.Controls 3.03b active daily users, 57% global Internet users
Meta owned Facebook yesterday clocked 20 years boasting of over three billion active users across the globe, which is equivalent of 57 per cent of global Internet users and 38 per cent of global population.
In 2004, as broadband was replacing dial-up Internet and mobile phones with colour screens were gaining popularity, on February 4, a social network, named “TheFacebook”, was launched by 19-year-old Mark Zuckerberg and his college roommates at Harvard University.
Facebook was named after the physical student directory distributed at universities at the start of the academic year, commonly known as a “face book”.
The social network was a big hit and soon spread to other college campuses across the United States.
Checks showed that within its first year, the platform grew to one million users, and in August 2005, it was renamed “facebook.com”.
By the end of 2006, anyone above the age of 13 with Internet access could join. The number of users jumped from 12 million in 2006 to 50 million in 2007, which doubled to 100 million by the end of 2008.
In 2012, the year Facebook reached one billion users, it went public, valued at $104 billion. Facebook made its initial public offering (IPO) at $38 a share and raised $16 billion.
On October 29, 2021, Zuckerberg announced the rebranding of Facebook, Inc to Meta Platforms, Inc. The company owns and operates Facebook, Instagram, Threads, and WhatsApp, among other products and services.
To put 3.03 billion users in perspective, that is more than the population of India (1.4 billion), China (1.4 billion), and Bangladesh (173 million) combined. In 2023, Facebook’s biggest audiences included: India (385.6 million), followed by the U.S. (188.6 million), Indonesia (136.3 million), Brazil (111.7 million) and Mexico (94.8 million).
According to Aljazeera.com, in Africa, Egypt leads with 49.3 million; Nigeria is second with 36.2 million, South Africa, 27.4 million and Algeria, 26.6 million.
Further, Italy has 29.7 million advertising audience, France, 32.6 million; Turkey, 34.8 million; Pakistan, 45.9 million; Colombia, 38.1 million; Argentina, 29.6 million among others.
Facebook’s largest audience group, with just below a third (29.9 percent) of all users, is 25-34 years.
There are 4.8 per cent (13-17 years); 21.5 per cent (18-24 years); 19.4 per cent (35-44 years); 11.6 per cent (45-54 years); 7.3 per cent (55-64 years) and 5.6 per cent (65 years and above).
Facebook has encountered numerous data privacy and user safety issues over the course of its 20-year existence.
One of the most notable issues occurred in 2018 when it was revealed that a British consulting firm Cambridge Analytica used 87 million Facebook users’ personal information without permission in early 2014 to build profiles of individual voters in the US to target them with personalised political advertisements.
Going forward, Aljaseera.com revealed that despite government scrutiny, and a dwindling younger audience, Meta last week reported a revenue of $40.1 billion and a profit of $14 billion for the fourth quarter of last year – far surpassing analysts’ forecasts.
Meta, like many other tech giants, has been investing heavily in boosting its computing power to support its ambitious artificial intelligence (AI) plans.
According to Reuters, Meta is gearing up to unleash its own AI chips, referred to internally as “Artemis”, later this year to be used in energy-hungry generative AI products it plans to integrate into Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.
