Facebook

Whenever technology is mentioned, we think of high-tech gadgets and futuristic robots created to serve mankind, but it is easy to overlook the place of smaller yet ever-present innovations of our technological lives. One of them is, of course, Facebook: an online social networking site created in 2004 by then-20 year old Mark Zuckerberg and his 4 college friends to look up and compare profiles of their fellow Harvard students. Facebook has grown over the past 13 years to become one of the largest companies in the world with over 2 billion active users as of this year, an astonishing figure which emphasises the extent of Facebook's influence over our everyday lives.

But Facebook wasn't the first of its kind - MySpace is widely known as Facebook's predecessor, and it was created in 2003 with functions and features almost identical to Facebook's. However, MySpace had declined when Facebook had flourished and only has around 50 million unique monthly visitors as of 2016 compared to Facebook's 2 billion in 2017.
So what was MySpace's decline attributed to, when Facebook was steadily rising? Was it the growing popularity of Web 2.0 which has been discussed in class? Was it inadequate management which stunted MySpace's growth? Or was it just coincidence that one is just more popular than the other?

Regardless of how MySpace had declined in the recent past, one more crucial question should be asked: Will Facebook decline as the popular MySpace had before it? or rather, how long until it happens?

Facebook's website

- William