Facebook
It wasn’t created in 2007, nor is it the first or the biggest social networking site. Yet, this year, Facebook spun a web of interaction that took the world by storm, shrunk degrees of separation, spread horizons and altered the Internet as we know it. So much so that the Collins English dictionary included the word Facebook in its 2008 version.
Launched in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg to help him stay in touch with friends, the site spun out of control by mid-2006 when colleges in the US took to it with a vengeance and enrolled 7 million users. Then Yahoo decided to buy out the site for $1billion and everyone thought it had been co-opted like many before it. But when the site wasn’t sold, doomsayers across the Internet bid it adieu. Till 2007 that is.
Today, with 40 million active users and one million new users adding every week, it’s the fastest growing social network. Surprisingly, a majority of new users belong to the Net-phobic 35 years and above age group. What scripted the change was simple and revolutionary. Unlike all the social networks that preceded it, Facebook stood steadfast on privacy and authenticity. Only people who knew each other and accepted each other as friends could view each other’s profiles, send messages and interact.
Then came the applications. In 2007, Facebook became the first social network to let others develop applications on it. For users, it became a place where you could compare yourself with friends, play online games and do arcane but fun things like biting friends to zombie-hood. For developers, it created a place where they could get in touch with millions of people. The experiment was so successful that Google was forced to follow it. Today, there are over 3,200 applications that can be added and 180 new ones are developed every week.
There’s a catch though: Facebook isn’t as commercially successful as one thinks. Perhaps that too will change. Next year.