EOTO Technology(Blog #6)

I have always had the basic knowledge that technology has evolved significantly through the past century, yet I recently learned how drastic these aspects of technology developed independently aside from technology's evolution as a whole. In our previous class period, everyone gave very detailed yet interesting presentations on different turning points in the evolution of technology, along with the importance of each. Every presentation had an abundance of information that I did not know prior, but the presentation about Facebook really caught my eye since it was the one I knew the least history about. You truly do not intensely think about who, what, when, where, and why certain inventions were created until you really get to dive into it and Facebook has such a fascinating history behind it.

Facebook may be very popular today, as it now has over 2 billion users worldwide, but it wasn't always as popular or even for everyone in the public. Backtracking to Boston Massachusetts on February 4th, 2004 a group of students of enrolled Harvard students launched the digital handbook, in which Harvard students could connect with one another online, called TheFacebook. This group of roommates creating this platform all worked under Mark Zuckerberg, who originally came up with this idea of students connecting with one another online.  

Many people in the Harvard community had found out about the platform and began to use it frequently, while also spreading how much they loved the platform to others who did not attend Harvard. So, Zuckerburg decided he would open up this platform to other Ivy League students across the United States since the popularity at Harvard was more than he anticipated it to be. After spreading to all eight of the Ivy League schools, it began to increase more and more in popularity each day, so Zuckerburg decided he was going to open Facebook up to the public in 2006. Instantly after opening up Facebook freely to the public, Facebook gained over 6,000 new users right off the bat. 

Facebook easily became to new trending way to communicate online and became the starting point for many other social media platforms like Instagram. As a matter of fact, Zuckerburg started a platform called Meta, where he began to purchase different social media platforms, including Instagram, and run them all under the same business company. All the platforms that are operated and owned by Meta are linked together while also operated by the same community guidelines that Meta has created. 

Fast forward to today, Facebook now has gained over two billion users within the past two decades and has become the branchholder idea to all of these other social media platforms people create and publicize today. Zuckerberg's invention was a huge evolution in technology, and we wouldn't have the same type of social media platforms and knowledge on how to communicate digitally as we do today if it were not for his brilliant idea that he launched straight from his own dorm room.