10 Famous Facebook Flops
Facebook has suffered some ignominious strikeouts during its 10 years. Consider these 10 features and products that didn't fly.
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Few could have predicted the rise of Facebook when Harvard University sophomore Mark Zuckerberg launched it with friends from his dorm room 10 years ago.
Back then it was "thefacebook.com," a social network exclusively for Harvard students. The service had no photo albums, no Timeline, no News Feed. It was a bare-bones, static profile page where users could list their basic information and interests.
Facebook's popularity rose quickly, amassing hundreds of thousands of users as it expanded to colleges and universities, high schools, and beyond. The social network boasts more than a billion users worldwide today.
In a recent interview, Zuckerberg reflected on Facebook's tenure and his own success: "I'm just really lucky. I really feel this deep responsibility, and I try to help folks here feel how unique of a position we're in, and that we need to do the best that we can," he said.
[From a Harvard dorm room to 1 billion users. Read Facebook History: 10 Defining Moments.]
While Facebook's rise to fame was fast, it wasn't without obstacles: In the last 10 years, the social network endured its fair share of turmoil in countless lawsuits and numerous privacy debacles. Just months after launching in 2004, Harvard University rival social network ConnectU filed a lawsuit against Facebook alleging that Zuckerberg copied its idea, stealing source code and intellectual property.
The social network has been at the center of many other lawsuits since then. The company settled two: one concerning Facebook Beacon, its controversial ad platform, and another involving Sponsored Stories, another type of ad. Both lawsuits centered on users' privacy.
Facebook reported that it was profitable for the first time in 2009. That year, the company brought in $777 million in revenue -- nearly triple that of 2008, SEC documents later revealed. It has come a long way since then. Last week, Facebook reported fourth-quarter sales of $2.6 billion, up 63% from the same time last year.
In a decade, Zuckerberg's team converted thefacebook.com from a standalone profile page to a social network with a bevy of features: Timeline, News Feed, Chat, Messaging, advertising, Pages, Facebook Credits, photo albums, commenting, sharing, and more.
Along the way, Facebook has tested a number of experimental designs and features, green-lighting some and killing others. Here's a look at 10 features from Facebook's past that didn't survive. Which ones got you riled, Facebook users?
Facebook's controversial ad platform, Beacon, launched on November 6, 2007, and drew immediate criticism from users and privacy advocates. It posted user activity from third-party websites such as Blockbuster, Hotwire, Yelp, and others to users' Facebook profiles. Later, a report claimed that Beacon was collecting data from its partner websites, regardless of whether users were Facebook members or not.
In August 2008, a class-action lawsuit was filed against Facebook and partner companies that activated Facebook Beacon. Two months later, Facebook announced it was shuttering the service, and it agreed to establish a $9.5 million settlement fund to support online privacy initiatives.
Facebook Gifts launched in early 2007 as a way for users to send personalized items to friends. These icons would generally cost $1 and would appear on users' profiles. In 2010, Facebook announced it was closing its gift shop, but it wasn't all bad news. "Gift credits," the virtual currency used to make these purchases, soon became Facebook Credits, the currency Facebook uses today.
When Facebook announced a redesign of its Messages feature in 2010, many proclaimed it could kill Google's popular Gmail service. The redesign rolled all Facebook communications online or via mobile phones -- from text messages and chat messages to email messages -- into one "social inbox." Facebook also gave all users an @facebook.com email address, hoping to become the communications platform of choice. Four years later, though, Gmail still exists, and Facebook has yet to woo email users to convert.
Facebook started testing a new feature called Questions in 2010, which was designed to compete with sites like Yahoo Answers and Quora. Questions let users generate short polls and ask their friends multiple-choice questions. Users then voted for the best answers. But the feature never took off, and Facebook confirmed in October 2012 that it was phasing it out.
In 2011, in the midst of the social deal trend, Facebook launched its own deals to compete with the likes of Groupon and LivingSocial. These offers, which were tested in just five cities, let users purchase goods or services at steep discounts, and then redeem the deals later. Four months later, however, Facebook discontinued the service.
"We think there is a lot of power in a social approach to driving people into local businesses," it said in a statement. "We've learned a lot from our test and we'll continue to evaluate how to best serve local businesses."
When Facebook launched Facebook Platform on May 24, 2007, it also introduced a markup language. Facebook Markup Language (FBML) was a framework for developers to serve custom content on canvas pages and tab pages. At Facebook's f8 developer conference in 2010, the social network announced its plans to depreciate FBML in favor of a transition to iFrames. On January 1, 2012, Facebook ceased FBML support.
Rumors of a Facebook phone have lingered for years. The closest it has ever come to existing was with the launch of Facebook Home, a user interface layer for Android smartphones, which was announced in April 2013. Letting users view and post content on Facebook, Facebook Home features a lock screen that displays notifications and includes an overlay that lets users chat on Facebook.
While Facebook Home is still available for download, its reception has been less than stellar. AT&T stopped carrying the HTC First, the first phone to run the feature, just months after its release.
Facebook announced in January that it would sunset Sponsored Stories, its problematic ad unit, by early April. Sponsored Stories launched in early 2011 as ads that appear in your news feed when you or a friend engages with a Page that paid for the exposure. These ads may appear when you "Like" a page, for example.
Shortly after its launch, Sponsored Stories became the focus of a class action lawsuit, which alleged that Facebook didn't get proper consent from users to use their names and profile pictures alongside the advertisements. Facebook later settled the lawsuit for $20 million.
Facebook announced in January that it would sunset Sponsored Stories, its problematic ad unit, by early April. Sponsored Stories launched in early 2011 as ads that appear in your news feed when you or a friend engages with a Page that paid for the exposure. These ads may appear when you "Like" a page, for example.
Shortly after its launch, Sponsored Stories became the focus of a class action lawsuit, which alleged that Facebook didn't get proper consent from users to use their names and profile pictures alongside the advertisements. Facebook later settled the lawsuit for $20 million.
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