Happy Anniversary Facebook

Facebook has changed a lot since it's inception in a Harvard dorm room, but so have we as a society.  It was the biggest thing since Oregon Trail and easily as well loved.  In honor of Facebook's 10 year anniversary  (and because I was inspired by my neat little look back video), I thought I might spend some time reminiscing on how far my personal Facebook has come.

November 30th 2004:  I created an account on The Facebook and wondered to myself, Who is this Mark Zuckerberg character.  At that point I think the only thing you could do was update your relationship status and your daily status, but only if you could come up with something that cleverly followed the words "Ashley is...". If you joined The Facebook before the end of 2004, like me, you get to count yourself as one of the fabled originals- part of the first one million users. Congratulations!

In early 2005 it looks like they introduced the wall.  This is where we all stumbled around for a while writing things that sounded like weekly yearbook notes.  We left wall notes reminiscing about freshman year,  we'd talk about how much fun we had last weekend at a party or how much we would miss each other over the summer, but the only way to follow the conversation was to go from wall to wall. I always felt so popular when more than one person would write on my wall in a day.

In late 2005, big changes were happening.  Now you could upload photos and you could even tag people in those photos.  I remember after parties or big weekends, we would all sit eagerly by the computer to see who go the best pictures and quickly untag any pictures that weren't so favorable.

As the years went by, Facebook dropped the "The", invited high school students and eventually anyone could have an account, which means we all were running a Facebook smear campaign to our parents so that they would avoid Facebook at all costs.  Every now and then you would get into a poking war that might end in a the virtual gift of a rose or a birthday cake.

Soon we started seeing companies develop pages and the iconic thumbs up "like" option was introduced. Then timeline was introduced and we all signed petitions to go back to the old design.  Nobody likes change, even virtual change.  I'm pretty sure I made empty threats about leaving the site because I didn't like the changes.

Before we knew it, we all had the Facebook app on our iPhones,  we added instagram to filter and quickly retouch our tans and constantly share every Buzzfeed list ever created.

Oh Facebook,  thanks for eating up so much of my time.  Happy 10 year anniversary!