The history of Facebook

The founder of Facebook is Mark Zucherberg. He was just a sophomore at Harvard University when he created ‘thefacebook.com’. That was in 2004 and in 2005, the domain name was bought for $ 200,000 and was already known as ‘Facebook’.

Back then, membership was only limited to Harvard University students. In the site’s first month, roughly half of Harvard’s population were already registered members. The website was promoted by programmer Dustin Moskovitz, the business side by Eduardo Saverin, graphic artist Chris Hughes, and Andrew McCollum. In the same year (2004), the site already expanded to Yale, Columbia and Stanford. Facebook continued to expand and eventually reached Boston schools, including the Ivy leagues. It gradually spread to various universities in the United States and Canada. Base operations moved to Palo Alto in California. Last October 2008, the international headquarters already moved to Dublin, Ireland.

In September 2005, the High School (HS) version was released. However, to become a member, high school students needed an invitation. After a while, the employees were already invited, including Microsoft and Apple. It was only in September 2006 that Facebook allowed teens to join, but only those over 13 and they should have a legitimate email address.

Today, Facebook and MySpace compete with each other. Users claim that these two sites are different, especially when it comes to personalization. On Facebook, users can customize plain text while on MySpace, users can use CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) and HTML. Users are free to interact with their friends due to various free Facebook features like Pokes, Photos, Status, Wall, etc. Friends can post comments, send virtual touches, upload and share photos, and post status messages to inform others of their actions and their whereabouts. The ‘wall’ is visible to your friends and other Facebook users and you can configure your privacy settings.

In 2007, users can already make attachments to the Wall and it is no longer limited to textual content. Since Facebook was introduced, it has already added many different functions. Now, you can find ‘News feed’ on users home page. Information stands out such as upcoming events, profile changes, birthdays, and much more.

Now you know the interesting story of Facebook. What started as a university-based social networking site is now a major site known around the world.