,000 students from 34 schools had signed up; then it began to spread worldwide, reaching UK universities the following month. Moreover, at same year major corporations started paying for exposure on the site.
After the address was purchased for $200,000 in August 2005, it changed the name and became Facebook.com – “it became simply Facebook and introduced the idea of “tagging” people in photos that were posted to the site. With tags, people identified themselves and others in images that could be seen by other Facebook friends. Facebook also allowed users to upload an unlimited number of photos. By year’s end it had six million monthly active users”.
In the year to come, the network extended beyond educational institutions and became available to anyone with any kind of a registered email address. The site has always been free to join and use, but it makes a profit by running ads and getting advertising revenue.
Many companies, including Google and Yahoo have showed interest in a buy- out, but Mr. Zuckerberg has so far refused to sell the company although £975m have been on the table.
The biggest concern
For more than a decade now, Facebook has been acquiring companies and collecting user information. One of the most recent and most famous scandals is so-called The Cambridge Analytica Scandal. The Guardian and The New York Times reported that data on up to 87m users had been gathered through “This is Your Digital Life” app. People were using this app for fun, but it soon collected a huge
3 Anesa Opijač amount of data not only of the users of the app, but of their Facebook friends too. That information was used for political purposes and to support some campaigns – including that one of Donald Trump and in support of Brexit. After the incident, all eyes were on Cambridge Analytica and Facebook. People were angry and many investigated how to deactivate their Facebook accounts. This search shows just how worried people were.
“Delete Facebook” search trend
Facebook today
Even today data and privacy concerns are still apparent. People also worry that Facebook might manipulate and sway future political events. However, Facebook announced that it had disabled 1.3b fake accounts in the past year. They also said they don’t record or listen to calls, but end-to-end encryption won’t be used any time soon, giving the possibility to authorities receiving access to calls.
When it comes to the revenue, the timeline below shows Facebook's quarterly revenues as of the fourth quarter of 2018. The social network's total revenues
4 Anesa Opijač amounted to 16.9 billion U.S. dollars in the most recently reported period, and the majority of it was generated through advertising.
Facebook revenue
Companies owned by Facebook
Here are the top four (out of the many) companies that Mark Zuckerberg has acquired. If connected to Facebook, these apps can use information such as names, usernames, photos, and even some other public information like gender and age.
Messenger • The new and improved version of Facebook Chat • Works on iPhone, Windows, and Android devices • Allows both video and voice-calls
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• If PayPal login information or credit card number is provided, users can send money on the app
• Bought by Facebook when it only had 30 million users back in 2012 • Facebook got it for $1 billion in cash and stock, • Four months later, they updated the app privacy policy • Anything posted on the app is being collected by this photo-sharing app, and that information is shared by business partners and those that “provide Instagram to you”
• Purchased in 2014 • Besides giving it access to their account information and contacts, users agree to give additional information such as usage and connection information
Oculus
• Also acquired in 2014 • It collects information shared between its users – information such as names, phone numbers, emails, and ages. Moreover, the company also notes information on a user's device type, location, IP address and more.
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