You are watching Kings every Saturday we tell the story of how big brands conquered the world, how Facebook became the king of social media welcome to a Lux calm, the place where future billionaires come to get inspired, hallo, ale, Xers and welcome back to another video brought To you by our team here, a telex calm, social media has taken over in a big way.
Over the past 20 years, millions of people have never known a world without it and hundreds of millions more can’t remember what life was like before it with the emergence of over a dozen ultra successful social media sites in recent years, one of Them claimed its spot at the top early on and has refused to give up the title of King in the years since today we are going to talk about how Facebook became the king of social media, but first a little background.
The big picture for 15 years. Facebook has led the way in the world of social media. It’s, not only the most dominant social media site out there, but also one of the most valuable companies in the world with a market cap of five hundred and fifty two billion dollars in 2019 and a brand value of eighty eight point.
Nine billion dollars Facebook is ranked above prominent brands like coca-cola Disney and Samsung Forbes says list to them as the fifth most valuable brand in the world behind Apple, Google, Microsoft and Amazon.
It’s, 2018 revenues totaled fifty five point: eight billion dollars. Facebook has about forty thousand employees and is headquartered in Menlo Park. California, the social media site is available worldwide, with the exception of a few banned countries, including China and North Korea.
You can find out more about that by clicking in the upper right hand corner to watch our video. The 15 things you didn’t know about Facebook, but of course, Facebook wasn’t, always a household name all around the world.
So let’s, go back now to see how it all started the beginning. Most people are familiar with the story of how Facebook began as the Facebook launched in 2004 by Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg, the site was at first only offered to Harvard students.
Then a few other colleagues, but Facebook was involved in a controversy from the very beginning. Just a few days after the launch, Zuckerberg was accused by cameron, winklevoss, tyler, winklevoss and divya narendra of stealing their idea for a harvard social network.
This led to a 10-year legal battle that ultimately ended with a 65 million dollar settlement, but while such rocky beginnings might have caused other emerging companies to falter and fail, Zuckerberg remained focused on his goal.
He dropped out of Harvard and directed all of his attention to Facebook. He moved to Palo Alto California to immerse himself in the Silicon Valley scene and he soon scored a critical $ 500,000 investment from Peter Cl the choice.
The fact is that Zuckerberg wasn’t the only person who developed and launched a social media app in the early 2000s. In fact, there were dozens of people who had the same idea. So why did Facebook rise to the top, while others faded into obscurity at the time of the launch? His main competitors were Friendster and MySpace, but then Friendster self-destructed under the weight of its own popularity too many people were joining the site, but Friendster didn’t have the infrastructure to support it.
Zuckerberg was careful not to fall into the same trap. He strategically restricted registrations in the beginning and gradually opened it up to new markets, so he could scale the business in a controlled way.
He also made another critical choice to put members in front of advertisers, which is something myspace often failed to do. This is one of the many reasons there was a mass migration from MySpace to Facebook.
In the 2000s, putting users first became a defining strategy of Facebook that would help them grow to be more popular. The strategy initially Zuckerberg strategy was to focus on building Facebook as the best possible product, not as a business with plenty of investors backing him up.
He wasn’t worried about profitability, monetizing or shareholders. 100 % of his focus was on creating a site that would be useful. Popular and cool, even as Facebook grew Zuckerberg continually asserted that he was primarily concerned with the social mission of Facebook and the needs of its users rather than the business side of the company.
He hired execs like Sheryl Sandberg, to handle the business concerns while he put his attention into the features and functionality of the site. He explained his philosophy in a letter to potential shareholders before going public in 2012, he stated we don’t build services to make money.
We make money to build better services. He also said that, by focusing on that mission, we believe we will create the most value for our shareholders over the long term, and this by all accounts, has been a winning strategy.
The defining moment after Peter Thiel’s. Initial investment, other investors came on board which enabled Facebook to expand the defining moment for the company is hard to pinpoint, as it grew organically and rapidly, but you could argue, it was September 26th, 2006, the first day that Facebook opened up to everyone.
Thirteen years and older others would argue that it was October 24th 2007, when Microsoft announced its purchase of 1.6 percent of the company for two hundred and forty million dollars. Some others might point to September 2009 when Facebook first became profitable.
Its rise also coincided with the emergence of the smartphone, which only increased its success. In October 2012, it became the first social networking site to attain 1 billion active monthly users, but all of this growth has occurred.
Despite some pretty significant scandals. Controversy, Facebook always seems to be at the center of some controversy, even dating back to its founding. There have been numerous scandals most centered on privacy concerns abuse of the platform and how data is handled.
