On Facebook's 14th Birthday, CEO Mark Zuckerberg Makes It His Mission To Make Facebook Better

Mark Zuckerberg, on Facebook’s 14th birthday yesterday, sent out a long message to his followers full of nostalgia and regret, but also hope. 

The Facebook CEO’s 245 word-post described all the mistakes he’s made over the years, ever since starting platform in a Harvard dorm room decades ago at the age of 19. “Over the years I've made almost every mistake you can imagine. I've made dozens of technical errors and bad deals. I've trusted the wrong people and I've put talented people in the wrong roles. I've missed important trends and I've been slow to others. I've launched product after product that failed,” he said.

And yet, Zuckerberg says that the reason Facebook is as big and successful as it is today is not because it avoided mistakes, but because they kept the faith that they were doing something that mattered. In fact, the social media giant is pretty much at the top of the game, with more than 2 billion monthly active users and at least $13 billion in revenue during the last quarter.

Of course, this isn’t just a trip down memory lane. It means a lot more when you realise the company has faced a lot of scrutiny lately. Facebook, alongside Google and Twitter, has been accused of being manipulated by Russian agents to skew the US elections, it’s faced backlash over reports of racial and sexual harassment on its platform, of not being quick enough on the draw to tackle revenge porn, and especially not being able to clamp down on falsified news articles.

Just last month, Zuckerberg laid out his plan of action for 2018, vowing to fix the platform’s problems and improve the experience. Just how he plans to do that is still somewhat up in the air, but maybe this time around the CEO is dedicated to real change online. If that’s the case, we may be seeing a very different Facebook very soon.