Zuckerberg built a website called "Facemash" in 2003 while attending Harvard University. The site was comparable to Hot or Not and used "photos compiled from the online face books of nine Houses, placing two next to each other at a time and asking users to choose the "hotter" person".[17] Facemash attracted 450 visitors and 22,000 photo-views in its first four hours.[18] The site was sent to several campus group listservs, but was shut down a few days later by Harvard administration. Zuckerberg faced expulsion and was charged with breaching security, violating copyrights and violating individual privacy. Ultimately, the charges were dropped.[17] Zuckerberg expanded on this project that semester by creating a social study tool ahead of an art history final exam. He uploaded all art images to a website, each of which was accompanied by a comments section, then shared the site with his classmates.[19]
A "face book" is a student directory featuring photos and personal information.[18] In 2003, Harvard had only a paper version[20] along with private online directories.[17][21] Zuckerberg told The Harvard Crimson, "Everyone's been talking a lot about a universal face book within Harvard. ... I think it's kind of silly that it would take the University a couple of years to get around to it. I can do it better than they can, and I can do it in a week."[21] In January 2004, Zuckerberg coded a new website, known as "TheFacebook", inspired by a Crimson editorial about Facemash, stating, "It is clear that the technology needed to create a centralized Website is readily available ... the benefits are many." Zuckerberg met with Harvard student Eduardo Saverin, and each of them agreed to invest $1,000 in the site.[22] On February 4, 2004, Zuckerberg launched "TheFacebook", originally located at thefacebook.com.[23]
Mark Zuckerberg, co-creator of Facebook, in his Harvard dorm room, 2005
Six days after the site launched, Harvard seniors Cameron Winklevoss, Tyler Winklevoss, and Divya Narendra accused Zuckerberg of intentionally misleading them into believing that he would help them build a social network called HarvardConnection.com. They claimed that he was instead using their ideas to build a competing product.[24] The three complained to the Crimson and the newspaper began an investigation. They later sued Zuckerberg, settling in 2008[25] for 1.2 million shares (worth $300 million at Facebook's IPO).[26]
Membership was initially restricted to students of Harvard College. Within a month, more than half the undergraduates had registered.[27] Dustin Moskovitz, Andrew McCollum, and Chris Hughes joined Zuckerberg to help manage the growth of the website.[28] In March 2004, Facebook expanded to Columbia, Stanford and Yale.[29] It then became available to all Ivy League colleges, Boston University, NYU, MIT, and successively most universities in the United States and Canada.[30][31]
In mid-2004, Napster co-founder and entrepreneur Sean Parker—an informal advisor to Zuckerberg—became company president.[32] In June 2004, the company moved to Palo Alto, California.[33] It received its first investment later that month from PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel.[34] In 2005, the company dropped "the" from its name after purchasing the domain name Facebook.com for US$200,000.[35] The domain had belonged to AboutFace Corporation.
In May 2005, Accel Partners invested $12.7 million in Facebook, and Jim Breyer[36] added $1 million of his own money. A high-school version of the site launched in September 2005.[37] Eligibility expanded to include employees of several companies, including Apple Inc. and Microsoft.[38]
2006–2012: Public access, Microsoft alliance, and rapid growth
In May 2006, Facebook hired its first intern, Julie Zhuo.[39] After a month, Zhuo was hired as a full-time engineer.[39] On September 26, 2006, Facebook opened to everyone at least 13 years old with a valid email address.[40][41][42] By late 2007, Facebook had 100,000 pages on which companies promoted themselves.[43] Organization pages began rolling out in May 2009.[44] On October 24, 2007, Microsoft announced that it had purchased a 1.6% share of Facebook for $240 million, giving Facebook a total implied value of around $15 billion. Microsoft's purchase included rights to place international advertisements.[45][46]
In May 2007, at the first f8 developers conference, Facebook announced the launch of the Facebook Developer Platform, providing a framework for software developers to create applications that interact with core Facebook features. By the second annual f8 developers conference on July 23, 2008, the number of applications on the platform had grown to 33,000, and the number of registered developers had exceeded 400,000.[47]
In October 2008, Facebook announced that its international headquarters would locate in Dublin, Ireland.[48] In September 2009, Facebook said that it had achieved positive cash flow for the first time.[49] A January 2009 Compete.com study ranked Facebook the most used social networking service by worldwide monthly active users.[50]
The company announced 500 million users in July 2010.[51] Half of the site's membership used Facebook daily, for an average of 34 minutes, while 150 million users accessed the site from mobile devices. A company representative called the milestone a "quiet revolution."[52] In November 2010, based on SecondMarket Inc. (an exchange for privately held companies' shares), Facebook's value was $41 billion. The company had slightly surpassed eBay to become the third largest American web company after Google and Amazon.com.[53][54]
On November 15, 2010, Facebook announced it had acquired the domain name fb.com from the American Farm Bureau Federation for an undisclosed amount. On January 11, 2011, the Farm Bureau disclosed $8.5 million in "domain sales income", making the acquisition of FB.com one of the ten highest domain sales in history.[55]
In February 2011, Facebook announced plans to move its headquarters to the former Sun Microsystems campus in Menlo Park, California.[56][57] In March 2011, it was reported that Facebook was removing about 20,000 profiles daily for violations such as spam, graphic content and underage use, as part of its efforts to boost cyber security.[58] Statistics showed that Facebook reached one trillion page views in the month of June 2011, making it the most visited website tracked by DoubleClick.[59][60] According to a Nielsen study, Facebook had in 2011 become the second-most accessed website in the U.S. behind Google.[61][62]