One million threatened to quit Facebook when News Feed appeared
07 Sep 2016
Facebook went official in 2004, but it was not till 2006 that the social media site became a collection of profiles of people you knew. Tuesday marked the 10th anniversary of Facebook starting its News Feed features. Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg took the opportunity to share the story of News Feed.
Zuckerberg has written on his profile that people sometimes ask him about the idea behind Facebook. He said, "Facebook, like everything, is made of many ideas and inventions."
Zuckerberg also shared a photo of the original team behind News Feed. He says that shortly after News Feed went live on Facebook, about a million people protested the changes and threatened to quit the social media website.
Here's the full text of Mark Zuckerberg's post:
"Happy 10th birthday, News Feed!
"This invention is one of my favorite stories from Facebook's history. Sometimes people talk about the "idea" behind Facebook, as if it was a single concept that came out fully formed. But Facebook, like everything, is made of many ideas and inventions.
"At the beginning of Facebook, there was no News Feed. For more than two years, Facebook was just a collection of profiles. You could visit a friend's page to look up some basic details about them, but there was no way to see updates from all your friends or be sure they saw yours.
"With News Feed, all of a sudden you could share with all your friends at once. And you could see what was happening with all your friends in one place. News Feed was the first real social feed. It was such a fundamental idea that now, 10 years later, every major social app has its own equivalent of News Feed.
"Not everyone liked the idea immediately. This photo shows members of the original News Feed team at the moment we launched. Shortly after this photo was taken, about 1 million people joined a protest group threatening to quit if we didn't change Facebook back. I remember there were actual protesters in the streets outside our office demanding we change.
"But one of the things I'm most proud of about Facebook is that we believe things can always be better, and we're willing to make big bets if we think it will help our community over the long term. News Feed has been one of the big bets we've made in the past 10 years that has shaped our community and the whole internet the most.
"Technically, News Feed is one of the most advanced systems we've built. For more than 1 billion people every day, it considers everything your friends are posting and all of the media content you might be interested in, it considers how much you might care about updates from each person or interest, and then it tries to show you what you'll find most important. Nothing like it has ever been built before.
"So thank you to the members of our team - past and present - who have built and improved News Feed over the years. And thanks to our community for growing with us. Everyone's News Feed is unique because each of you is unique, and we'll keep working to make Facebook a better place for all the moments you share.
