February 4 In History: The Birth Of Facebook At Harvard By Mark Zuckerberg

Photo illustration (Annie Spratt / Unsplash)

JAKARTA - On February 4, 2004, a Harvard University sophomore named Mark Zuckerberg launched The Facebook, a social media site he built to connect Harvard students with one another. The next day, over a thousand people signed up, and that was just the beginning.

The site is now known as Facebook. Facebook has rapidly grown to become one of the most significant social media companies in history. Today Facebook is one of the most valuable companies in the world, with more than 2 billion monthly active users.

Quoting History, Thursday, February 4, the origins of Facebook have been highly researched, even made into a film: The Social Network (2010). But the exact source of the idea remains unclear. What is clear is that Zuckerberg is so adept at creating excitement through his coding skills. Two things that are very useful at Harvard.

The previous year, Zuckerberg became a college celebrity by creating FaceMash, a website where students can choose which women are most attractive at Harvard. However, this was quickly opposed by the administration and some women's groups. Despite FaceMash's short-lived popularity, Zuckerberg considered the value of creating a campus-wide social network.

Photo illustration (Annie Spratt / Unsplash)

During his second year, Zuckerberg built the social media that was the forerunner of Facebook. When it launched on February 4, he and his roommates were glued to the screen in front of them, watching around 1,200 to 1,500 fellow students sign up for the site within the first 24 hours of being born.

From there, Facebook grew rapidly, moving to another university in the Boston area and another Ivy League campus in the spring. At the end of the year, the site had a million users. An investor, Peter Thiel invested 500 thousand US dollars. Dan Zuckerberg left Harvard to run Facebook from its new headquarters in California.

From California, Facebook spread all over the world. not only a very valuable company but also one of the most important institutions of the early 21st century. Facebook is a social media site for a generation of internet users. Facebook is also one of the main forces bringing the internet into a very participatory phase.

Data sales scandal

Photo illustration (Brett Jordan / Unsplash)

However, there are other problems with the development of Facebook. In addition to allowing misinformation and fake accounts to proliferate, Facebook has drawn criticism for selling its user data. Facebook failed to adequately protect users.

In April 2019, Zuckerberg said he was overseeing plans to consolidate the power of social networks and control competitors by treating his user data as offering chips. He also publicly stated that he would protect that data.

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Photo illustration (Nghia Nguyen / Unsplash)

According to him, about four thousand pages of company documents were leaked, most of which included data from 2011 to 2015. These documents include email, web, percentage data, and meeting summaries.

It shows how Zuckerberg, together with his board of directors and management team, found ways to make use of Facebook user data, including information about friends, relationships and photos. According to an NBC News report, in some cases Facebook will reward preferred companies by giving them access to their user data.

In other cases, Facebook will deny users access to rival companies or applications. In July 2019, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Trade Commission fined Facebook about 5 billion US dollars. This is due to the handling of Facebook user data by the social media company.

The FTC is investigating allegations that Facebook inappropriately shared information belonging to 87 million users with the now-defunct British political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica. Investigations are focused on whether sharing of data and other related matters violates the 2011 consent agreement between Facebook and regulators.

However, Facebook continues to dominate the social media market. So far Facebook generates the most ad revenue and maintains more than half of the total market share.

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