This year People magazine choose Mark Zuckerberg to be the person of the year of 2010.  Facebook launched 7 years ago from Zuckerberg’s dorm room.  In 7 years Facebook has grown from college students to high school students to an international presence.  Facebook had their 500th million user this year.  Thats almost 2x the population of the U.S.  Recently Goldman Sachs invested 500 million dollars into the social giant and completed a valuation of it to be 50 Billion dollars.  Did Zuckerberg ever think his idea to connect students across the country would turn into America’s most valuable investment of the new century?

As a person that is highly interested in technology and also working in the IT field,  I have always had ideas but never applied them.  I have noted that Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg – never graduated, but its their drive to create intriguing applications that engage the users.  Always found the original ESPN motion to be the coolest thing out there and then you see a site like youtube launched followed by copy cats and ones building on the idea such as Vimeo.  But Facebook is different.  With Facebook it wasn’t the starter.  With average popularity there was Friendster that was launched 2 years prior to Facebook.  And then there was My Space that was launched in Aug of 2003.  Also before Facebook.  Its clear that limiting the user base on Facebook was probably the best thing that happen to the site.  By 2005 you were hoping that your university was on the list of schools allowed to access Facebook.  I remember having conversations with students and their reason of liking facebook over myspace, “MySpace anyone can join, Facebook is controlled an I like that.”

By 2006 Facebook broaden its boarders and opened it up to highschool students.  The establishment of the brand was unbelievable.  Facebook has become a way of life.  Facebook became so big that Mark even earned a movie for himself (most of is fictional) Facebook continues to innovate and provide tools to connect users and media together.

List of some of Facebook features that changed everything

1. This one is the most apparent one – The Like Button. Similar to digg. The ability to share everyday media from blogs, video sites, etc with the people we connect with everyday.  Prior to ‘The Like Button’ – It was popular to see blog sites like betabuzz have social sharing buttons like for digg or for reditt but not all sites had them.  The Like button is featured on popular news sites like NYTimes to CNN.

2. Status Updates – The ability to share a link, embedded video, pictures, or just whatever is on your mind.  I’ve had full conversations with people just on statuses!

3. Feeds – Social Feed is huge for Facebook. You can see what your friends are doing sharing to connect.  Liking a blog site such as Engadget enables you to get the RSS feed that you usually get on your google reader, you get it on your Facebook feeds.  I found that I read almost 2x more since the Like button linked RSS feeds.

4. Facebook API - Facebook also has given opportunity to web app developers.  With offering a Facebook API.  User/Developers can create their software/game for Facebook.  Remember when you use to go on shockwave.com to play all your favorite games.  Facebook API enables apps that can socially connect with user.  [... Farmville.. need I say more, Mashable - Social Media Site (basically based on FB, Twitter, etc)]

One last thing Facebook has also changed the way we live our lives. I grew up in the 90s and went to highschool in the late 90s, early 2000s.  Could you imagine going to highschool with Facebook? What’s the first thing you do when you wake up. Mine use to be check my gmail.. now its check my Facebook.

Next Time – I will talk about how Apple Transformed ‘Apps’

Sources: People Magazine, Wikipedia