Founded on February 4, 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with his college
roommates and fellow Harvard University students Eduardo Saverin,
Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes, the
world’s most popular social networking website has turned
nine today. From its initial days of limited memberships for
college students to over one billion active users today, the social
networking major has definitely come a long way.
Let’s look at major milestones in Facebook’s
journey:
- January 11, 2004:
‘thefacebook.com’ domain is registered by Mark
Zuckerberg
- February 4, 2004: "Thefacebook” is
launched with membership restricted to students of Harvard
University
- March 2004: Facebook expands to other colleges
and universities
- June 2004: Facebook incorporates into a new
company and moves its base of operations to Palo Alto,
California.
- September 2004: Facebook introduces ‘The
Wall’, allowing users to share their thoughts on profile
pages. ConnectU files a lawsuit against Zuckerberg and other
Facebook founders claiming that Zuckerberg stole the idea for
Facebook from their company.
- December 30, 2004: Facebook achieves its one
millionth registered user.
- September 2005: Starts adding high schools to
the network.
- September 2006: The social networking
site opens to everyone aged 13 and over, and with a valid e-mail
address. It launches News Feed, which allows users to see all wall
posts by friends at one place.
- October, 2007: Microsoft purchases a 1.6
percent share of Facebook for USD 240 million, giving Facebook a
total implied value of around USD 15 billion.
- March 2008: Facebook hires Sheryl Sandberg,
previously Google's Vice President of Global Online Sales &
Operations, as its COO.
- June 2008: Facebook acquires ConnectU for USD
20 million in cash and over USD 1.2 million in shares, valued at
USD 45 million based on USD 15 billion company valuation.
- October 2008: Facebook sets up its
international headquarters in Dublin, Ireland
- February 2009: Facebook introduces
‘Like’ button, allowing users to "like" status updates,
comments, photos, and links posted by their friends.
- June 2009: Facebook surpasses News
Corp.’s Myspace as the leading online social network in the
U.S.
- August 2009: Facebook acquires social media
real-time news aggregator FriendFeed, a startup created by Gmail's
first engineer Paul Buchheit.
- February 2010: Facebook acquires Malaysian
contact-importing startup Octazen Solutions.
- June 2011: Facebook partners with Skype to add
video chat.
- September 2011: Facebook introduces Timeline
in the profile page, which shows highlights of activities by
Facebook user since joining rather than displaying recent
posts.
- October 10, 2011: Facebook launches iPad
app.
- January 2012: Facebook begins making Timeline
mandatory.
- April, 2012: Facebook acquires Instagram, a
photo-sharing social network, for USD 1 billion in cash and
stock
- May, 2012: Facebook goes public, negotiating a
share price of USD 38 apiece, valuing the company at USD 104
billion, the largest valuation to date for a newly listed public
company
- October, 2012: Facebook reaches 1 billion
users
- January 2013: Facebook launches Graph Search
that lets users sift through their social connections for
information about people, interests, photos and places.