Facebook turns 17, the social network that has gone from a university game to a big media game with 2.8 billion users, with all the associated problems of content expansion and control, as demonstrated by the recent blockade by Donald Trump.
His story is well known and was told by the film The Social Network.
The platform was launched on February 4, 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg and his fellow Harvard college mates Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes with just a thousand dollars in investment and originally designed for students only, but was soon expanded to other schools to then have the worldwide diffusion we know.
To date, according to the latest quarterly, there are 2.8 billion monthly users.
The most important region now for Zuckerberg's social network is Asia, Europe is saturating.
Beyond the innovations implemented over the years (live video, artificial intelligence, eCommerce, dating, payments) the real upgrade of Facebook came with the launch of Messenger in 2011 (now it has 1.3 billion active users per month) and the purchase of Instagram in 2012 (1 billion users) and WhatsApp in 2014 (2 billion users).
A broad ecosystem for which the Antitrust offensive has taken place in the US.
Total revenues also consisted almost entirely of advertising revenue and increased 33% to $ 28.07 billion in the fourth quarter ended December 31.
After the Cambridge Analytica scandal of 2018, privacy attention has recently shifted to WhatsApp for an update of the terms of use that the company - after user protests, the Privacy Guarantor intervened in Italy - has decided to postpone the May 15.
While it is entrusted to the Oversight Board, a committee of external experts, the decision whether to expel the former president of the United States, Donald Trump, from the platform forever for statements on the electoral result.
A ban put into practice by other technological platforms that has triggered a worldwide debate on the control of content by social media.