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YOUR FRIENDS' ACTIVITY

    Facebook Turns 8, And Together We've Grown

    By Brian Anthony Hernandez | Mashable – Sat, Feb 4, 2012

    I've been on Facebook for 2,561 days, having joined during the first year of its existence and my first year of college.

    As the world's largest social network turns 8 years old today, millions of people will reflect on the impact Facebook has had on their lives, however big or small that impact may be.

    [More from Mashable: Olapic’s Crowd-Sourced Photo Campaigns Becoming a Sports Trend]

    My Facebook experience mirrors yours in many facets.

    We've changed our relationship statuses, sometimes more than we can remember. We've flipped through our tagged photos, every once in awhile untagging the ones we now deem unfavorable. We've seen friends' last names change, with their marriages followed by offspring. We've said goodbye to fellow Facebook users, our friends whose Walls -- and now Timelines -- have become digital memorials. We cried. We smiled. We tell our stories.

    [More from Mashable: Facebook IPO: Test Your Knowledge [QUIZ]]

    Just shy of its second birthday on Feb. 4, 2005, Facebook saw me register for an account on Jan. 30.

    Back then, Facebook was only for college students. I was 18, living in a dorm at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln. I didn't own a computer or a laptop, and smartphones as we know them today didn't exist, so I accessed Facebook on campus computers.

    Facebook became a hobby, something I would check every so often and not every day like I do now. But as more faces jumped onto the service -- first high school students, then anyone over 13, then my mom (Hi Mom, I hope you "Like" this story!) -- I began to rely on it more. I replaced my physical scrapbooks, which I routinely updated in high school, with an online database of memories: 161 photo albums and 28 videos.

    SEE ALSO: Turn Your Facebook Timeline Into a Movie

    In 2006, a year after Pete Cashmore introduced the world to Mashable, Facebook unveiled Notes. I used them as my first crack at blogging. Since then, I've used Notes to showcase my celebrity look-a-likes in 2006, reveal some intimate thoughts about turning 21 and listening to Kelly Clarkson's "Sober" in Milwaukee in 2007, as well as describe my encounter with a suicidal man while living in Phoenix in 2009.

    Notes ignited content sharing on Facebook so much -- and so early on -- that media organizations began opening their eyes to the site's potential to bring more readers to their stories. Being in journalism school, this piqued my interest immensely. Facebook capitalized on that revelation by launching a Share button just months after Notes came out. Early adopters of the feature such as The New York Times, Sports Illustrated and The Onion continue to reap the benefits of social sharing and the significant referral traffic it attracts.

    A year later in 2007, early signs of Facebook trumping MySpace as the go-to social network surfaced. I never really got into MySpace, but the chatter about this topic among friends who avidly used it became frequent and intense. Again, Facebook pounced on this opportunity to dethrone MySpace as social king with a redesign, which involved ditching its trademark "Facebook Guy" logo.

    That same year, the first rumblings of a possible Facebook IPO made their way into headlines. CEO Mark Zuckerberg squashed the rumors, but on Feb. 1, 2012, Facebook filed for a $5 billion IPO. Zuckerberg in 2007 wanted to focus on development, and then along came a mobile version of Facebook, specifically for iPhone.

    2008 was the year Facebook unleashed its Chat feature, expanded its global reach by adding more languages, and overtook MySpace based on monthly unique visitors. For me, Facebook Chat eventually pushed aside my other instant-messaging applications. A major redesign then merged our Walls and Mini-Feeds.

    Facebook rolled out Usernames in 2009, allowing us to sign up for custom URLs (here's mine). In 2010, a new Feature called Facebook Messages let me create an @Facebook.com email address. Facebook Messages integrated my email, IM and text messages into one inbox.

    Just last year, my Facebook experience began to transform tremendously. First, Facebook Chat gave us voice-calling capabilities and Skype-powered video chat. Then, I enabled the new Subscribe feature, which allowed anybody to subscribe to my personal profile and see anything I share publicly. And most notably, some of our profiles evolved into Timelines (see the changes in the gallery below).

    SEE ALSO: Facebook Reveals 2011′s Most-Popular Status Trends

    Somewhere in between all of those changes, I sent virtual Gifts, I Poked some of you, I cringed at the ads that first appeared in 2006, I scoured the Marketplace for any gems, and I used the apps developed within the open-source Facebook Platform.

    Now it's election year 2012, and politicians more than ever are using Facebook and other tools to grab our attention and sway our votes. If social networks could run for office, I'd vote for Facebook because of all the things I just mentioned.

    Together, we've grown. Happy birthday, Facebook. Good luck, Zuck and the gang. Thanks for enriching my life.

    What are your fondest memories of using Facebook? When did you join the social network?

    BONUS: Your Profile Has Looked Throughout the Years

    2005 - The Facebook

    Back in the days when The Facebook was only available to select networks, the News Feed didn't exist. Users hopped between profiles like this one.

    Click here to view this gallery.

