From Harvard University’s dorm room to conquering the world, Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook has been through a long journey. As the world’s richest and, maybe most influential, kid-on-the-block celebrates its 10th anniversary, today is an excellent opportunity to recall 10 defining moments of a roller-coaster adventure.
#1 Most Facebook users are probably not aware of it but before “Thefacebook”, Zuckerberg with a few university friends launched Facemash in October 2003. The site which asked visitors to rate students’ “hotness” based on photos stolen by Zuckerberg in Harvard’s directories, attracted over 20,000 people within 24 hours.
#2 When the university came to know about Facemash, it had it shut down. Zuckerberg who was accused of violating copyrights, breaching security and violating individuals’ privacy; later apologised in an interview with The Crimson. In any case, Facemash inspired Zuckerberg and soon after the incident, he started to write a code to create “Thefacebook”.
#3 On 4 February 2004, Zuckerberg put thefacebook.com online. Within a month, nearly half of Harvard’s population signed up on the platform. Later, students from other US colleges and universities including Columbia, Stanford and Yale, joined the social network.
#4 Meanwhile, six days after the launch of “Thefacebook”, three students at Harvard, among whom featured the Winklevoss twins, blamed Zuckerberg for having stolen their ideas while he was working with them as a programmer. After four years of legal dispute following a lawsuit filed by the trio, the court ruled in their favour in 2008 and Facebook had to settle for $65 million.
#5 Thefacebook’s growing popularity quickly caught the eyes of investors. Peter Thiel, the co-founder of PayPal, became its first investor in 2004. Microsoft later start injecting big dollars in the start-up. Today it has approximately 1.6% of shares in the company.
#6 In 2005, “TheFacebook” became known as “Facebook”, following the acquisition of a new domain name: facebook.com. In October, the platform added a new photo uploading function.
#7 The reputation of Facebook crossed frontiers and in September 2006 Zuckerberg opened its platform to the world. Anybody who was at least 13 years old could sign up for the first time. During the same year, Newsfeed was introduced as well as Facebook’s first mobile app.
#8The “Like” button was inserted on 9 February 2009 after the chat feature in 2008. A few months later, Facebook outpaced Myspace and became the most popular social network in the US.
#9 The California-based company hit another milestone in 2012, when it launched its IPO in May 2012. The social network was valued at $104 billion, a record figure for a new public company. A year before this, the timeline feature was inserted on Facebook.
#10 Facebook continues its billion dollars’ ascension after 10 years of activities. The largest social network with 1.23 billion monthly users saw its revenues climb past $7.87bn in 2013.
If you want to delve deeper into the Facebook world, The Social Network movie should satisfy your appetite. Meanwhile Mark Zuckerberg’s anniversary post requests your attention. Happy Birthday Facebook!
Source: The Telegraph
Link to Mark Zuckerberg’s status: https://www.facebook.com/zuck
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