About Facebook And History

Introduction

Facebook is a popular social networking website and an online social networking service. Its name comes from a colloquialism for the directory given to students at some American universities.Facebook was founded on February 4, 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with his college roommates and fellow Harvard University students Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes.The founders had initially limited the website's membership to Harvard students, but later expanded it to colleges in the Boston area, the Ivy League, and Stanford University. It gradually added support for students at various other universities before it opened to high-school students, and eventually to anyone aged 13 and over. Facebook now allows anyone who claims to be at least 13 years old to become a registered user of the website.Facebook was started with an aim to connect people and not as a "company".

Hot or Not?

Facebook was invented by Harvard computer science student Mark Zuckerberg, along with classmates Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes. The origins to the name hints as to the history of Facebook, however, the website was originally and briefly called Facemash. Mark Zuckerberg was a second year student, when he wrote the software for the Facemash website. Perhaps, it was Zuckerberg's sophomoric sense of humor that led him to create the site as a type of "hot or not" game for Harvard students, where website visitors could compare two student photos side-by-side and let viewers decide who was "hot" and who was "not". Mark Zuckerberg put his computer science skills to good use by hacking into Harvard's security network and where he copied the student ID images used by the dormitories and used them to populate his Facemash website.
Fashmash opened on October 28, 2003,and closed a few days later, shut down by Harvard execs. Mark Zuckerberg faced charges of breach of security, violating copyrights, and violating individual privacy for stealing the student photos he used to populate the site. He also faced expulsion from Harvard University for his actions. However, all charges were eventually dropped.

TheFacebook

On February 4, 2004, Mark Zuckerberg relaunched with a new website "Thefacebook". Six days later, Mark Zuckerberg again faced trouble when three Harvard seniors, Cameron Winklevoss, Tyler Winklevoss, and Divya Narendra, accused Zuckerberg of stealing their ideas for an intended social network website called HarvardConnection, and of using their ideas for TheFacebook. Winklevoss, Winklevoss, and Narendra later filed a lawsuit against Zuckerberg, however, the matter was settled out of court.
Membership to the website was at first restricted to Harvard College students. Zuckerberg enlisted a few of his fellow students to help grow the website: Eduardo Saverin worked on business, Dustin Moskovitz as a programmer, Andrew McCollum as a graphic artist, and Chris Hughes. Together the team expanded the site to additional universities and colleges.

Facebook

In 2004, an angel investor, Sean Parker (founder of Napster) became the company's president. The company changed the name from TheFacebook to just Facebook after purchasing the domain name facebook.com in 2005 for $200,000.
Mark Zuckerberg's antics finally did pay off when profits from Facebook made him the world's youngest multi-billionaire. Kudos goes to Zuckerberg for spreading the wealth around, according to the NYTimes, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg donated $100 million dollars to the Newark, New Jersey public school system, which has long been underfunded.

Ownership & PartnerShip

The ownership percentages of the company, as of 2012, are:

Mark Zuckerberg: 28%,
Accel Partners: 10%
Digital Sky Technologies: 10%
Dustin Moskovitz: 6%
Eduardo Saverin: 5%
Sean Parker: 4%
Peter Thiel: 3%
Greylock Partners: between 1 to 2%
Meritech Capital Partners: between 1 to 2% each
Microsoft: 1.3%
Li Ka-shing: 0.8%
Interpublic Group: less than 0.5%

Revenues

(estimated, in millions US$)
Year Revenue Growth
2006 $52[97] —
2007 $150[98] 188%
2008 $280[99] 87%
2009 $775[100] 177%
2010 $2,000[101] 158%
2011 $3,711[102] 86%
2012 $5,089[103] 37%
2013 $7,872[103] 55%

Mergers and Acquisitions

Till date facebooks has made acquisitions with 45 companies inlcuding ConnectU,Instagram and whatsapp.Getting merged with whatsapp and paying a whooping $19bn made it one of the biggest deal ever in social media.

Impacts

Facebook has affected the social life and activity of people in various ways. With its availability on many mobile devices, Facebook allows users to continuously stay in touch with friends, relatives and other acquaintances wherever they are in the world, as long as there is access to the Internet. It can also unite people with common interests and/or beliefs through groups and other pages, and has been known to reunite lost family members and friends because of the widespread reach of its network.Some argue that Facebook is beneficial to one's social life because they can continuously stay in contact with their friends and relatives, while others say that it can cause increased antisocial tendencies because people are not directly communicating with each other.

Recent studies have shown that Facebook causes negative effects on self-esteem by triggering feelings of envy, with vacation and holiday photos proving to be the largest resentment triggers. Other prevalent causes of envy include posts by friends about family happiness and images of physical beauty—such envious feelings leave people lonely and dissatisfied with their own lives.

Mass media

Movies like The Facebook Effect,The Accidental Billionaires,The Social Network reflect history of facebook.Getting to my personal opinion THE SOCIAL NETWORK is best one ever to know all about facebook.

C.E.O @FACEBOOK WITH OBAMA

FACEBOOK OPENING OFFICE 1st DAY

2014 TIMELINE FaceBook Snapshot 1

2014 TIMELINE FaceBook Snapshot 2

SOURCE:INTERNET,WIKIPEDIA
EDITED AND WRITTEN:Rutvik Shah

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