face book

                          

Facebook is an American online social media and social networking service company based in Menlo Park, California. Its website was launched on February 4, 2004, by Mark Zuckerberg, along with fellow Harvard Collegestudents and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes.

Facebook is an American online social media and social networking service company based in Menlo Park, California. Its website was launched on February 4, 2004, by Mark Zuckerberg, along with fellow Harvard Collegestudents and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes.

The founders initially limited the website's membership to Harvard students. Later they expanded it to higher education institutions in the Boston area, the Ivy League schools, and Stanford University. Facebook gradually added support for students at various other universities, and eventually to high school students. Since 2006, anyone who claims to be at least 13 years old has been allowed to become a registered user of Facebook, though variations exist in this requirement, depending on local laws. The name comes from the face bookdirectories often given to American university students. Facebook held its initial public offering (IPO) in February 2012, valuing the company at $104 billion, the largest valuation to date for a newly listed public company. It began selling stock to the public three months later. Facebook makes most of its revenue from advertisementsthat appear onscreen.

Facebook can be accessed from a large range of devices with Internet connectivity, such as desktop computers, laptops and tablet computers, and smartphones. After registering, users can create a customized profile indicating their name, occupation, schools attended and so on. Users can add other users as "friends", exchange messages, post status updates, share photos, videos and links, use various software applications ("apps"), and receive notifications of other users' activity. Additionally, users may join common-interest user groups organized by workplace, school, hobbies or other topics, and categorize their friends into lists such as "People From Work" or "Close Friends". Additionally, users can report or block unpleasant people.

Facebook has more than 2.2 billion monthly active users as of January 2018. Its popularity has led to prominent media coverage for the company, including significant scrutiny over privacy and the psychological effects it has on users. In recent years, the company has faced intense pressure over the amount of fake news, hate speechand depictions of violence prevalent on its services, all of which it is attempting to counteract

History

2003–2006: Thefacebook, Thiel investment, and name change

Zuckerberg wrote a program called "Facemash" in 2003 while attending Harvard University as a sophomore (second year student). According to The Harvard Crimson, the site was comparable to Hot or Not and used "photos compiled from the online facebooks of nine Houses, placing two next to each other at a time and asking users to choose the "hotter" person".^[6] Facemash attracted 450 visitors and 22,000 photo-views in its first four hours online.^[7] The Facemash site was quickly forwarded to several campus group list-servers, but was shut down a few days later by the Harvard administration. Zuckerberg faced expulsion and was charged by the administration with breach of security, violating copyrights, and violating individual privacy. Ultimately, the charges were dropped.^[6] Zuckerberg expanded on this initial 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 featured with a corresponding comments section, then shared the site with his classmates, and people started sharing notes.^[8]

Original layout and name of Thefacebook, 2004

A "face book" is a student directory featuring photos and basic information.^[7] In 2003, there were no universal online facebooks at Harvard, with only paper sheets distributed^[9] and private online directories.^[6][10] Zuckerberg told the Crimsonthat "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."^[10] In January 2004, Zuckerberg began writing code for a new website, known as "TheFacebook", with the inspiration coming from an editorial in the Crimson about Facemash, stating that "It is clear that the technology needed to create a centralized Website is readily available ... the benefits are many."^[11] On February 4, 2004, Zuckerberg launched "TheFacebook", originally located at thefacebook.com.^[12]

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.^[13] The three complained to The Harvard Crimson and the newspaper began an investigation. They later filed a lawsuit against Zuckerberg, subsequently settling in 2008^[14] for 1.2 million shares (worth $300 million at Facebook's IPO).^[15]

Membership was initially restricted to students of Harvard College; within the first month, more than half the undergraduates at Harvard were registered on the service.^[16] Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz, Andrew McCollum, and Chris Hughes joined Zuckerberg to help manage the growth of the website.^[17] In March 2004, Facebook expanded to the universities of Columbia, Stanford, and Yale.^[18] It later opened to all Ivy League colleges, Boston University, New York University, MIT, Washington and gradually most universities in the United States and Canada.^[19][20]

In mid-2004, entrepreneur Sean Parker—an informal advisor to Zuckerberg—became the company's president.^[21] In June 2004, Facebook moved its operations base to Palo Alto, California.^[22] It received its first investment later that month from PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel.^[23] In 2005, the company dropped "the" from its name after purchasing the domain name facebook.com for US$200,000.^[24] The domain facebook.com belonged to AboutFace Corporation before the purchase. This website last appeared on April 8, 2005;^[25] from April 10, 2005, to August 4, 2005, this domain gave a 403 error.^[26]

Mark Zuckerberg, co-creator of Facebook, in his Harvard dorm room, 2005

In May 2005, Accel Partners invested $12.7 million in Facebook, and Jim Breyer^[27] added $1 million of his own money. A high-school version of the site was launched in September 2005, which Zuckerberg called the next logical step.^[28] (At the time, high-school networks required an invitation to join.)^[29] Facebook also expanded membership eligibility to employees of several companies, including Apple Inc. and Microsoft.^[30]