Facebook, one of the most popular and largest social networking platforms in the world, was founded on February 4, 15 years ago
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 04th February, 2019) Facebook, one of the most popular and largest social networking platforms in the world, was founded on February 4, 15 years ago.
It was launched by Mark Zuckerberg, a student who at that time was studying computer science and psychology at Harvard University in Boston.
In 2003, when he was a sophomore at Harvard, Zuckerberg wrote a program called CourseMatch, which helped students choose their subjects based on the choices of other users.
He later created the Facemash program, which let users compare each other's photos to determine who was more beautiful. Although Facemash became popular among students, Zuckerberg was forced to close it after it was banned by the university.
At the end of 2003, Zuckerberg agreed to an offer from three students, twins Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, and Divya Narenda, to help them create a student dating site named HarvardConnection. In January 2004, Zuckerberg took on his own project and a month later, on February 4, launched TheFacebook.com, a closed social network for Harvard students. He was assisted by fellow students Dustin Moskovitz, Andrew McCollum, Chris Hughes and Eduardo Saverin.
Within the first day of the social network's launch, 1,200 users had signed up. A month later half of Harvard's students had a profile on TheFacebook.
This website soon became popular in other universities in Boston and eventually was used by almost all US universities. By the end of 2005, the number of Facebook users had reached six million.
In summer 2004, Zuckerberg registered his company as a legal entity. In August 2005, the site acquired its current Facebook.com domain.
Facebook mobile access has been available since April 2006, and access for everyone, not just students, has been open since September 2006. Creating a new profile required only a registered email address.
The main element of Facebook is the user profile, which contains statuses, photos, personal information, and information about interests and friends. The profile is controlled by privacy settings. Personal profile statuses can be updated by publishing text, links to external resources, images and check-ins. Friends are invited to comment on a status, mark it and share it with other friends. In 2011, the profile was converted to a chronological feed of a user's posts, known as the Timeline. The home page's news feed, which you can read, adjust and comment on, is formed from posts made a user's friends, and groups and pages they follow.
Facebook first introduced the Like button on February 9, 2009. It was created by website developers so that users could mark their favorite posts, photos, statuses of their friends and other things with a single click. It became possible to place the Like button on third-party websites in spring 2010.
From time to time, Facebook updates its interface and adds new features. Users can now exchange instant messages in Messenger, make publications about events, create groups to communicate with people who share common interests and shoot Facebook Stories, among many other things.
In 2010, the number of registered accounts on Facebook reached half a billion, and Zuckerberg was named Time magazine's Person of the Year.
In summer 2017, the number of Facebook accounts reached two billion.
According to the company, as of December 2018, 1.52 billion people use the social network daily, and the number of active monthly users is 2.32 billion people.
Facebook Headquarters is located in California. As of September 2018, more than 33,500 employees work in the company. The company has 14 offices in the United States and more than 40 around the world.
Facebook's board of directors includes CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Chief Operating Officer Cheryl Sandberg, Desmond-Hellmann, who is CEO of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, chairman and CEO of video streaming service Netflix, Reed Hastings and others.
Facebook owns a number of other popular services. On April 9, 2012 it bought photo sharing app Instagram for $1 billion. In February 2014, Facebook agreed to pay $16 billion to take over one of the most popular messenger services, WhatsApp.
On May 17, 2012, Facebook made the largest initial public offering (IPO) in the history of the internet. The next day, Facebook began selling stock to the public and trading on the US Nasdaq exchange.
During the IPO, the price of Facebook shares was set at $38, and the selling parties raised about $16 billion at that price. Now Facebook shares are traded on several exchanges around the world, including in Moscow, Switzerland and other countries.
Since launching, Facebook has seen its fair share of scandals, a number of which were related to blocking or deleting publications. In spring 2018, the company was involved in a political scandal in the United States, when it became known that political campaigning firm Cambridge Analytica, which worked with US President Donald Trump during his election campaign, illegally obtained data of more than 50 million Facebook users. Based on the collected data, the researchers evaluated the political preferences of voters and showed them advertising that directly related to their interests.
At the end of September 2018, Facebook reported a problem in the social network's security system that had affected nearly 50 million users. The company later clarified that out of those 50 million, only 30 million accounts had been hacked.
However, despite the scandals, Facebook showed a profit of $22.1 billion in 2018, a 39 percent bump from the previous year. The company's advertisement revenue amounted to $55 billion Dollars, increasing by 38 percent from 2017.
