celebrates 10 years of life and reaches its 'maturity' - The World

Facebook prepares to celebrate its tenth anniversary on February 4, an age of ‘maturity’ for the king of social networks after passing a checkered IPO and have become a powerful advertising tool. And with Facebook, your audience has also been ‘aging’.

“It’s been an incredible journey,” admitted this week its founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg .

social network, born in February 2004 in the room of Mark Zuckerberg at Harvard itself, is today a global company that connects more than one billion people, it also became the founder of one of the billionaires youngest in the world.

“F acebook has made smaller, interactiv or world. Une families, friends and neighbors around the world. This is a real social phenomenon ” comments Trip Chowdhry , an analyst at Global Equity Research.

“ Over 20% of time spent on the Internet is what leads Facebook . And being made a successful transition from computer to mobile . Such achievements are remarkable “Lou Kerner believes , founder of the Internet Society Social Investment Fund.

The story could have gone wrong . In spring 2012, the ‘grand entrance’ Facebook on NYSE was a disaster, with a series of technical problems and a share price in freefall, to the point that lost half its value in three months.

However, the company has already found favor with Wall Street, where the share price moves in record levels and where as some analysts saw it as Citibank ” the best example of the growth of the Internet industry in the U.S. “.

KAREN BLEIER AFP -PH-WNI

Indeed, some sectors found in this network an advertising Mine , and also with an eye to the increasingly popular smart phones to access the Internet.

Your income

this field exploded last year, which allowed him to dethrone Yahoo! second place in the overall advertising market ‘online’ , with 5.7% of the global pie this market according to eMarketer. There is still far from Google (no less than 32.4%) but is growing three times faster, and multiply their chances with new products as your video advertising.

Of course, it has not been an easy or unproblematic way. “Facebook has begun a ‘social revolution’ , but might not be able to control ,” says Trip Chowdhry, recalling that there are constant questions about the protection of personal data user or the advertising too intrusive , as well as growing concerns about abandoning users, including teenagers , a growing number of competitors.

A recent study

iStrategyLabs for three years indicates that the number of Facebook users in the U.S., in the age group 13-17 years decreased by three million (down 25% of all users in that age group), while over 55 grew by 12.5 million members (80%).

recent image Mark Zuckerberg itemprop=”provider” REUTERS

“People joke about the fact that it is for teenagers, it is not cool to have your mom on Facebook. Well do not talk or even mothers, but grandmothers ,” said Lou Kerner .

However, points “You can not be cool forever” . According to Kerner, there comes a time when either disappear, or you become an essential service . Facebook seems to have achieved the latter with much success.

analyst, “the loss of care of adolescents is more than offset by the increase in the number and participation of older people.”

research firm Trefis also finds that the ‘aging’ of Facebook users could be positive for income , as older users also have more purchasing power.

“Advertisers are putting promotional content on Facebook for one reason: to generate sales and large buyers ‘online’ have over 25 years .”. “With these numbers,” Trefis adds, “the fall in the number of users aged 13 to 24 years becomes almost irrelevant.”