Facebook History

Zuckerberg

Founded on February 4, 2004, by Mark Zuckerberg, Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes in a Harvard dorm room, Facebook has rapidly become one of the biggest social networking sites in the world. Within the year, the social networking site accrued over 1 million users - which has since grown exponentially to hit over 2 billion in 2018. 

But how did this college startup become one of the world's largest companies, with a presence in dozens of countries worldwide? 

ccording to Divya Narendra and Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, Zuckerberg reneged on an agreement to help them build their own social media site at Harvard - and, instead, used the code and idea to inspire the creation of Facebook. And while the dispute was eventually settled in 2008, Facebook's inception was clouded in questions. 

But before there was Facebook, there was Facemash. 

In 2003, as a sophomore, Zuckerberg created a site that compared the pictures of different Harvard students' faces and allowed users to rate the attractiveness of those pictures - attracting 450 people to vote 22,000 times. However, because Zuckerberg violated the school's policy by hacking into the school's system to acquire photos for the site, it was shut down quickly by the university - within two days. Still, Zuckerberg avoided expulsion. However, Facemash's success sparked the idea for Facebook - a social networking site where students at Harvard could use their ".edu" email addresses and photos to connect with other students at the school.Along with Moskovitz, Saverin, and Hughes, Zuckerberg created the address thefacebook.com in February of 2004, and it began to spread like wildfire at Harvard - and then Stanford, Yale, and Columbia by March of that year. 

Let's break it down.

• February 2004 - Facebook (then called "thefacebook") was founded by Zuckerberg, Moskovitz, Saverin, and Hughes.

• March 2004 - Facebook spreads to three other college campuses - Yale, Columbia, and Stanford. 

• June 2004 - Facebook moves its headquarters to Palo Alto, California. 

• September 2004 - The site launches the now-infamous "wall" - which allows users to post things and receive messages on their own page. 

• December 2004 - Facebook hits 1 million users. 

• May 2005 - Facebook expands to over 800 college campuses. 

• September 2005 - The site expands to high school networks. It also drops the "the" to become just "Facebook." 

• October 2005 - Facebook adds photos and goes international.

• December 2005 - Facebook has over 6 million users.

• April 2006 - Facebook goes mobile.

• September 2006 - Anyone can now join Facebook.

• December 2006 - Membership increases to 12 million.

• June 2007 - Video launches.

• December 2007 - Membership increases to 58 million.

• July 2008 - Launch of Facebook for iPhone. 

• February 2009 - The "like" button is introduced.

• July 2010 - Over 500 million users are active on Facebook.

• August 2010 - Engineering center is opened in Seattle.

• October 2010 - Groups are launched.

• April 2011 - Data center opens in Prineville, Oregon. 

• July 2011 - Video calling is launched.

• April 2012 - Acquisition of Instagram is announced.

• May 2012 - Facebook releases their IPO - which raised $16 billion and gave the company a $102.4 billion market value.

• October 2012 - Membership hits the 1 billion mark.

• February 2013 - Acquisition of Atlas is announced. 

• June 2013 - Facebook's acquisition of Instagram launches video. 

• February 2014 - Acquisition of WhatsApp is announced.

• March 2014 - Acquisition of Oculus is announced.

• November 2014 - Groups App is announced. 

• April 2015 - Over 40 million small business pages are on Facebook.

• June 2015 - Facebook's AI Research opens in Paris.

• February 2016 - Facebook's Reactions launches. 

• July 2016 - Over 1 billion users of Messenger a month.

• October 2016 - Marketplace launches - allowing users to buy and sell products.

• April 2017 - F8 developer's conference is held in San Jose by Facebook.

• March 2018 - Facebook sued by shareholders following stock plummet.

• April 2018 - Zuckerberg testifies before Congress regarding concerns over data and privacy breaches.

• September 2018 - Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg testifies before Congress alongside Twitter (TWTR) - Get Report executives.