One of the most recent and most significant scandals was tied to the 2016 US election prior to the election. A Russian researcher named Aleksandr Cohen, was approved by Facebook to conduct a survey through an app on the site.
About 300,000 users took the survey and their data was collected, along with the data of all their friends on the site. This data was then sold to British voter profile and company Cambridge analytic, ah, who was hired by the Trump campaign, although they denied using this data.
During the campaign, up to 87 million users were affected, which called into question how Facebook handles personal data and who can access it. This was in addition to the criticism the site was facing for spreading Russian propaganda and fake headlines.
Zuckerberg has testified in front of the US Congress multiple times about these issues, and he contends that these concerns are being addressed, while some have lost confidence in Facebook and have deleted their profiles.
These controversies have yet to have a serious effect on the usage of the site, and the company just keeps on growing, bigger and bigger acquisitions. It seems like whenever a company might threaten its place at the top.
Facebook simply buys it out. That certainly seems to be the case with Instagram which Facebook bought in 2012 for 1 billion dollars. They paid 19 billion dollars for whatsapp messenger in 2014 and remember Friendster Facebook bought them in 2010 for 40 million dollars.
In fact, in its relatively short history, Facebook has acquired over 70 companies, many of which you’ve, probably never heard of one sale it missed out on was snapchat, which had attempted to buy for three billion dollars back in 2013, but the offer was Turned down by CEO Evan Spiegel that little snapchat ghost is probably still haunting Zuckerberg streams.
One of its most significant acquisitions was oculus VR in 2014 for two billion dollars. This company is bound to play an important role in the site’s future. As a virtual reality is increasingly at the forefront of technology, but Before we jump ahead of ourselves, let’s.
Look at where Facebook stands right now results. Despite the controversies. Facebook remains the most used social media site worldwide, with 1.4 billion daily active users and 2.3 billion monthly active users, not only that over 1.
5 billion people regularly use whatsapp 1 billion people use, Instagram and 1.3 billion are using facebook. Messenger. Facebook users are spread throughout the world with the highest number located in India, followed by the United States.
Facebook is known for its innovative features that are introduced quickly and either refined or eliminated based on user feedback. Facebook offers just about everything. Other internet platforms can offer, with the exception of search engines, it’s, a source of news, videos, games, social interaction, sales and much more, and it promises to become an even more integral part of daily life in the future.
If Mark Zuckerberg has anything to do with it, the future in 2016 Zuckerberg announced a ten-year plan for the company, which was focused on three main areas: artificial intelligence, virtual reality and increased global connectivity.
Think you’re addicted to Facebook. Now the company has plans to make the platform even more immersive and integrated into everyday life. Zuckerberg believes that virtual reality will be the next major technology that people will use to interact with each other and that’s, why he acquired oculus VR.
He also has plans in the works to bring Internet to the four billion people in the world who are not currently connected. One of his ideas is to fly drones over villages that can beam down data through a laser.
Even though Zuckerberg does have ambitious plans for the future, he is approaching them in a meticulous and patient way, which ultimately could lead to more sustainable progress for the company. Closing one reason why Facebook has continued to be so successful is because it has consistently found a way to scale its services without losing sight of its culture and fundamental purpose.
Facebook could have easily gotten too comfortable at the top and stopped taking risks and pushing forward in new directions, but that has never been the case. Facebook is continually evolving, mostly in subtle ways, so that users, don’t get too uncomfortable with the changes.
The social media space is crowded so who can compete with Facebook in terms of active accounts? The next closest competitor is YouTube with two billion monthly active users, but YouTube’s. Functionality is limited compared to that of Facebook.
Some think Twitter could be a competitor, but the reality is they aren’t even close right now, with only 330 million active users. So yes, there’s. No question that Facebook is king of social media and likely remain so for the foreseeable future question now that we’re wrapping up this video, we’d, like to know which social media site do, you think, has the best chance to Dethrone Facebook, as the king of social media, let us know in the comments and of course, since you’re still with us until the very end here’s, your bonus Facebook’s.
First major investor, Peter Thiel has been handsomely rewarded for his good instincts and initial trust in Zuckerberg vision. When Facebook went public, he and his investment funds held more than 44 million shares of the company during the IPO.
He netted more than six hundred and forty million dollars by selling 16.8 million of his shares. A few months later, he sold off twenty million more shares worth a total of three hundred and ninety five point: eight million dollars.
This means he’s already seen a return of over 1 billion dollars from his initial investment, and he still retains about 5.6 million shares. Thank you for spending some time with us. A Luxor’s, make sure to subscribe.