Looking Back At Facebook and Where it Goes Next

Ten years ago today, Facebook was created.

Since then it has grown to a worldwide site that millions of people go to every day, multiple times a day to share anything and everything.

If you haven't seen it yet, every user has a Look Back video waiting for them. For some reason they decided not to allow you to share or like your own video, so I had to capture mine to show to other people.

(Update - Since I wrote this they've added a share button)

What prompted this post was a company asking me what my thoughts were on Facebook and where it goes from here. They decided to edit my quote and not tell me and I wanted to share my unfiltered thoughts with you.

My answer to the question was:

"I started using Facebook long before many because I was working at a college and thus a .edu account to get in before it opened to the world.

Watching it grow from a place where people shared what they were up to and you could easily keep track of your friends to a marketing filled game of look at me has been a strange evolution. Even stranger is that Facebook has never respected businesses and organizations enough to make it as powerful tool for them as they could. Over the years I've had clients with big budgets who wanted to do things and yet Facebook would barely talk to us. I've never understood their decision to act this way.

Facebook isn't going to go away in the future, but it will continue to change. Next week they will start breaking themselves apart as Paper is released. I'm sure Instagram will be shortly behind it evolving into a more integrated separate arm. You can also expect a YouTube competitor and audio will fit into there as well when they buy a Spotify or Rdio.

The data shared will appear across all mediums. As I'm pouring my morning coffee the newsfeed will quietly scroll by on the wall of my kitchen and if I want to see more of something I'll tell it to do so. Our devices that we wear on our wrists or eyes will check us in, share a photo and know who is with us. We won't need to like a brand page because it'll know what we bought because all of our 'things' will self report back to the mother ship."

Who knows if that is where it will end up, but that is my best guest at the moment.

It certainly has evolved a lot since my manager came in to chat with me about choosing "someone's bitch" from the drop down of job types to what it is today.

Can't wait to see where Mark and team take it in the next ten years.