I have done quite some reading about the birth of this website and its evolution into one of the most visited websites on the planet today and I cannot help but be in awe. I mean, look at the facts here people: A 19 year old ‘computer geek’ launches a small website out of his Harvard dorm in 2004 and within 6 years, the website sits at the top of the ‘social networking’ bunch of websites, enjoys the loyalty of 57 million (and growing at the rate of 250,000 new members each day) users from across the globe, is worth $82.29 billion as of today and is one of the biggest internet companies in the world. Those numbers are really hard to ignore and one can’t help but gawk at them, like I do.
The popularity of the website has been rising and does not see any signs of slowing down. As if this was not enough- the movie ‘The Social Network’ which was based on the story of birth of Facebook went on to become one of the favorites of the critics and also earned a total of eight Oscar nominations. The movie that shows the founder of Facebook – Mark Zuckerberg in grey shades though out the movie, engulfed in lawsuits almost as soon as Facebook is launched and as a crude and unsocializing person, has even become one of the frontrunners for this year’s Oscars. The movie, even though about computer programming and coding doesn’t really have an awkward moment filled with techie-gobbledygook. It is fast and ruthless and has some great performances by the lead actors which only compliments the movie’s credibility.
The success of the movie, which hardly showed anything good about Mark Zuckerberg didn’t even manage to put a dent into the company’s image and Facebook continues to encompass the internet and its population. On the contrary, people like my parents who were unaware what Facebook and the whole ‘social-networking’ ruckus was about now know about it. And like them, more people who earlier didn’t know about Facebook now do know about it, ultimately ending up at the website’s gates to become a member and start their ‘socializing’.
Adding another feather to the cap, and again boosting Facebook’s image, was Mark Zuckerberg being named the ‘Person of the Year’ by TIME magazine or the year 2010. He beat out competition from the likes of Hamid Karzai- the President of Afghanistan and Julian Assanage- the controversial founder of the international whistle blowing Wikileaks organization.
Zuckerberg has been described as a torchbearer for a whole generation and I cannot disagree with that. He has managed to connect a twelfth of the world’s population though his single website, and has more or less, changed the way people interact and relate with each other today. We had heard of couch potatoes, bookworms, video-game addicts and soon might have to come up with a new term for people addicted to facebook. Maybe ‘facebookED’ might be a good term to describe that. Not giving a Facebook account today is scorned upon by teenagers and can lead you to being ‘unfriend’ed from society itself. Words like ‘Poke’, ‘Tag’ and ‘Unfriend’ have shot to fame because of this social-networking behemoth. Facebook has provided a new method of socializing and it’s all on the internet. The person doesn’t even need to get up from his laptop, doesn’t need to shake hands (can instead just ‘poke’) and doesn’t even need to be in the same room as the person he’s meeting with -to be able to socialize.
It took me a couple of hours to finish writing this article, which included researching all the facts and figures related to Facebook. And am eager to see if there has been any activity on my Facebook page or whether anyone has ‘liked’ my latest profile picture. So with that, I am sub-consciously directing your attention to your own Facebook pages. Go get ‘Facebook’ed!!
