68 comments

[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 135 ms ] thread
Ugh. 10 years of privacy invasion.
I love when new people sign up and believe the best way to contribute is to troll.
So, stating a fact is trolling nowadays? Good to know.
When a troll calls accuses someone else of trolling, you know you are living in a lunatic asylum.
Bebo was 9 in January. I wonder who will win between them?
When I go to Bebo, it tells me they're currently closed but I can sign up for the new Bebo. The fact that they've had to shut their doors and reboot (like digg and myspace) puts some doubt in my mind as a user. Wikipedia tells me that they've also deleted all user content from the site. I especially wouldn't consider it to be nine continuous years if they're bankrupt and closed for business, even if they plan on reopening. If they succeed, Bebo launched in 2014.
Ok. Should we celebrate?
(comment deleted)
> why were we the ones to build this? We were just students. We had way fewer resources than big companies. If they had focused on this problem, they could have done it.

What does "this" refer to? ;)

Exclusion by school email address, that's a resource. Big companies didn't have that, so they couldn't start "this" the same way, so they got to a different "it" and so on... Caring is important, but every social phenomena is unique by origin when you connect the dots backwards.

Also, it's not just big companies who "could have done it". About a million different teenagers (including me) made virtual pet sites in the early 2000s. Virtual pet sites have profiles, friends lists and social features. If you get rid of the virtual pets, you have a social network. But that probably seemed too simple to us.
I remember being on Facebook in its infancy. When the user's "wall" was just a <textarea> that was editable by anybody. I used to change the comments left by friends of friends to humorous effect (at least in my mind).

Does anybody else remember this? Or did I dream this up?

Yep yep, back when it was thefacebook.com
Well happy birthday.
"The first ten years were about bootstrapping this network." Can somebody please enlighten me on what he means here? I had previously thought that "bootstrapping" is a term reserved by those who are developing with little resources?

Is there some other meaning that i'm not aware of?

"In computer technology the term (usually shortened to booting) usually refers to the process of loading the basic software into the memory of a computer after power-on or general reset, especially the operating system which will then take care of loading other software as needed." So I'm assuming they are saying that they "creating the necessary software/infrastructure for the network to run on", rather than using it in the "bootstrapping a startup" sense.
Awesome.. OK that makes much more sense now, i knew i was missing something important!
Happy 10th birthday Facebook! You have such a love and hate relationship with more than a billion people around the world. Awesome.

You guys wanna check out "A Look Back" [0]. It shows your highlights and moments in Facebook. It feels good reminiscing those moments. I wonder though, did they generate the look back videos for all of their users? I think that will require massive computation power.

[0] https://www.facebook.com/lookback

Oh wow that was amazing! I wonder how they tackled that too
My "Lookback" was beautiful; brought back some memories. Made me realise how much my life changed in 6 years.

As for your question, they are not generating it for every user; my test account doesn't have it. It's a 5 years old account.

Interesting. Maybe they just generate it for the active users. You mention it was a tst account, so I assume it's not that active and not a lot of content.
Yeah, not much content; I delete almost every post since they are just dummy posts made with the API.

I just checked again and I know have that page on my test account but no video:

  Thank you, { firstname }

  10 years ago people started using Facebook to share their biggest moments. Here are some of yours.


And then just 6 photos, though that account has 7-8 photos anyway.
I now also get that paged after having deleted one of the photos that appeared in the video. I wonder if they will regenerate it.
I'm hoping they will regenerate it :/ I deleted one photo from a bachelorette party because the cake very inappropriate and for whatever reason they chose that damn photo to be featured.
ITs the same story with me, first I hit the link I was able to see the video.....later on its just disappeared,after waiting long and refreshing no result.
I enjoyed lookback a lot, although it didn't seem to do much besides randomly select posts (the statuses it selected were not my most liked, and half the photos were of other people).
(comment deleted)
Great work Facebook, you've remained relevant and certainly made the world more connected. Looking forward to seeing what you do over the next 10 years. True poster-child for startups and what they can accomplish.
Three cheers for a decade of surveillance!
Imagine if you walked in to NSA 20 years ago and said I'll make a software that millions and millions of people will use to list all their friends, where they have been what they have done where they have gone where they want to go what they want to do, what they are thinking, photos of themselves, family, children, wife, husband, everything, they'll just go there every day and update this information .... you'd have gotten kicked out ... fast forward and tada! "Facebook! I use it because everyone else does" .... honestly from a surveillance point of view Facebook is the holy grail ... I can just imagine them shouting ... Facebook ... jackpot!
Bill Gates' quote rings so true here:

"Most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in ten years."

Aka compound interest / exponential function.
I don't know. It doesn't seem like Facebook has done anything new for users since around 2007/8 to me.
In 2007/8 Facebook had roughly 100 million users. They now have well over a billion. That's something in itself.
I just don't see how this is something to celebrate. Facebook is an awful company and an awful product.
I don't think they look at it like that themselves though...
The comment does not support its assertions with examples, reasons, or rationales.
Don't be obnoxious.

