‘The best is yet to come’: Mark Zuckerberg celebrates 20 years of Facebook

Mark Zuckerberg, the co-founder of Facebook, now Meta, on Sunday (Feb 4th) celebrated 20 years of the social media platform.

Posting a throwback video on Meta-owned social media platform Instagram, Zuckerberg wrote: "20 years ago, I launched a thing. Along the way, lots of amazing people joined, and we built some more awesome things. We're still at it, and the best is yet to come."

The video

The 25-second video, technically called a reel, featured the Meta CEO from his younger days, back when Facebook was first launched on February 4, 2004.

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Zuckerberg's video is a montage of photos and videos from the 20-year journey. It starts with a message "I have a feeling this is going to go by really fast," before moving on to feature the pictures and clips to Aerosmith's "Dream On."

The video, among others, features Edwardo Saverin, who helped found Facebook. Zuckerberg and Saverin had a major falling out and engaged in a major legal battle, which saw the ex-friends filing lawsuits against one another.

Also featured are Zuckerberg's wife, Priscilla Chan, and former Meta Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg, who stepped down in 2022.  

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He also posted several other posts to his account @zuck. One featured then-and-now pictures of him sitting at a desk working on computers. The pictures, which are 20 years apart, showcased widely different computer setups. One similarity the two shots shared is a variety of caffeine-laced drinks.

Facebook: a short history

The platform was launched in 2004 and is credited with ushering in a new era of communication. It was Zuckerberg and co-founders Dustin Moskovitz and Eduardo Saverin.

Within months of its launch, Facebook hit one million active users. The following year, Facebook introduced the feature to add photos and also came up with news feed.

In 2009, it introduced the well-known 'like' button. By the end of the decade, the platform clocked 500 million active users. 

However, with the emergence of other popular platforms like TikTok, and Instagram, it has now got left behind, with mostly the older generation using it. In February 2022, as per Business Standard, Facebook's total number of users declined to 1.9 billion for the first time.