    This story originally published on Mashable here.

     

    16 comments

    • Euno17
      Euno17  •  3 mths ago
      Facebook is a fad and like Myspace - it will eventfully fade away. It's a social networking site. It's not the first social hang-out and it won't be the last. People have moved from each social venture as technology continues to progress. I remember when AOL chat-rooms were the big internet places to hang-out and socialize. The Facebook is the 'hot-spot/big-thing' right now, but who's to say that there won't be another evolutionary/better site to knock Face-book off as FB did to myspace? and in a very generalized kind of statement - Time shall always be our enemy - ergo sooner or later everything shall end - that doesn't exclude facebook.

      "What are your fondest memories of using Facebook? When did you join the social network?"

      Jesus, did the author really use those questions to end the article? Does anyone have 'fond' memories of using technology?
    • Streetrod
      Streetrod  •  Tulsa, Oklahoma  •  3 mths ago
      Facebook jockeys have permanently traded their privacy for a little taste of celebrity status.
    • captain flatulence
      captain flatulence  •  3 mths ago
      I give it another 2 years and FB will go the way of myspace. The IPO will make a handful of people very wealthy if they get in and get out.
      One day the millions of users will wake up and realize how it is just a huge harvesting mechanism for advertisers.
    • a Yahoo! User
      a Yahoo! User  •  3 mths ago
      I joined FB twice and never saw the point in connecting with people from the past or don't know. Maybe if you are young and single you can use it to pick people up? I have an ego, like everyone else but, don't feel the need to post what I'm doing every 5 minutes.
    • BR549
      BR549  •  3 mths ago
      So, you have wasted 2,561 days of your life, I'm not sure that is something to be proud of.
    • Sa Ad
      Sa Ad  •  Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia  •  3 mths ago
      babi
    • Nash Savoy
      Nash Savoy  •  Amherst, Massachusetts  •  3 mths ago
      Together we've grown? I would say, in relation to FB, together we've become inhibited. I realize the author of this article is far more advanced than I am in matters of technology. At the same time, I realize he is young and naturally inexperienced in life. Life experience can, if one is open to it, provide wisdom that supersedes technology. Technology and its various offspring such as FB can serve a reasonable, but limited purpose. It is impossible for it to replace genuine, human interaction - except as a mere a counterfeit. The profound and vital benefits of real, live interaction - nourishing our senses and fine tuning our basic, human skills is something which simply cannot be duplicated behind a digital screen. To believe or espouse otherwise is 100 percent deceptive. We are raising socially inept, unstable, addicted, and disordered children in today's world. It isn't so much that the world is so terrible. It is because you cannot be prepared for the world when your skills to do so have been oppressed or under nourished by compulsively hiding behind a device. It is sad, really. Anyway, all that to make a point that we're "growing" in the wrong direction.
    • Paulina
      Paulina  •  Waterloo, Iowa  •  3 mths ago
      I hate facebook because once you are stupid enough to sign on, there is virtually no way to disconnect from it.

      There is supossedly an option to opt out of facebook and stop getting messages, but that is a lie. I tried this 3 weeks ago, and am still getting messages from people I don't even know to add me to their friends list.

      I can only conclued that facebook's owners and operators are liars and are well on the way to owning all of the idiots that continue to use it.
    • William S
      William S  •  Las Vegas, Nevada  •  3 mths ago
      FOOLS FACEBOOK!
    • Jason
      Jason  •  Vestal, New York  •  3 mths ago
      no u havent growen at all. u have regressed.
    • j ringo
      j ringo  •  3 mths ago
      in a recent report it was said that 40+ % of divorces have "facebook" somewhere in the papers as a part of why they are divorcing. hell if anyone from Your past was worth getting back with you would have never split up. I personally could never see the use for facebook. unless you want to use it as a catalog of info for your business. the original intent is long gone now your just putting personal content in the internet that will outlast you.
    • j ringo
      j ringo  •  3 mths ago
      facebook will turn like the Bulletin boards, forums and "link lists" before it into just another marketing tool for spammers. Ebay started as a place where the average person could sell the shirt of their back and make a fair chunk of change, these dayus unless you are a wholesaler from China, willing to sell for pennies or just have something "really cool" ebay is a waste of time as far as making it worth while to sell. like ebay, the average facebook user, now that big money is involved will just become a source of income one way or another.
    • william
      william  •  3 mths ago
      "I've been on Facebook for 2,561 days, having joined during the first year of its existence and my first year of college."

      Gee - if only I were 20 years younger...then maybe I'd say, "Like - OH...MY...GAWD! Can you, like...BELIEVE IT?!?!"
    • A Yahoo! User  •  3 mths ago
      Facebook is an invasion of your own privacy, which you have inflicted upon yourself.
    • Vicky
      Vicky  •  3 mths ago
      Oh how sweet it is
    • Torrell
      Torrell  •  San Diego, California  •  3 mths ago
      These are disgusting storys.
     Post a comment
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