If someone asks what are the most common apps used by you, Our immediate response will be Facebook, Messenger, and WhatsApp. Some might add few other names to the same list as well. But most of the internet world is consumed by these three giants. And the amazing part is, all of them are owned by the single company Facebook.
Facebook being the oldest among three has 1.65 billion monthly active users as of the first quarter of 2016 according to Statista. This app was not built with an intention of gaining such a popularity. It was developed by Mark Zuckerberg along with his college roommates while studying psychology at Harvard University and it went live on 2004. Within a few hours of going live, the site was fully stormed by Harvard, and within a few years, it occupied the entire globe making its founder the youngest billionaire in the world. At a later stage, this site got ported into mobile phones. People not only got to know what their friends are doing but also were able to chat anytime. Following this, they planned of detaching its messaging feature into a completely separate app, since the primary purpose of the Facebook app is News Feed. They named it as ‘Messenger’ on August 2014. Though people were forced to download this app initially, but then they started admiring it.
Apart from Facebook, Brian Acton, and Jan Koum came up with an elegant and simple to use messaging app known as WhatsApp. It was developed by a small team of engineers and reached 1 billion of monthly active users worldwide as of February 2016. One may not come across a smartphone with no WhatsApp in it. This shows the popularity earned by them. Knowing all this, Facebook planned of buying it for $19 billion and successfully bought it in February 2014. After it has been acquired by Facebook, features such as end-to-end encryption are added to it and we are waiting for some more. This is not the end, Facebook has gobbled up roughly 50 companies since 2005. Out of which WhatsApp, Instagram are the notable ones.
“Facebook is not one thing,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg told The New York Times in April 2014. As Zuckerberg realized the way in which Facebook is playing the vital role in user’s daily life, he started adding some innovative features in it. Currently, they have come up with a new feature known as ‘Facebook Live’ where people are allowed to broadcast their live videos. This feature has been in testing for a few months and celebrities were asked to make some inspiring live videos of them. Love of people started pouring to this innovation as well. As Facebook will never remain stagnant, we are hoping for some more features in the upcoming versions.
As Facebook will never remain stagnant, we are hoping for some more features in the upcoming versions.
Shilpa K
shlpk3@gmail.com
