2024-02-11 07:05:19
Short videos appear to be the only area where Mark Zuckerberg’s company can’t take the top spot
From the very first day of Facebook, there is also a Bulgarian woman on the social network. This is Vanya Pasheva, who was a student at the time. Her story was told by “24 Chasa” in 2014.
10 years later, Pasheva still keeps and uses her profile. She herself was surprised that she was the first Bulgarian on the social network, and even expressed her doubts. Her number – on Facebook, each account receives a number equal to the order in which it was registered, but it indicates otherwise. Of course, it is possible that a lady who married a foreigner and took foreign citizenship predated Pasheva. There is also a possibility that someone who subsequently deleted their account was the first. For example, even Mark Zuckerberg’s profile is not number 1, but number 3. This is not because someone has overtaken him, but for the simple reason that the first two accounts were test accounts.
Today, Pasheva hardly posts on the social network, but quickly responds to messages received in it. Her profile is littered with greetings for several birthdays. One of Vanya’s last posts – from January 10 of this year – is about fundraising. She shared it from her friend instead of getting a present for her birthday. The chosen cause is to support the financing of American schools in Bulgaria.
The post before it is from 2019. Vanya uploads a statement from a fellow Harvard student, stating that he unfortunately missed the class reunion because he was unjustly detained in South Sudan.
Because Facebook was only for learners in its first two years, at that time the site played rhythm guitar and the leading social network was MySpace. There are no such restrictions in it, and users can customize their personal pages. And not only visually, but even to put on their preferred music. All of this, however, requires powerful computers, which are available in the US but not in much of the world.
Facebook noticed the problem and decided to keep their design simple. Thus, with the opening, they quickly overtake MySpace, which in 2012 was so unvisited that Justin Timberlake bought it for only 25 million dollars. It wasn’t until 2 years later that Facebook tried to put a more beautiful and complex design. They give up after only 2 months. It turns out that while I have a giant, fancy 27-inch monitor with massive resolution, a lot of people around the world don’t. Small resolution and small screens are more common in the world than the giant screens of Apple or Dell. And the old design we tested doesn’t look good at all on a 10-inch netbook. In fact, even a post may not fit in the visible part of the screen. Plus, many people using the site only access it from a PC — not from mobile phones or tablets. And scrolling by clicking or pulling a scroll bar is massive because not everyone has trackpads or scroll wheels. And most scrolling or most mouse movements make the site harder to use, commented Facebook product designer Julie Zhuo at the time.
And while the rivalry with Twitter was lateral – on Facebook one can write posts without character restrictions, at 144 on the other site, whose hashtags were also added to Mark Zuckerberg’s network, other competitors appeared. Instagram, for example, became a hit among young people who did not want to be on other social networks. So – they were looking for a place of their own, away from their parents who were on Facebook. Therefore, Mark Zuckerberg’s company made a smart move and bought Instagram.
However, some young people preferred Snapchat. Photos that disappear after 24 hours could be uploaded there. Moreover, they beautified themselves with the help of various filters. After a failed attempt to buy this application as well, they introduced the functions on Instagram. A few years later, they are already a fact on Facebook as well.
In recent years, however, young people have reoriented themselves and migrated to TikTok. In the application by scrolling one can watch short videos. Instagram quickly added them, and Facebook followed suit. For now, however, tiktok is the leader in the segment. Due to the live broadcast of how games are played, the live streaming feature has also been added to both social networks. Previously, they were lagging behind several specialized sites, but recently they are catching up, as they signed contracts to exclusively broadcast major gaming tournaments.
However, the competition was not only at the level of social networks, but also in chat applications. First, Facebook separated the messenger into a separate application for smartphones, and the site remained common, although there is an option to view only the one with the messages. This is how he handled imessages on an iPhone. However, it appeared WhatsApp, which has become the dominant online messaging app and calls, some with video. Facebook added a picture to its messenger after it already had calls. This did not help in 2014 and WhatsApp was bought by Mark Zuckerberg’s company. It is currently the leading communication app. It faced competition only in the field of encrypted messages and calls. Therefore, specialists were hired to implement the technology. They even exceeded expectations and now encryption is not an option but applied to every message and every conversation. Thus, they are only accessible by the devices from which they are derived. However, for the convenience of users, they can be backed up and restored from a new device if the user wishes. Soon Facebook will combine messages from Messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram in one place.