By Charles Mgbolu
Swirling happily in her Sunday dress, Sonia Chukwu, a university undergraduate, takes several portrait photos of her and her friend with her phone.
In just minutes, the photos are uploaded on Facebook, and in less than an hour, there are over 100 likes from their online friends. For Sonia, her day has practically been made.
On Sunday, February 4, Facebook, marks 20 years since its creation by a Harvard University undergraduate named Mark Zuckerberg and three friends in a dorm room.
Like Sonia, Facebook has become a platform that is beyond a mere virtual meeting point for friends.
‘’Facebook is my escape from worries; it saved me in my very low moment. It is where I see and meet people that just make me happy, and really, that’s all I care about,’’ Sonia tells TRT Afrika.
''Over the years, Facebook has evolved from connecting with friends old and new to becoming a platform that rewards content creators with a source of livelihood,’’ says Uche Aitkins, an avid user in Lagos, Nigeria.
Facebook has more than 2 billion active daily users, with about 271 million Facebook users in Africa as of 2022.
The number is projected to reach over 377 million by 2025, according to research platform Statista.
In 2004, Facebook was a Harvard-only site. Over the next few months and years, the site expanded, first permitting students from other colleges and universities to sign up, then high schoolers and professionals with corporate email addresses.
By 2006, many of its original users had aged out of their initial demographics, prompting Facebook to cast a wider membership net.
“We have two years of alums already, and more than one-third of the people using the site are not in college anymore,” Zuckerberg told the New York Times in 2006, right before the site opened its doors to anyone over the age of 13.
“If we make it so other young people can use the site, it strengthens the experience for everybody,” the Facebook founder said.
Many will say Zuckerberg has kept to his words as the platform has worked to intensify user experiences, especially with the introduction of Artificial Intelligence (AI).
For Ifeanyi Ewuzie, an online dealer in textile materials, Facebook practically kept his business alive.
''As a business owner, Facebook offers me a vast user base for targeted advertising, increased brand visibility, and direct engagement with customers,’’ Ifeanyi tells TRT Afrika.
In 2021, Facebook announced a new parent company named ‘Meta’ to reflect the company's growing ambitions.
Meta signalled the platform's plunge into AI explorations, which users like Ifeanyi say have helped their businesses succeed.
‘’Facebook has the capacity to help me build or nurture a customer base around my brand. Facebook also provides valuable analytics tools to track and measure the performance of my business page, enabling me to refine my marketing strategies based on user insights,’’ Ifeanyi said.
But still, Facebook has been dogged by scandals, data security issues, competition violations, and criticism related to censorship.
In May 2023, Facebook’s owner, Meta, was fined a record $1.2bn (£1bn) and ordered to suspend the transfer of user data from the EU to the US.
In August 2022, Facebook announced it was investigating a data security breach involving more than 50 million accounts.
But through it all, Facebook has risen like a phoenix from the ashes and continues to be a formidable social media brand.
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