On the 4th February, Facebook turned 17 years old. Now one of the biggest companies in the world, it’s become an everyday fixture of millions of lives the world over.
A Harvard student named Mark Zuckerberg launched Facebook, a social media website he had built in order to connect Harvard students with one another. Seventeen-years later, Facebook is one the most influential social networks in the world, boasting approximately 2.2 billion monthly users.
Let’s take an in-depth review of how a young student goes from coding in his dorm room to the head of one of the most important tech firms in history.
A brief History
It all began in 2003, when Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg created an online programme called “Facemash”, which allowed users to objectify fellow students by comparing photos of their faces and selecting who they deemed as ‘hotter’.
While Zuckerberg faced punishment from the Harvard administration for his actions, “Facemash” provided the framework for what was to become Facebook. On February 4 2004, the first iteration of Facebook was born, then known as thefacebook.com and made available exclusively to Harvard students.
Facebook proved extremely popular with Harvard students when it was first launched, so much so that the site was soon also made available to students at Stanford, Yale and Columbia before expanding to numerous other colleges.
By September 26 2006, anyone in the world could make themselves a Facebook account. One year prior, the social media platform officially became “Facebook”, as opposed to “TheFacebook”.
The world’s greatest
Finally, in December, 2009, Facebook hits a major milestone. With 350m registered users and 132m unique monthly users, it becomes the most popular social platform in the world.
The following year saw lots more tweaking and changes, such as the ability to like comments and improvements to photo tagging. July saw the number of registered users hit 500m, while the end of the year saw a big valuation of the company.
In November, 2010 Facebook was valued at a massive $41bn. Meanwhile it became the 3rd largest web company in the US, sitting behind Google and Amazon. All of this being achieved in under five years with no sign of progress slowing.
August also saw the release of Facebook Messenger as a standalone app. This came after the company acquired Beluga, a group messaging service, back in March. In 2012, Facebook reached the one-billion user milestone and still showed no sign of slowing down.
Major Milestones in Facebook’s history
February 2013 – Acquisition of Atlas is announced.
April 2014 – Facebook’s Business Manager service is launched.
November 2014 – Groups App is announced.
April 2015 – Over 40 million small business pages are now on Facebook.
June 2015 – Facebook’s AI Research group opens in Paris.
February 2016 – Facebook’s Reactions launches.
October 2016 – Facebook Marketplace launched – allowing users to buy and sell products.
October 2018 – Facebook announces the launch of the new Facebook Portal: a hands-free video calling device.
December 2018 – Facebook announced the launch of “Stablecoin”, a blockchain version in India.
June 2019 – Facebook launches its news digital wallet and currency called Calibra.
September 2019 – Facebook acquire the mind-reading startup CTRL-labs for $1 billion.
May 2020 – Facebook purchases GIPHY for hundreds of millions of dollars.
June 2020 – Facebook unveil their new AI tool to transform 2D images into 3D models.
June 2020 – The company announces its new “Dark Mode” for mobile devices.
Despite being shrouded in controversy over its (mis)handling of user privacy, Facebook continues to grow. In the third quarter of 2020, Facebook brought its total user base to an astonishing 2.74 billion.
