The triumphs and failures of the social network that made you stare at the screen

The site, which was designed to directly share all the good, bad and most intimate things about life, became an almost instant hit. Barely a month after its birth, it was already open to students from other well-established academic centers and, by the summer of the same year, the eyes of Silicon Valley luminaries were already fixed on Page and his father. . They came in with million-dollar investments; And Zuckerberg eventually decided to leave his books in a corner, take a plane to California, and settle in Palo Alto, where he devoted himself to growing his fledgling company. And all on the forced march. You had to move quickly. break everything. so this was it,

2010: Harvard alumnus recognized as ‘Time’s Person of the Year’. 2012: Facebook breaks the 1 billion users mark. Instagram comes. whatsapp comes, The website becomes a technological emporium and the lives of all of us – or almost all of us – change at a rapid pace. Now, 20 years after the birth of the germ of the ‘monster’ that is Meta today, you only have to look back and spend a little time remembering what your daily life was like in the first half of the century to realize this. Before smartphones, viral videos and photos of perfect meals eaten by perfect looking people.

Today, thanks to Facebook and the accompanying Facebook, you have the opportunity to be permanently updated about the situation in which your loved ones find themselves. It’s also possible that you’ve found content creators on this ‘app’, or others, who upload things that you like or even inspire you. But, at the same time, it is also quite possible that the social network caused you problems. Because Facebook is not a blame-free story., But come on, not even close. There is scope for failure and loss. Also for betrayal of user trust.

Easier than MySpace

Facebook was not the first social network in history. Before this, it was already possible to find other tools on the Internet such as MySpace (2003) or, bridging the gap, Windows Messenger (1999), which allowed users to communicate and share content. But Facebook was a different thing; It puts the user directly at the center of the conversation and besides, you don’t have to be an Internet veteran to make the most of it.

«The Internet user on Facebook was the protagonist from the beginning. Both that and his life. Everything was based on the publications that were made,” Fernando Checa, director of the Social Media master’s degree at the International University of La Rioja, tells ABC.

“It was easy to use and had less options. Every MySpace was customizable, and there came the problem, it was missing a single parameter. The expert adds, “Zuckerberg has made the configuration very limited and simple.” And he is right. Everything on Facebook was based on the publication of images and videos. Boards were where you could see posts made by your friends. It even became the quintessential place to reconnect with people from whom you had drifted apart. In the first decade of the century this, which has become so common now, seemed almost like magic.

The experience of using social networks also focused on the consumption of content from each person’s contacts. From friends and family, come, and it almost stops counting. On board were photos of birthdays, restaurant trips and family vacations at the beach. Smaller currency and fewer artifacts. No filter. But this gradually changed, as trade became dominant.

Free, but not that free

Zuckerberg was clear from the beginning: Facebook had to be free for the user. And by free it is understood that the Internet user did not have to pay a single euro to be able to use the service without any restrictions. But that’s it. Because what is said to be free is not free. Zuckerberg doesn’t give anything.

On Facebook you pay, but you pay with data, You pay with the information you filled in when registering: your age, your gender, your place of residence. As well as with the content you upload, the pages you follow and the publications you ‘click’ on. Everything is measured. And that information is used to build your profile and enable us to target advertising to you based on your preferences. It was the same in the first decade of the century and it is the same even now.

But the start-up was not entirely easy, however, 20 years later, Page, and especially the company, show as much financial strength as ever. It was difficult for Zuckerberg to find the key to making the business viable. “The company’s number of users was growing rapidly, but it spent time not being profitable. It was hard to figure out how to leverage advertising and get advertisers to trust the project,” says Cheka.

Things slowly started changing. In 2007 Facebook launched its targeted advertising platform. It went public in 2012. Its conversion to a public company was somewhat complicated at the initial stage due to listing problems, although it did not take long for the business to take off on a permanent basis. The company also expanded by adding other parts like Instagram or WhatsApp. Nowadays, if you have a smartphone, it is very difficult not to use the Zuckerberg application in your daily life.

