Facebook celebrated its 10th anniversary on Tuesday. CEO Mark Zuckerberg posted a letter looking back at the social networking site’s success and why it has lasted this long. The company also released a neat feature that looks back at users’ own activities since joining.
The 62-second “A Look Back” videos remind you of when you joined Facebook and what your very first profile picture looked like. It shows off your most-liked status and other highlights from you account. In other words, yes, Facebook really has kept all that data since you’ve joined.
In a open letter celebrating the milestone, Zuckerberg explained why he believed Facebook is still running in a world where people move on to the next big thing as soon as possible.
“When I reflect on the last 10 years, one question I ask myself is: why were we the ones to build this? We were just students. We had way fewer resources than big companies. If they had focused on this problem, they could have done it,” Zuckerberg wrote. “The only answer I can think of is: we just cared more.”
Later, he thanked the millions of users on the site for building a community there. “I'm so grateful to be able to help build these tools for you. I feel a deep responsibility to make the most of my time here and serve you the best I can,” he wrote.
Facebook is constantly looking to the future as it tries to stay ahead of Google and Twitter. The New York Times reports that on Monday, it showed off a new iPhone app called Paper, which will give users a new way to scroll through their news feed. There will actually be human editors picking out recommended stories for users, along with generated recommendations.
Pew Research also marked the anniversary by releasing the results of a new study of Facebook users. It found that half of adults have over 200 friends in their networks. However, most don’t update their statuses on a regular basis and only 4 percent of those surveyed change their statuses more than once a day.
image: Wikimedia Commons
