History of Facebook
The history of Facebook traces its growth from a college networking site to a global social networking service. It was launched as TheFacebook in 2004, and renamed Facebook in 2005.
Founded by Mark Zuckerberg and his college roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes at Harvard University, it was initially limited to Harvard students. It expanded to other colleges in the Boston area, the Ivy League, and gradually most universities in the United States and Canada, corporations, and by 2006 to everyone with a valid email address along with an age requirement of being 13 or older. Facebook introduced key features like the News Feed in 2006, which became central to user engagement. By 2007, Facebook surpassed MySpace in global traffic and became the world's most popular social media platform. The company focused on generating revenue through targeted advertising based on user data, a model that drove its rapid financial growth. In 2012, Facebook went public with one of the largest IPOs in tech history. Acquisitions played a significant role in Facebook's dominance. In 2012, it purchased Instagram, followed by WhatsApp and Oculus VR in 2014, extending its influence beyond social networking into messaging and virtual reality. These moves helped Facebook maintain its position as a leader in the tech industry.
Despite its success, Facebook has faced significant controversies. Privacy concerns surfaced early, including criticism of its data collection practices. The Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal in 2018 revealed misuse of user data to influence elections, sparking global outcry and leading to regulatory fines and hearings. Facebook has been accused of enabling the spread of misinformation and hate speech and influencing political outcomes, prompting debates about content moderation and social media's role in society. The platform has frequently updated its algorithms to balance user experience with engagement-driven revenue, but these changes have sometimes drawn criticism for amplifying divisive content. Facebook's role in global events, including its use in organizing movements like the Arab Spring and, controversially, its impact on events like the Rohingya genocide in Myanmar, highlights its dual nature as a tool for empowerment and harm.
In 2021, Facebook rebranded as Meta, reflecting its shift toward building the "metaverse" and focusing on virtual reality and augmented reality technologies. Facebook continues to shape digital communication, commerce, and culture worldwide, with billions of users making it a key organisation in the 21st century.
Facemash
"Facemash" was a website designed to evaluate the attractiveness of female Harvard students. The students were unaware their images were being used for this rating, judging by the complaint from Fuerza Latina and the Harvard Association of Black Women. The site used ID photos of female undergraduates taken without permission from the university's online directories. Users were presented with pairs of women and asked to rank who was "hotter." The homepage stated, "Were we admitted for our looks? No. Will we be judged by them? Yes."By the end of Facemash's launch day, at least 22,000 votes from a total of approx. 400 to 450 users were cast on the site. According to a 2003 article from The Harvard Crimson, Zuckerberg created the site in less than a week and documented the process in a blog. He hacked into the online intranets of Harvard Houses to obtain photos, developing algorithms and codes along the way. He referred to his hacking as "child's play." In a blog entry, Zuckerberg noted, "The Kirkland Facebook is open on my computer desktop, and some of these people have pretty horrendous Facebook pictures. I almost want to put some of these faces next to pictures of farm animals and have people vote on which is more attractive."
Zuckerberg faced scrutiny from the university's Administrative Board in November 2003 after Facemash caused an uproar in Harvard. Groups such as Fuerza Latina and the Harvard Association of Black Women protested, and the computer services department filed a complaint with the Administrative Board. Zuckerberg was accused of breaching security, violating copyrights, and infringing on individual privacy. This approach would eventually shape Facebook's business model, leading to numerous scandals such as the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
As a consequence, the Harvard Administrative Board removed the site on 2 November. The actions taken against Zuckerberg, if any, are unknown. He was not made to withdraw or leave school. He did not elaborate on whether the board took any other lesser actions.
Zuckerberg expanded on the Facemash project the same semester by creating a social study tool. He uploaded art images, each accompanied by a comments section, to a website he shared with his classmates.
TheFacebook
A "facebook" is a student directory featuring photos and basic information. In 2004, there were no universal online facebooks at Harvard, with only paper sheets distributed and private online directories. Zuckerberg told the Crimson that "Everyone's been talking a lot about a universal face book within Harvard. ... I think it's kind of silly that it would take the University a couple of years to get around to it. I can do it better than they can, and I can do it in a week." In January 2004, Zuckerberg began writing a code for a new website, known as "TheFacebook", with the inspiration coming from an editorial in the Crimson about Facemash, stating that "It is clear that the technology needed to create a centralized Website is readily available ... the benefits are many." Zuckerberg met with Harvard student Eduardo Saverin, and each of them agreed to invest $1,000 in the site. On February 4, 2004, Zuckerberg launched it under the name of "TheFacebook", originally located at thefacebook.com.Zuckerberg intended to create a website that could connect people around the university. Upon finishing the site, Zuckerberg told a couple of friends, one of whom suggested sharing it on the Kirkland House online mailing list, which included several hundred people. According to his roommate, Dustin Moskovitz, "By the end of the night, we were ... actively watching the registration process. Within twenty-four hours, we had somewhere between twelve hundred and fifteen hundred registrants."