User is no longer the center

With the discovery of economic benefits, the experience of using Facebook changed. The Board, above all, stopped collecting content published by friends of the Internet user on duty. Instead, sponsored posts from brands and posts launched by third parties, which might be of interest according to the site’s algorithm, began to be promoted. The goal started out being to keep your eyes glued to the screen for as long as possible.

Too ‘Influential people’ started arriving. “In a very simple way, anyone started getting the opportunity to stand out. Before, it was impossible if you weren’t an athlete or an artist. People bought the idea and then it was developed even more on other sites, both in the company (Instagram) and in the competition (TikTok), “Ferran Lalueza, expert in social networks and professor of communications at the university, explained. Newspaper. Oberta of Catalonia.

Cambridge Analytics

Facebook is not Apple. And Zuckerberg knows it. Your social network and your company are far from the reputation of the Apple company. During this period the company made many big mistakes. The most egregious, perhaps, was the Cambridge Analytica (CA) scandal. Theoretically, the firm used the data of millions of Facebook users to benefit Donald Trump’s presidential candidacy in the 2016 US elections. And it was all based on fake news, very well targeted, thanks to information from the site.

The exploitation of Facebook for electoral purposes continued in subsequent years. In 2020, a former social network engineer named Sophie Zhang shared that the company had detected several disinformation campaigns aimed at manipulating electoral processes in several countries around the world, and yes, Spain was among those affected . “The truth is that we didn’t care at all about stopping them,” said the former social network worker.

He also said he had “blood on his hands,” which is exactly what Zuckerberg told the United States Congress in the middle of this week. But not because of Cambridge Analytica, but because of a more recent scandal.

Scams continue

Cambridge Analytica (CA) burst in 2018 and since then, the social network has been under the scrutiny of regulators. Facebook had a bad reputation, and it got worse as time went on. In late 2021, former Facebook employee Francis Haugen shared internal Facebook reports that suggested a lack of genuine interest on the platform’s part in moderating content and controlling misinformation. And also in relation to protecting young children from the most harmful effects of social networks on their mental health.

For example, in the leaked documents, you can see that the company was well aware that it was worsening the mental health of the 30% of teenagers who feel bad about their body or their appearance. He did nothing to solve it. At least, until everything is out and new security features start launching. At this time there were people who tried to guide the company to find a solution to the problem, such as former executive Arturo Béjar, who returned to the company to help improve the experience of the little guys. They accomplished nothing, as Béjar himself explained to ABC a few months ago.

call it meta

Facebook’s brand suffered a lot due to CA’s involvement and the leaking of the company’s internal data. Just weeks after the Francis Haugen scandal, the company changed its name to Meta, thereby ignoring Zuckerberg’s commitment to the company as a leader in building the new digital world known as Meta. metaverse, A future reality that, for the moment, seems more like a fantasy than anything else.

old user

The leak of internal documents also revealed the company’s concerns about the aging of Facebook’s user base. And obviously also because of the rapid growth of TikTok.

According to data from the latest Pew Research report: Teens, Social Media and Technology 2023, ten years ago, the proportion of teens using Facebook was 71%, and currently it is 33%. The app is almost more of a place for mothers and grandmothers of children than for children. At least in Spain. The profile of the national internet user who is a Facebook user is actually female (53.4%), married (8.76%) and between 40 and 64 years of age (50.6%).

Over the past few years, Facebook has tried to reverse the situation by making some minor changes to the application and making it more similar to tools like Instagram. But this is still not enough to grab the attention of the youth. “They will definitely make more changes in the future and they are preparing for an important revolution.” “I have no doubt,” Cheka says.

but finally succeeded

Despite aging users, frequent scandals, and increasing competition, Facebook remains the quintessential social network. Great reference for everyone else to follow. At least that’s what the statistics say. This platform has more than 3,000 million monthly users and is the most used, Even by the Spanish. Over 33 million unique monthly users are from our country and they dedicate an average of 9 hours and 13 minutes per month to the application. Furthermore, regarding its daily usage, it has been observed that more than 20 million people use it every day. This is all according to digital consumption analysis firm GfK DAM.