Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) is celebrating the tenth anniversary of News Feed which has been a significant part of the company’s success.

Facebook is particularly pleased with the progress that News Feed has made so far. Things haven’t always been this smooth, especially when the feature was launched 10 years ago, it was met with a lot of controversy and users hated it. The social media giant has constantly tweaked News Feed since then and it is now the core service of the social platform which is used by more than 1.5 billion people.

The fact that the company transformed News Feed into a powerhouse is remarkable considering that at one point along the journey there were protests against it. There was a protest group formed against News Feed and one million people joined, threatening to stop using Facebook if the new feature was not turned off. Chris Cox who is one of the engineers behind the feature stated that at one time he had to go out through the back door to avoid protestors who had camped outside the company headquarters.

The problem with News Feed at the time of its launch was that it did not have a central place where users could check updates from friends. “People would click through profiles on Facebook looking for what’s new. It was amazing. We had this massive communications infrastructure, but we still couldn’t answer the question: What’s going on?” said Cox.

Facebook equated News Feed with having to come up with a newspaper that would serve 10 million users. Though there was a lot of friction against the service at the beginning, it is now considered one of the most powerful tools. It handles updates from friends as well as updates on the world in general. It is one of Facebook’s vital tools in its advertising business.