Facebook has obvious problems as a company—privacy violations, data retention, lock-in, and so on—and as software, especially with regard to the frequency with which it's buggy as hell.

However, it's also had more impact on the utility of the web for most users than almost any other product, save for perhaps Google. More than one-seventh of the entire human population now uses Facebook every month, which is incredible. And to achieve that in only 10 years—obviously by providing a service that many people feel is worthwhile—is still something that we can admire, regardless of the other issues around Facebook.

However, it's also had more impact on the utility of the web for most users than almost any other product, save for perhaps Google.

If by "had more impact" you mean "changed it into a medium for idle entertainment".

Seriously, what problem does Facebook solve? Does it even do a very good job solving this problem? Does it have any redeeming quality whatsoever?

From where I stand, it's just another dumb fad that was in the right place at the right time. It's the slap bracelet of this generation.

At the top of the list I would say would be bringing a critical mass of users under the one service.

Everything kind of follows from that, the actual service is less important and can likely be replicated by many companies.

> At the top of the list I would say would be bringing a critical mass of users under the one service.

That sounds like damage to route around, not like a solution to a problem.

>> Seriously, what problem does Facebook solve? Does it even do a very good job solving this problem? Does it have any redeeming quality whatsoever?

Seriously? Reconnecting with old friends (and it solved this problem so much better than anything else in history that it's laughable). Keeping in touch with family across the world. On a very simple level, it's basically replaced a folder on my computer for storing pictures, and now they are available to me no matter where I am.

If you want to talk about making money, it's made demographic targeting widely available to those who couldn't afford a television ad, or wanted actual metrics.

Slap bracelets came nowhere near the level of adoption Facebook hit. Calling it a fad is looking at the facts and willfully ignoring them.

Many developers have benefited greatly from either facebook exposure or their platform. It has become kind of a sine-qua-non for web applications at least. It's commonplace however to denigrate big monopolies (ibm, microsoft) and facebook is one of them.
The standard reply "don't feed the troll" would be applicable here. I am surprised that this type of comment shows up in HN.

However, hate Facebook or love Facebook, it does provide some social gluing at various levels. I mean, when my parents see pictures of their grandchildren playing on Facebook, their faces light up and smile. This type of interaction is valuable for my parents. I know that they are other ways of doing this, but this works at some level.

For me, happy 10th birthday Facebook!

Congratulation 10 years old Facebook!Just wonder how many time Facebook data had been stollen in 10 Years.
Anyone notice that in the superbowl commercials no one was giving links to facebook ala facebook.com/pepsi?
Anyone remember SB ads with "AOL keyword: Pepsi" ?
Yes, and you also just invoked horrible memories of CompuServe's "GO" keywords.
At this point it's not even necessary. It's like saying Google us.
Except they were almost all had text like #pepsi, indicating the place to talk about this commercial is only on Twitter.
Hurray! 10 years of getting people laid remotely!
Well my video crashed when I tried to share it, and now it will not recreate it so I've missed out. Any idea how to redo one?
I'm having the same issue!! My FB app crashed when I tried to post it and now the video is totally gone... :/ Just a thank you message and a few of my pictures.
I only got to view my lookback once and it never came back! how can i get my video back. I want to share it:( can someone tell me how to get it back?
For all those who deleted by mistake their lookback it took me three days to find how to get it back....... 1. log into your facebook 2. top right find where you can find actual form to report problem 3. actually write what you did 4. say sorry lol 5. wait 24 hours 6. log back in 7. hopefully like mine yours will come back 8. play it 3 times 4. log out 5. log in 7. green share button will appear 8. don't touch or alter again. I hope all who want it back get it back good luck Tony
I've deleted my look back video and now I can't get it back? I re clicked the link and it now just comes up of a grid of about 6 photos!? Anyone know how I get the video back? 😞
For all those who deleted by mistake their lookback it took me three days to find how to get it back....... 1. log into your facebook 2. top right find where you can find actual form to report problem 3. actually write what you did 4. say sorry lol 5. wait 24 hours 6. log back in 7. hopefully like mine yours will come back 8. play it 3 times 4. log out 5. log in 7. green share button will appear 8. don't touch or alter again. I hope all who want it back get it back good luck Tony
I actually don't know how the video is made. How do you create, and modify, a video with a programming language?
Why can't I post my "A Look Back" video to FB? I don't see a share button.
I saw the video. Liked it but one photo which i deleted, when i returned to check the video it was goneeee!!! Can i get it back? Anyone please?
For all those who deleted by mistake their lookback it took me three days to find how to get it back....... 1. log into your facebook 2. top right find where you can find actual form to report problem 3. actually write what you did 4. say sorry lol 5. wait 24 hours 6. log back in 7. hopefully like mine yours will come back 8. play it 3 times 4. log out 5. log in 7. green share button will appear 8. don't touch or alter again. I hope all who want it back get it back good luck Tony