Facebook’s History……….in 29 Photos

Discover Facebook’s History in just 29 photos – and find out how the Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg transformed his social experiment into a social giant.

Picture 1 – Beginning of Facebook

Mark Zuckerberg, 23, founded Facebook while studying psychology at Harvard University.

Picture 2 – Face Mash

2003 saw the year that Mark Zuckerberg produced a program called “face mash” which allowed visitors to compare two student pictures side-by-side and let them choose who was “hot” and who was “not. This creation took place during his second year at Harvard and in only 4 hours reached 22,000 page views.

Picture 3 – The Facebook

Only a few days after the launch of “face mash” Harvard ordered the site to be taken down due to copyright and security issues, however despite this Mark Zuckerberg willingly launched “thefacebook” on February 4, 2004.

Picture 4 – Cameron and Tyler Winklevossas and Divya Narendra

Shortly after the release of “thefacebook” Mark Zuckerberg found himself under further scrutiny, as twins Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss as well as Divya Narendra all Harvard Seniors alleged to have previously spoke to Zuckerberg regarding a website all to similar to ‘thefacebook’. This website was called HarvardConnection.com which they claimed was used as inspiration by Zuckerberg’s

Picture 5 – Mark Zuckerberg and Dustin Moskovitz

Facebook’s popularity was evident in its first month as over half of Harvard’s students were registered to the site, and by March 2004 Facebook expanded to Yale, Columbia and Stanford universities. Due to the increase in both popularity and size Zuckerberg was in a position to bring in fellow Harvard students Dustin Moskovitz, Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum and Chris Hughes. The idea was that they would become cofounders to grow social media site into a credible business.

Picture 6 – Facebook’s first ad-sales pitch

A few months down the line from Facebook’s initial launch was Facebook’s first ad-sales pitch, which gave great insight into the growth and potential of the firm.

Picture 7 – Mark Zuckerberg in his college room

After his sophomore year, Zuckerberg dropped out of college to devote himself to Facebook full time, moving the company to Palo Alto, California.

Picture 8 – Napster co-founder Sean Parker

 During mid 2004, Mark Zuckerberg hired naspster co-founder Sean Parker who would go on to be named Facebook’s first ever president.

Picture 9 – Palo Alto office on a daily basis

During the early days of Facebook you often couldn’t tell whether the small office in Palo Alto was a serious business start up or in fact a social gathering for Zuckerberg and his colleagues. In-fact a normal day would see Zuckerberg hang out in the office wearing shorts with a cold one in one hand and a laptop in the other.

Picture 10 – Facebook First Investment

Zuckerberg and his team moving to a new office was of course a huge millstone in Facebook’s history however so was there first outside funding in the form of a $500,000 investment from ex-PayPal executive Peter Thiel that came in the same month.

Picture 11 – Facebook launches news feed

By May 2005 Facebook achieved $13.7 million in funding which allowed the business to grow ever more. This showed in 2006, where Facebook launched its famous News Feed function, which allowed its users to receive a live stream of information based on who they are ‘friends’ with on Facebook.

Picture 12 – Sheryl Sandberg, Chief Operating Officer

The back end of 2007 saw Facebook appoint a Chief Operating Officer; this role was to be filled by Sheryl Sandberg after meeting with Zuckerberg at a Christmas party. However at the time Sheryl Sandberg was faced with 2 separate job roles, which she could pursue. However Zuckerberg was able to convince her to join the team there and then at that Christmas party.

Picture 13 – The Rise in Smartphones

 Facebook was growing quicker than ever during 2008 mainly down to the rise in smartphones, the popularity of smartphones meant that more users were able to access Facebook on the go using the application which was known to be much more convenient for its users.

Picture 14 – Stanford Research Park, Facebook’s New Office

In 2009, Facebook was able to move into a slightly larger Palo Alto office within the Stanford Research Park due to its rapid increase in growth. In-fact during the latter stages of 2010 Facebook hit a trillion page views a month.