Just six days after the launch of the site, three Harvard University seniors, Cameron Winklevoss, Tyler Winklevoss, and Divya Narendra, accused Zuckerberg of intentionally misleading them into believing that he would help them build a social network called HarvardConnection.com, but instead using their idea to build a competing product. The three complained to the Crimson, and the newspaper began an investigation. Zuckerberg knew about the investigation so he used TheFacebook.com to find members in the site who identified themselves as members of the Crimson. He examined a history of failed logins to see if any of the Crimson members had ever entered an incorrect password into TheFacebook.com. In the cases in which they had failed to log in, Zuckerberg tried to use them to access the Crimson members' Harvard email accounts, and he was successful in accessing two of them. In the end, three Crimson members filed a lawsuit against Zuckerberg which was later settled.
Membership was initially restricted to students of Harvard University. Within the first month, more than half the undergraduate population at Harvard was registered on the service. Zuckerberg was joined in the promotion of the site by Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz, Andrew McCollum, and Chris Hughes. In March 2004, Facebook expanded to Stanford, Columbia, and Yale. This expansion continued when it opened to all Ivy League and Boston-area schools. It gradually reached most universities in the United States and Canada. Facebook was incorporated in the summer of 2004, and the entrepreneur Sean Parker, who had been informally advising Zuckerberg, became the company's president. In June 2004, Facebook moved its base of operations to Palo Alto, California.
In May 2005, Accel Partners invested $13 million in Facebook, and Jim Breyer added $1 million of his own money. A high-school version of the site launched in September 2005. Eligibility expanded to include employees of several companies, including Apple Inc. and Microsoft.
2006–2012: Public access, Microsoft alliance, and rapid growth
In May 2006, Facebook hired its first intern, Julie Zhuo. After a month, Zhuo was hired as a full-time engineer. On September 26, 2006, Facebook opened to everyone at least 13 years old with a valid email address. By late 2007, Facebook had 100,000 pages on which companies promoted themselves. Organization pages began rolling out in May 2009. On October 24, 2007, Microsoft announced that it had purchased a 1.6% share of Facebook for $240 million, giving Facebook a total implied value of around $15 billion. Microsoft's purchase included rights to place international advertisements.In May 2007, at the first f8 developers conference, Facebook announced the launch of the Facebook Developer Platform, providing a framework for software developers to create applications that interact with core Facebook features. By the second annual f8 developers conference on July 23, 2008, the number of applications on the platform had grown to 33,000, and the number of registered developers had exceeded 400,000.
The website won awards such as placement into the "Top 100 Classic Websites" by PC Magazine in 2007, and winning the "People's Voice Award" from the Webby Awards in 2008. In early 2008, Facebook became EBITDA profitable, but was not cash flow positive yet.
On July 20, 2008, Facebook introduced "Facebook Beta", a significant redesign of its user interface on selected networks. The Mini-Feed and Wall were consolidated, profiles were separated into tabbed sections, and an effort was made to create a cleaner look. Facebook began migrating users to the new version in September 2008. In July 2008, Facebook sued StudiVZ, a German social network that was alleged to be visually and functionally similar to Facebook.
In October 2008, Facebook announced that its international headquarters would locate in Dublin, Ireland. A January 2009 Compete.com study ranked Facebook the most used social networking service by worldwide monthly active users. China blocked Facebook in 2009 following the Ürümqi riots.
In 2009, Yuri Milner's DST, alongside Uzbek Russian metals magnate Alisher Usmanov, invested $200 million in Facebook when it was valued at $10 billion. A separate stake was also acquired by Usmanov's USM Holdings on another occasion. According to the New York Times in 2013, "Mr. Usmanov and other Russian investors at one point owned nearly 10 percent of Facebook, though precise details of their ownership stakes are difficult to assess." It was later revealed in 2017 by the Paradise Papers that lending by Russian state-backed VTB Bank and Gazprom's investment vehicle partially financed these 2009 investments, although Milner was reportedly unaware at the time.
In May 2009, Zuckerberg said of the $200 million Russian investment, "This investment is purely buffer for us. It is not something we needed to get to cash flow positive." In September 2009, Facebook became cash flow positive ahead of schedule after closing a roughly $200 million gap in operating profitability.
In 2010, Facebook won the Crunchie "Best Overall Startup Or Product" award for the third year in a row.
The company announced 500 million users in July 2010. Half of the site's membership used Facebook daily, for an average of 34 minutes, while 150 million users accessed the site from mobile devices. A company representative called the milestone a "quiet revolution". In October 2010 groups were introduced. In November 2010, based on SecondMarket Inc., Facebook's value was $41 billion. The company had slightly surpassed eBay to become the third largest American web company after Google and Amazon.com.
On November 15, 2010, Facebook announced it had acquired the domain name fb.com from the American Farm Bureau Federation for an undisclosed amount. On January 11, 2011, the Farm Bureau disclosed $8.5 million in "domain sales income", making the acquisition of FB.com one of the ten highest domain sales in history.
In February 2011, Facebook announced plans to move its headquarters to the former Sun Microsystems campus in Menlo Park, California. In March 2011, it was reported that Facebook was removing about 20,000 profiles daily for violations such as spam, graphic content and underage use, as part of its efforts to boost cyber security. Statistics showed that Facebook reached one trillion page views in the month of June 2011, making it the most visited website tracked by DoubleClick. According to a Nielsen study, Facebook had in 2011 become the second-most accessed website in the U.S. behind Google.