Sunday, February 3, 2013

Facebook reaches the big 010: Happy B-Day to you


"I used to do Facebook but you get a little too wrapped up in that stuff. Its more distracting than anything so I don't any more. I left it behind. I detoxed!"
~~ Emily Stone

American actress and 2012 People’s Choice Award, Favorite Movie Actress


Facebook that controversial social networking service with media, social, political and cultural implications launched in February 2004, and turns 10 years young today. As of December 2012, Facebook had over 1.2 billion active users, more than half of them using Facebook on a mobile device. Happy Birthday Facebook! Where's the Google doodle?

Founded by Mark Zuckerberg with his college roommates and fellow Harvard University students Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes, the website's membership was initially limited by the founders to Harvard students, but was expanded to other colleges in the Boston area, the Ivy League, and Stanford University.

Mark Zuckerberg wrote Facemash, the predecessor to Facebook, on October 28, 2003, while attending Harvard as a sophomore. 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.

With success comes controversy particularly with Facebook. Zuckerberg hacked protected areas of Harvard's computer network and copied the houses' private dormitory ID images. Harvard at that time did not have a student "facebook" (a directory with photos and basic information), though individual houses had been issuing their own paper facebooks since the mid-1980s. From it’s first 4 hours online, Facemash attracted 450 visitors and 22,000 photo-views.


According to an article from Rolling Stone in July 2008, the site was quickly forwarded to several campus group list-servers, but was shut down a few days later by the Harvard administration. Zuckerberg was charged by the administration with breach of security, violating copyrights, and violating individual privacy, and faced expulsion. Ultimately, the charges were dropped. The Battle of Facebook, Rolling Stone, NY July 2008,

Zuckerberg expanded on this initial project that semester by creating a social study tool ahead of an art history final, by uploading 500 Augustan images to a website, with one image per page along with a comment section. He opened the site up to his classmates, and people started sharing their notes.

The following semester, Zuckerberg began writing code for a new website in January 2004. He was inspired, he said, by an editorial in The Harvard Crimson about the Facemash incident. On February 4, 2004, Zuckerberg launched "Thefacebook", originally located at thefacebook.com.

Six days after the site launched, three Harvard seniors, Cameron Winklevoss, Tyler Winklevoss, and Divya Narendra, accused Zuckerberg of intentionally misleading them into believing he would help them build a social network called HarvardConnection.com, while he was instead using their ideas to build a competing product.

The three complained to the Harvard Crimson, and the newspaper began an investigation. The three later filed a lawsuit against Zuckerberg, subsequently settling. In June 2004, Facebook moved its base of operations to Palo Alto, California and received its first investment later that month from PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel. The company dropped “The” from its name after purchasing the domain name facebook.com in 2005 for $200,000.

Writers for The Wall Street Journal found in 2010 that Facebook apps were transmitting identifying information to "dozens of advertising and Internet tracking companies". The apps used an HTTP referrer which exposed the user's identity and sometimes their friends'.

Facebook said, "We have taken immediate action to disable all applications that violate our terms.” Facebook in Privacy Breach, The Wall Street Journal (New York).

In January 2013, the countries with the most Facebook users were:
FB stats by country, March 3, 2012)
United States with 168.8 million members
Brazil with 64.6 million members
India with 62.6 million members
Indonesia with 51.4 million members
Mexico with 40.2 million members This totals to 309 million members or about 38.6 percent of Facebook's 1 billion worldwide members.
43.1 Million Members of Facebook in Indonesia, Kompas, February 2, 2012.

In regards to Facebook's mobile usage, per an analyst report in early 2013, there are 192 million Android users, 147 million iPhone users, 48 million iPad users and 56 million messenger users


All photos courtesy of Wikimedia and screen shots taken from video and websites. All other photos will be credited as required.


Additional resources:
Facebook profile may expose mental illness Fox News
Facebook Banned: 9 Ways To Get Kicked Off The Social Network Huffington Post
Facebook Wikipedia
This is The Future of The Facebook ‘News Feed’ Business Insider



