I've been on Facebook for 2,561 days, having joined during the first year of its existence and my first year of college.
As the world's largest social network turns 8 years old today, millions of people will reflect on the impact Facebook has had on their lives, however big or small that impact may be.
My Facebook experience mirrors yours in many facets.
We've changed our relationship statuses, sometimes more than we can remember. We've flipped through our tagged photos, every once in awhile untagging the ones we now deem unfavorable. We've seen friends' last names change, with their marriages followed by offspring. We've said goodbye to fellow Facebook users, our friends whose Walls — and now Timelines — have become digital memorials. We cried. We smiled. We tell our stories.
Just shy of its second birthday on Feb. 4, 2005, Facebook saw me register for an account on Jan. 30.
Back then, Facebook was only for college students. I was 18, living in a dorm at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln. I didn't own a computer or a laptop, and smartphones as we know them today didn't exist, so I accessed Facebook on campus computers.
Facebook became a hobby, something I would check every so often and not every day like I do now. But as more faces jumped onto the service — first high school students, then anyone over 13, then my mom (Hi Mom, I hope you "Like" this story!) — I began to rely on it more. I replaced my physical scrapbooks, which I routinely updated in high school, with an online database of memories: 161 photo albums and 28 videos.
In 2006, a year after Pete Cashmore introduced the world to Mashable, Facebook unveiled Notes. I used them as my first crack at blogging. Since then, I've used Notes to showcase my celebrity look-a-likes in 2006, reveal some intimate thoughts about turning 21 and listening to Kelly Clarkson's "Sober" in Milwaukee in 2007, as well as describe my encounter with a suicidal man while living in Phoenix in 2009.
Notes ignited content sharing on Facebook so much — and so early on — that media organizations began opening their eyes to the site's potential to bring more readers to their stories. Being in journalism school, this piqued my interest immensely. Facebook capitalized on that revelation by launching a Share button just months after Notes came out. Early adopters of the feature such as The New York Times, Sports Illustrated and The Onion continue to reap the benefits of social sharing and the significant referral traffic it attracts.
A year later in 2007, early signs of Facebook trumping MySpace as the go-to social network surfaced. I never really got into MySpace, but the chatter about this topic among friends who avidly used it became frequent and intense. Again, Facebook pounced on this opportunity to dethrone MySpace as social king with a redesign, which involved ditching its trademark "Facebook Guy" logo.
That same year, the first rumblings of a possible Facebook IPO made their way into headlines. CEO Mark Zuckerberg squashed the rumors, but on Feb. 1, 2012, Facebook filed for a $5 billion IPO. Zuckerberg in 2007 wanted to focus on development, and then along came a mobile version of Facebook, specifically for iPhone.
2008 was the year Facebook unleashed its Chat feature, expanded its global reach by adding more languages, and overtook MySpace based on monthly unique visitors. For me, Facebook Chat eventually pushed aside my other instant-messaging applications. A major redesign then merged our Walls and Mini-Feeds.
Facebook rolled out Usernames in 2009, allowing us to sign up for custom URLs (here's mine). In 2010, a new Feature called Facebook Messages let me create an @Facebook.com email address. Facebook Messages integrated my email, IM and text messages into one inbox.
Just last year, my Facebook experience began to transform tremendously. First, Facebook Chat gave us voice-calling capabilities and Skype-powered video chat. Then, I enabled the new Subscribe feature, which allowed anybody to subscribe to my personal profile and see anything I share publicly. And most notably, some of our profiles evolved into Timelines (see the changes in the gallery below).
Somewhere in between all of those changes, I sent virtual Gifts, I Poked some of you, I cringed at the ads that first appeared in 2006, I scoured the Marketplace for any gems, and I used the apps developed within the open-source Facebook Platform.
Now it's election year 2012, and politicians more than ever are using Facebook and other tools to grab our attention and sway our votes. If social networks could run for office, I'd vote for Facebook because of all the things I just mentioned.
Together, we've grown. Happy birthday, Facebook. Good luck, Zuck and the gang. Thanks for enriching my life.
What are your fondest memories of using Facebook? When did you join the social network?
BONUS: How Your Profile Has Looked Throughout the Years
Back in the days when The Facebook was only available to select networks, the News Feed didn't exist. Users hopped between profiles like this one.
With the September 2006 launch of Facebook's News Feed, user profiles contained mini-feeds that displayed user activity.
Users were able to add application tabs to their profiles (e.g. Bumper Stickers). Facebook also introduced the Publisher tool bar, which allowed a user to publish a status update, photo or link to his profile.
A new kind of user profile, Pages launched in 2009. Users could "become a fan" of a Page (until 2010, when they could "like" a page) to see that individual's or business' updates in their news feed.
As of Sept. 20, Facebook's new ticker has the ability to follow a user around to every page, including profiles. The company also introduced a "View As" widget in the upper right-hand corner that allows a user to preview how others see her page.
Announced Thursday at Facebook's f8 conference, the new profile will act like a virtual scrapbook, featuring important milestones that have occurred since your time on Facebook. Compared to the evolution of the social network's profile thus far, this redesign appears the most significant.
Back in the days when The Facebook was only available to select networks, the News Feed didn't exist. Users hopped between profiles like this one.
With the September 2006 launch of Facebook's News Feed, user profiles contained mini-feeds that displayed user activity.
While not a huge year for profile redesign, users began to interact more with each other's profiles -- remember Facebook Gifts?
Users were able to add application tabs to their profiles (e.g. Bumper Stickers). Facebook also introduced the Publisher tool bar, which allowed a user to publish a status update, photo or link to his profile.
A new kind of user profile, Pages launched in 2009. Users could "become a fan" of a Page (until 2010, when they could "like" a page) to see that individual's or business' updates in their news feed.
Late in 2010, Facebook launched a new profile that, up until this week, remained pretty much unaltered. Users took advantage by getting creative with the new photo banner at the top of the page. Also, Facebook told you what friends/fans you had in common in the upper right-hand corner of each page.
As of Sept. 20, Facebook's new ticker has the ability to follow a user around to every page, including profiles. The company also introduced a "View As" widget in the upper right-hand corner that allows a user to preview how others see her page.
Announced Thursday at Facebook's f8 conference, the new profile will act like a virtual scrapbook, featuring important milestones that have occurred since your time on Facebook. Compared to the evolution of the social network's profile thus far, this redesign appears the most significant.
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