Can you believe Facebook has been apart of our lives for more than 10 years? It's the internet's main social media platform, and it was once the star of a movie, as well. The 2010 movie The Social Network told the famous story of how Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg created the website that launched social media as we currently know it. Facebook has changed in the past five years especially, adding all kinds of lists, pages, stickers, and inescapable advertising all over your newsfeed. I mean, I still remember when its URL was TheFaceboo.com, it was only open to certain schools and it wanted to know my college class schedule.
Today, more than 2 billion users worldwide use social media and Facebook has more than 1 billion users as of January 2015, according to the agency We Are Social. Facebook is no longer the, well, simple alternative college face book Zuckerberg created it to as in his college dorm room. Now, your parents use it. My parents use it. Your boss will probably friend you on it and then you'll have add them to your "professional" filter. You can check into places as if it's Foursquare in 2009, but sorry, no mayor-ships here. And then there's the whole matter of your friends getting mad at you for not liking their posts (True story of mine. Seriously).
So let's take a look at this evolution of the social network that inspired The Social Network, from 2010 until now.
2010: More Emphasis On Photos
This year still had the same old Facebook profile as we knew it, plus Likes which we had all come to like (ahem), but added more emphasis on photos. It condensed your important information at the top of the profile and included the recent photos you'd been tagged in. I remember being okay with this design, not quite knowing that Timeline would soon burst onto the scene a year later and change everything about Facebook as we knew it.
2011: Timeline!
And then, there was Timeline. I remember a lot of my friends pouting about it and refusing to make the change over. It was too weird, too new, included a giant cover image, and turned the precious Wall into a chronicle of your life. But like with all Facebook redesigns, everyone eventually got over it and accepted the change and starting stalking their exes once again.
The Ticker was also introduced, in case your newsfeed wasn't updating 'likes' and status updates fast enough. Some people didn't like this addition, but I think it's cool — especially because sometimes you'll catch updates on here that don't end up on your newsfeed due to restrictions or just that Facebook algorithm.
2012: Welcome To The Family, Instagram
To think that once upon a time, IG was a mere newbie on the social media scene. That Hipsamatic once sat on the throne of filtered images. It may have helped Instagram that it was bought by Facebook during this year and it finally released the app for Android — I remember downloading it and thinking, "Meh." Now I'm on IG All. The. Time.
This was also a big year because Facebook launched its IPO on the stock market.
2013: BIGGER PHOTOS! MORE FEELINGS!
Facebook began emphasizing photos even more by making the photos on the newsfeed display larger. Plus, Facebook to a page (ahem) from LiveJournal and began giving the choice of including activities and feelings in your status updates, like "in love" or "eating food" or "watching Pretty Little Liars."
2014: Hashtag Trending
Taking note of Twitter's inclusion of trending hashtags, Facebook decided to do the same and (gasp!) also allow hashtags to be searchable. Hashtag awesome.
Facebook Messenger also became a separate app, but that had some privacy issues, and they also debuted Paper, an app for iOS.
2015: GIFs!
Huzzah! GIFs are finally postable and fully functional on Facebook, which now allows us all to express our deepest desires on Facebook — and get more likes.
Images: Giphy (6)