Facebook Timeline
2003
♦ October 28, 2003: Mark Zuckerberg releases Facemash, the predecessor to Facebook. It was described as a Harvard University version of Hot or Not
2004
♦ January 2004: Zuckerberg begins writing Facebook
♦ January 11, 2004: Zuckerberg registers thefacebook.com domain
♦ February 4, 2004: Zuckerberg launches Facebook
♦ March 2004: Facebook expands to MIT, Boston University, Boston College, Northeastern University, Stanford University, Dartmouth College, Columbia University, and Yale University
♦ April 13, 2004: Zuckerberg, Dustin Moskovitz, and Eduardo Saverin form Thefacebook.com LLC, a partnership
♦ June 2004: Facebook receives its first investment from Peter Thiel for US$500,000
♦ June 2004: Facebook incorporates into a new company, and Sean Parker (early employee of Napster) becomes its president
♦ June 2004: Facebook moves its base of operations to Palo Alto, California
♦ August 2004: To compete with growing campus-only service i2hub, Zuckerberg launches Wirehog. It is a precursor to Facebook Platform applications
♦ September 2004: ConnectU files a lawsuit against Zuckerberg and other Facebook founders
♦ December 30, 2004: Facebook achieves its one millionth registered user
2005
♦ May 26, 2005: Accel Partners invests $13 million into Facebook
♦ July 19, 2005: News Corp acquires MySpace, spurring rumors about the possible sale of Facebook to a larger media company
♦ August 23, 2005: Facebook acquires Facebook.com domain for $200,000
♦ September 2005: Added high school networks[14]
♦ October 2005: Added international school networks and added photos
2006
♦ 2006: A leaked cash flow statement shows that Facebook had a net loss of $3.63 million for the 2005 fiscal year
♦ March 28, 2006: A potential acquisition of Facebook is reportedly under negotiations, for $750 million first, then later $2 billion
♦ September 2006: Facebook discusses with Yahoo! about the latter possibly acquiring the former, for $1 billion
♦ September 2006: Facebook launches a high school version of the website
♦ September 26, 2006: Facebook is open to everyone aged 13 and over, and with a valid email address
2008
♦ June 2008: Facebook settles both lawsuits, ConnectU vs Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg et al. and intellectual property theft, Wayne Chang et al. over The Winklevoss Chang Group's Social Butterfly project. The settlement effectively had Facebook acquiring ConnectU for $20 million in cash and over $1.2 million in shares, valued at $45 million based on $15 billion company valuation
♦ August 2008: Employees reportedly privately sell their shares to venture capital firms, at a company valuation of between $3.75 billion to $5 billion
♦ October 2008: Facebook sets up its international headquarters in Dublin, Ireland
2009
♦ August 2009: Facebook acquires FriendFeed
♦ September 2009: Facebook claims that it has turned cash flow positive for the first time
2010
♦ February 2010: Facebook acquires Malaysian contact-importing startup Octazen Solutions
♦ April 2, 2010: Facebook announces the acquisition of photo-sharing service called Divvy-shot for an undisclosed amount
♦ April 19, 2010: Facebook introduces Community Pages, which are Pages that are populated with articles from Wikipedia
♦ April 21, 2010: Facebook introduces Instant Personalization, starting with Microsoft Docs, Yelp, and Pandora
♦ June 2010: Facebook employees sell shares of the company on SecondMarket at a company valuation of $11.5 billion
♦ October 1, 2010: The Social Network, a film about the beginnings of Facebook directed by David Fincher is released. The film is met with widespread critical acclaim as well as commercial success; however, Mark Zuckerberg says that the film is a largely inaccurate account of what happened.
2011
♦ January 2011: $500 million is invested into Facebook for 1% of the company, placing its worth at $50 billion
♦ February 2011: Facebook adds new "civil union" option for gay partnerships
♦ February 2011: Facebook application and content aggregator Pixable estimates that Facebook will host 100 billion photos by summer 2011
♦ June 2011: Facebook partners with Skype to add video chat
♦ September 2011: Facebook partners with Heroku for Facebook application development using the Facebook Platform
♦ September 22, 2011: Facebook launches new UI Timeline in F8 Convention
♦ October 10, 2011: Facebook launches iPad app
♦ December 21, 2011: Facebook log in page changes due to Facebook Timeline addition
♦ December 22, 2011: Facebook launches its new profile user interface, Facebook Timeline.
2012
♦ April 2012: Facebook acquires picture sharing and social network, Instagram, for $1 billion, the largest acquisition to date
♦ May 2012: Facebook IPO, initial price set at $38 a share, and the stock closed at $38.23 on its first trading day
♦ July 2012: Facebook adds same-sex couples as icons for marriage
♦ August 2012: Facebook forces all remaining users of the old profile style to the new "Timeline" style
♦ October 2012: Total number of Facebook users reaches 1 billion



All photos courtesy of Wikimedia and screen shots taken from video and websites. All other photos will be credited as required.



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10 comments:

  1. Amazing that Facebook is around for 10 years and already passed the billion account mark.

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  2. Interesting blog and thanks for celebrating Facebook. This information is good to know.

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  3. \Cool. I like the way you use quotes.

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  4. Wow, this is such an informative blog. I am sure many will appreciate the timeline.

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  5. No Google doodle. Could it be because they are competitors?

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  6. Really enjoyed this post and your blog.

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  7. Interesting trivia that the original name was Facemash.

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  8. The movie about Facebook was so exciting. The stock market IPO was such a disappointment to many.

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  9. Obviously, FB is here to stay and many will continue to use it. But whether it can capitalize in ads is another story. Many are on FB just for the sake of communicating and networking to friends, so not sure how effective the ads are going to be.

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  10. Interesting, how time flies by and already FB in just 10 years reaches over a billion accounts.

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