With more than 200 million users, Facebook has become the online social network of choice for many. Its recent meteoric rise has been well covered, including the way it has left Myspace to rapidly become a ghetto of the Internet - rife with abandoned profiles and crawling with solicitation offers. The history of Facebook, however, is not without its own bits of questionable activity.
The Facemash Era
Facebook today is quite different from Facebook in 2004 and its roots prior to that. So how did Facebook originate? It started with a different name and a different goal. Originally called "Facemash", Mark Zuckerberg devised the site as a rating site wherein two individual's pictures would be placed side-by-side and users chose which individual was more attractive. It was a way for Zuckerberg, then a sophomore at Harvard University, to occupy his time outside of classes.
Zuckerberg, however, soon found himself in legal trouble for methods used to collect images for Facemash, namely hacking into restricted areas of Harvard's computer network and accessing ID images used for dorm security purposes. Charges, including violating individual privacy, breach of security, and copyright violation, were filed and eventually dropped.
The TheFacebook Era
Not one to be swayed, Zuckerberg continued . And for those asking "How did Facebook originate?" the Facebook as it is recognized today began in February 2004 with thefacebook.com. After Harvard dropped the charges stemming from the Facemash incident, Zuckerberg took on an idea that had been of growing popularity at Harvard: a university facebook.
Tired of waiting for Harvard to get around to creating a school-wide facebook, Zuckerberg created it himself. With the assistance of some friends (namely Dustin Mokovitz, Eduardo Saverin, Chris Hughes, and Andrew McCollum), Zuckerberg set out to promote TheFacebook. By March of 2004, approximately half of Harvard's undergraduate population was using the service.
Because thefacebook.com was not property of Harvard, Zuckerberg could expand membership however he wished. Within a year, thefacebook.com was hosting students from all of the Ivy League schools as well as universities in the greater Boston area. In 2005, Zuckerberg bought the domain name facebook.com and dropped the "the" from the former name.
A Tragic Thrust Into the Limelight
In rapid succession, Zuckerberg made Facebook available to colleges and universities across the United States and Canada, then certain high-profile corporations (i.e., Apple, Microsoft, etc.), then high schools, and eventually anyone older than 13 years of age with a valid e-mail address. Membership expanded rapidly, but it wasn't until April 16, 2007 and the tragic massacre at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech), which left 32 people dead, that Facebook became a household name.
Such an unforeseen event left most news agencies scrambling to get reporters to the scene and report the horrific details. While news crews were in transit, sources such as CNN were looking to find information anywhere they could. Students at Virginia Tech were updating their Facebook pages rapidly as they learned new details. It was this on-the-scene coverage from Facebook users that received much of the initial coverage on major news networks, creating a massive migration to Facebook.
Facebook Today
From its somewhat bizarre origin as Facemash it has taken Facebook just five years to amass more than 200 million active worldwide users. According to Forbes.com, Facebook also posted a 2008 revenue of more than $300 million (USD). Reuters reports Facebook's employee total exceeds 700 people. Additional, Facebook has set up an international headquarters in Dublin, Ireland.
Perhaps the more intriguing question is not "How did facebook originate?" but rather "How big can Facebook get?"
