Facebook turned 17 today, and on this occasion CEO Mark Zuckerberg decided to talk about the past of the social network, while a special animation was launched by the American company to celebrate this special day.
"17 years ago, the first students signed up on Facebook and started connecting with friends. It's been a wild ride since then and I want to thank you all for being a part of this community.
I'm proud of what we've accomplished together over the past 17 years, but I'm even more optimistic about the years ahead.
The world is facing historic challenges right now, and we are committed to doing our part to help. Last year, we ran the largest voter information campaign in recent history and helped more than 4 million people register. This year, we will run the largest campaign worldwide promoting authoritative information about the Covid vaccine that helps put this pandemic behind us.
We're building the community infrastructure to support the diversity of communities needed for everyone in the world to join the ones that matter in their lives. I think this is one of the most important things we can do to help strengthen the social fabric.
We build privacy-focused social platforms from the bottom up, based on end-to-end encryption in WhatsApp and Messenger, and then build a lot of private social tools like groups, video calls, payments, co-viewing and more on top That foundation.
We're building tools for commerce to give more than 200 million small businesses the same tools that historically only larger companies have — from tools to reach customers to ways to easily set up a store on Facebook and Instagram even if the store your physical Is closed.
We're building the next major virtual and augmented reality computing platform. It will give you the experience of "presence" — that you are right there with another person. It will open up opportunities by letting you teleport anywhere without having to commute.
And we're building a new governance model for online communities. The Oversight Board is a piece that provides independent and binding appeals, and we are now working to establish more aspects of independent community governance for years to come.
If we can achieve these goals, then the years ahead will be even more exciting than the past 17 years. Thank you for being on this journey with us.”
