THE HISTORY OF FACEBOOK: FROM BASIC TO GLOBAL GIANT

On the 4th February Facebook turned 14 years old. Now one of the biggest companies in the world, it’s become an
everyday fixture of millions of lives the world over.

Businesses, too, have found their place from industry giants to the quaint cafe in a tiny town of a few hundred people.

So how did one young US student go from coding in his dorm room to the head of one of the most important and
influential tech firms in history?

ZUCKERBERG STARTS OUT

Mark Zuckerberg took the first steps of his path at an early age. Clearly understanding the importance of coding,
Zuckerberg’s father Edward taught him Atari BASIC computer programming. It didn’t take long for his skills to become
apparent. When he was 11, his parents hired a software developer named David Newman to tutor him. Newman to this
day calls Zuckerberg a “prodigy”.

Within a couple of years, Zuckerberg created an incredibly practical programme: ZuckNet. His father ran a dentists out
of the house and wanted a simple way for the receptionist to contact him without shouting through their home. ZuckNet,
which worked like an internal instant messaging system, did just that.

While attending Phillips Exeter Academy, an elite boarding school, his drive to create did not abate. He attracted interest
from AOL and Microsoft. The wanted to buy Synapse, a piece of software that learned a user’s music taste through AI
and listening habits he created with a friend, and give him a job.

Ultimately, he turned it down and set his sites on Harvard. It’s here where the origins of Facebook can be found. It’s a
decision he unlikely regrets now.

HARVARD AND FACEMASH

Having turned down two of the biggest tech companies in the world, Zuckerberg headed off to Harvard in 2002. Clearly
he had bigger plans. He chose to major in psychology, but took plenty of computer science classes along with it. At first
the psychology choice seems strange. Why not major in programming or something similar?

But when you think of Facebook’s nature, the supposed ‘addictive’ nature of the likes, comments, and pokes, the
psychology part becomes clearer. Facebook from the off pulls you in to share personal details and seek out interaction
from other people. Being able to design something like this must involve some knowledge of the human mind.

Zukerberg attracts his first big controversy in October, 2003. He creates and published Facemash, a website that lets
Harvard students judge the attractiveness of each other to create rankings (similar to the Hot or Not site that launched
in 2000). As he didn’t actually get permission to use student photos, unsurprisingly many were not happy with his work.

Within a few hours the site had seen 22k photo views, but within a few days it was shut down. He was hauled in front
of the Harvard Administration Board. With the risk of expulsion on the table, the board finally decided to let him stay.
After a public apology he moved on from his first brush with authority and set his sights on his next project.
INTRODUCING THE FACEBOOK

It wasn’t long until we saw the first iteration of a now near ubiquitous company. February, 2004 saw Thefacebook
launch. With a slightly different name, the platform was familiar. It had a profile where you could upload a photo, share
your interests, and connect with other people. It also offered a network visualization of your connections.

Initially this was only opened to people with a Harvard email address and within the first month 50% of the college’s
student’s had signed up. But there was a big problem Zuckerberg had to deal with from the off. He was being sued.

Zuckerberg ad previously worked on a similar project with fellow students Cameron Winklevoss, Tyler Winklevoss,
and Divya Narendra. He eventually quit to do this one thing, Thefacebook. But this ex-collaborators say he stole their
concept and ideas and they wanted recompense.

They eventually came to a settlement in 2008, with each of the trio receiving 1.2m shares in the Facebook company. By
the IPO, these were worth $300m, but more on the IPO later.

Thefacebook was an instant hit and interest grew and grew and grew. By the end of 2004, membership was open to
nearly all universities in the US and Canada and people were clamouring to sign up.

June of that year also saw Zuckerberg move the company’s operations to Palo Alto, California and secured some
important investment. Co-founder of PayPal, Peter Thiel, joined the board and brought with him $500,000.

In May 2005 TheFacebook received more money. This time investments of $12.7m from Accel and $1m from the
personal fortune of venture capitalist Jim Breyer. People were really paying attention now.

In August the ‘the’ was dropped and the company officially became Facebook (the facebook.com domain cost $200,000).
The following month high school students are admitted, along with employees of Microsoft and Apple. The company
was now ready to move beyond its student base.

Then in November Zuckerberg took an important decisions about his own life. Having taken the semester off from
Harvard, he announced he was leaving entirely, returning briefly to hire some new employees. After significant
investment and a growing membership, Zuckerberg was ready to fully dedicate himself to running his company, as a
CEO rather than a programmer.
YOU HEARD OF THIS THING CALLED FACEBOOK?

With the Zuck at the helm full-time, Facebook continued its expansion plans. In December Australian and New Zealand
universities were included, along with high schools from Mexico, the UK, and Ireland. That meant there were now 2,500
colleges and 25,000 high schools with access to Facebook.

It wasn’t until September 2006 when the platform became open for everyone (well, anyone over 13 with a valid email
address). Facebook had now gone fully global. We also started to see the rate of membership growth:

December 2006: 12m

April 2007: 20m
July 2007: 30m
October 2007: 50m

In May 2007, Facebook open their Marketplace, which lets users post classifieds to sell products and services. It also
saw the launch of the Facebook Application Developer platform, opening the gates for developers to create their own
applications and games that integrated with Facebook.

The platform was also looking beyond personal profiles to how businesses could use the site. By the end of 2007 over
100,000 companies had signed up, with Facebook launching Pages for Businesses to support this. Already they’re
making plans to build on existing ad revenue to make advertising on the platform accessible to even the smallest of
businesses.

Then in 2008 we see a huge release from Facebook. April, 2008 saw Facebook Chat roll out, allow us to more instantly
annoy our friends and family. Essentially, the concept is no different to ZuckNet. We also see the People You May
Know, Facebook Wall, and Facebook Connect released in the same year.

Meanwhile the user count continues to grow:

August, 2008: 100m
January, 2009: 150m
February 2009: 175m
April, 2009: 200m
July, 2009: 250m
September, 2009: 300m

We also saw one of the big Facebook games appear. Farmville was released in June, 2009 and, despite being a rip off
of a game called Farm Town, became a huge success. By August it had 10m daily active users. So, so much virtual corn.