The History of Facebook

We all know about the social media giant and the majority of us have Facebook accounts, but how did Mark Zuckerberg's baby come to be. One night after heavy drinking at Harvard, Facebook owner Mark Zuckerberg was dumped by a girlfriend and decided to create his own version of "hot or not". He hacked into Harvard's computer network and copied the house's private dormitory ID images. He called this site Facesmash, and it had 450 visitors and 22,000 photo views in less than 4 hours. Zuckerberg knew that his idea was ingenious, stating, "the initial site mirrored people's physical community--with their real identities--represented the key ideas for what later became Facebook." Zuckerberg was charged by the administration at Harvard for breach of security, violating copyrights, and violating individual privacy, and faced expulsion, but the charges were ultimately dropped against Zuckerberg from the Harvard constituents. After being involved in another hacking episode with an Art Course in which he illegally downloaded over 500 pictures onto a site, individually commenting on each picture......"the Professor had no other choice but to give him me an A and he said it was the best final project grade he had ever given", Zuckerberg said in a TechCrunch interview. Zuckerberg decided that pictures and individuals identity would ultimately provide the necessary social means to connect, reconnect, and network with whom they so choose.

So, in February of 2004, thefacebook was launched from Harvard and it started with about 250-300 close friends and by nights end there was over 1500 members. Three seniors from Harvard accused Zuckerberg of stealing information from their HarvardConnection social connection site. He almost responded arrogantly to their claims, "I think its kind of silly that it has taken them over two years to launch their site, I launched mine in less than a week." He later did settle with the three seniors from Harvard, terms from the settlement have not been disclosed.

Membership was initially limited to just Harvard students, but within a few months Zuckerberg decided to open his site to a few more Universities (Stanford, Columbia, Yale, and Boston area schools). By June, thefacebook.com bought the domain name facebook.com for $200,000 and they moved the organizations headquarters to Palto Alto, California. Facebook then took on the next logical progression, inviting all universities and high schools to join. Membership began to rise incredibly fast and venture capitalists were lining up at the door to approach Zuckerberg. Zuckerberg maintains to this day that Facebook has zero intent to ever go public and will remain a privately held organization. To that point, he also stated that "I don't think social networks can be monetized in the same way that search did.....in three years from now we have to figure out what the optimum model will be, but that is not our primary focus today." It would be really interesting to know what their primary focus was in 2008 and see if it is coming to fruition as fast as all of their other organizational goals. My guess was/is that their primary goal was to be considered the online social media marketing giant that they are today, and how they can turn that concept into a cash cow.

Today, Facebook houses over 500 million users from all over the globe. Their international headquarters is located in Dublin, Ireland and they have seven research and developmental sites in the United States, most notably Palto, Alto---as previously mentioned the site of their original headquarters. They recently purchased two online entities, Malaysian contact-importing start up Octazen Solutions and photo-sharing service provider Divvyshot to bolster their already stellar pic and contact divisions. Organizational powerhouses Microsoft and Google have expressed interest in acquiring Facebook from Zuckerberg, but he maintains his stance that he is not interested in selling Facebook. Today, most financial experts value Facebook in the neighborhood of 11.5 -13.5 billion dollars. As the story goes, Zuckerberg can thank a heavy night of drinking and being dumped by his girlfriend for his vision and development of what is Facebook today. If it were just that easy.........