As Facebook turns 20, politics is out; impersonal video feeds are in
Social media are more popular than ever, but social networks are dying
“I’m a little intoxicated, not gonna lie. So what if it’s not even 10pm and it’s a Tuesday night?…Let the hacking begin.” So typed a 19-year-old Mark Zuckerberg, liveblogging from his Harvard dormitory as he began work on a website called Facemash. The site displayed randomly selected pairs of students’ mugshots, harvested from the university’s intranet, and allowed users to vote on who was hotter. It caused a stir and was promptly shut down. But before long, a successor was in the making. On February 4th 2004 Mr Zuckerberg launched a new site: TheFacebook.com.
This article appeared in the Briefing section of the print edition under the headline “Not posting, but watching ”
From the February 3rd 2024 edition
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