Picture 15 – Facebooks corporate campus

Despite the move, this office would only last 2 years as 2011 saw the year that Facebook were able to move into a corporate campus, the same one that Sun Microsystems used before being bought by the parent company Oracle.

Picture 16 Hacker Way, Facebook

In addition to this, Zuckerberg was able to change the name of the campus to “Hacker Way” which added to Mark Zuckerberg’s iconic philosophy “Move fast and break things”.

Picture 17 – 2011 Egyptian protests 

Due to Facebook’s size, power and access to millions of people it rapidly became a common way of organizing events and because of this became a major political power at this point. A common example of this was the 2011 Egyptian protests. Which was labeled a “Facebook Revolution”.

Picture 18 – Mark Zuckerberg with Obama 

As well as Facebook being involved in political events it was only right that Zuckerberg himself got more involved in politics. Over the past few years he has spoken to many world leaders including Barack Obama where he is able to address the case for spreading Internet access all over the world.

Picture 19 – Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook’s belief in same sex marriage

As a community and a business Facebook, has always possessed beliefs of marriage equality and equal rights. This has been followed by millions of people around the world.

Picture 20 – First IPO event for Facebook

 Labeled a “cultural touchstone” by the media Facebook held its historic $5 billion initial public offering on Friday, May 19 2012. The IPO was the biggest in technology and one of the biggest in Internet history. At this point Facebook were unstoppable.

Picture 21 – Facebook and its Little red book

The same time 1 Billion joined the social networking site, workers saw the introduction of the “little red book”, a small book that was placed on the desks of all its employees. This book was filled with inspirational quotes, which were specifically inserted to share the company’s core values and beliefs. Essentially allowing all employees to be on the same page.

Picture 22 – Mark Zuckerberg on his wedding day

Quite literally the day after the IPO, Mark Zuckerberg married the love of his life Priscilla Chan, a girl he met at Harvard whilst he was a student.

Picture 23 – Mark Zuckerberg after buying Instaragm

One of Facebook’s roles as being one of the market leaders is looking out for the latest and most promising start-ups. In-fact Facebook have wasted no time is snapping up the latest hot shots within the industry. For example in 2012 Facebook bought out photo-sharing service Instagram for $1 Billion which has 500 billion users.

Picture 24 – Mark Zuckerberg and the Oculus

 Another example would be Oculus, relatively new to the gaming industry Zuckerberg bought the company for $2 billion in March 2014. The mission is to make the world more open and connected.

Picture 25 – Zuckerberg after buying whats app

Perhaps one of the larger deals would be the what’s app deal, in February 2014 Facebook bought what’s app for a significant fee of $19 billion. What’s app’ cofounder, Jan Koum, is now a Facebook board member where it has over $1 Billion monthly users.

Picture 26 – Celebrating 10 years

 As well as making an almighty deal during February 2014, it was also Facebook’s 10^th birthday. So I guess it was only fitting. At this point over 1.23 billion people were visiting the social network every month. Were in fact a billion of them were on their mobile devices. Its good to see that despite constant technological changes Facebook continued to grow.

Picture 27 – Brand new campus

 Over 10 years of growth and finally the social media giant have there own campus designed by the famous architect Frank Gehry.

Picture 28 Mark Zuckerberg and his Wife

 Late December, Zuckerberg announced the brand new corporation of Chan Zuckerberg initiative. The brand new limited liability corporation will receive 99% of his wealth, which will then be reinvested into world changing causes.

 Picture 29 –  12 Years

 After 12 years of growth and expansion the social giant  is still the leading social network in the world, with over 1.71 billion users each month. Quite conveniently Zuckerberg owns the only other social networking sites with over a billion users, which means Facebook, are showing very few signs of slowing down. With Mark Zuckerberg at the reigns it looks like his mission and dream to connect everybody in the world will be pursued a little longer.