Facebook Turns 17, Celebrates It With a Custom Animation About Friendship

Fb turns 17 at present, February 4, and is celebrating its annual milestone “Mates Day” with a customized animation wordmark that speaks of friendship and inclusion. The animation reveals a lady sporting a scarf and a younger boy connecting through Fb and exchanging messages, loaded with pleasant emoji, to point out the size and breadth of the social media firm’s success within the final 17 years. The large that Fb is at present began as a school community for Harvard College college students in 2004 by a 19-year-old Mark Zuckerberg, alongside together with his school mates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes. Most of this story was explored within the film The Social Community, however within the years since, the corporate had grown to be virtually omnipresent; with a number of well-liked providers together with WhatsApp and Instagram, and has drawn large criticism for spreading misinformation and hate, other than its acknowledged mission of connecting folks.

Facebook at present has an estimated 2.6 billion monthly active users worldwide with over 241 million users in India. Over time, it has created and bought a number of services, together with Messenger, WhatsApp, Instagram, and Oculus which have turned it right into a social media conglomerate catering to a rising on-line inhabitants. WhatsApp, for example, has an estimated 1.5 billion customers on this planet with over 400 million in India alone. Instagram has over 800 million users worldwide.

Alongside the best way, the corporate has additionally gotten into a number of controversy. Most just lately, a WhatsApp privacy policy update talked about sharing consumer knowledge with Fb’s different services spiralled into an argument. Fb can be at the moment locked in a battle with the Australian authorities over paying media retailers for the information that drives site visitors to its platforms.

However the largest controversy surrounding Fb to date has been the Cambridge Analytica scandal that had Zuckerberg depose earlier than the US Parliament to elucidate how consumer knowledge of 87 million Fb customers could possibly be mined for political promoting. The US regulators just lately settled the information privateness scandal with Fb after enforcing a fine of $5 billion (roughly Rs. 38,159 crores).

At 17 years of age, Fb will be stated to be on the cusp of maturity. With Amazon boss Jeff Bezos stepping out of the CEO’s chair, and Google’s founders additionally not actively concerned within the day-to-day selections of the corporate anymore, Zuckerberg is among the few large tech founders of the early 2000s nonetheless within the sizzling seat.

Earlier on Thursday it held a gathering to debate its policies on misinformation, and it continues to develop at a speedy clip, and is at present one of many largest gamers in what could possibly be the way forward for know-how — digital actuality.

Does WhatsApp’s new privateness coverage spell the tip in your privateness? We mentioned this on Orbital, our weekly know-how podcast, which you’ll be able to subscribe to through Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, or RSS, download the episode, or simply hit the play button under.