What was the original purpose of Facebook?

Facebook ^[1]
is one of the giants of the Internet today. But its founders never
dreamed of the success, when they were slowly building it from
scratch in their university dorm room.

Here, we briefly explore how Facebook started ^[2], and uncover the origins
of its name as well as detail some of Facebook’s major
milestones.

What was the original purpose of Facebook?

The original purpose of Facebook ^[4], or “The Facebook” as it
was known then, was to allow Harvard students to use their “.edu”
email addresses and photos to connect with other students at the
school.

Zuckerberg foresaw a way of bringing the existing social
experience of college onto the Internet. He wanted to create a
place that could help college students connect with one
another.

history of facebook mobile
Source: downloadsource.fr/Flickr ^[5]

Why did Mark Zuckerberg make Facebook?

“Harvard organizations such as fraternities and sororities
already had a precursor to Facebook for each individual
organization. His idea was to take this information and put it into
a central location so that all of the students of a college could
communicate with one another.” – Techwalla ^[6].

To this end, in January of 2004, Mark Zuckerberg began writing the
code ^[7] for this new site that
would eventually become Facebook. The inspiration for it came from
an editorial in The Havard
Crimson^[8] on Facebook’s
controversial forerunner
“Facesmash ^[9].”

The site’s name was taken, by all accounts,^[10] from the sheets of
paper distributed to the freshman that profiled students and staff
at Harvard.

Facebook was subsequently founded in 2004
by Mark Zuckerberg ^[11], Eduardo
Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris
Hughes ^[12] — all of whom were
students at Harvard University ^[13]. Soon after the
new site was launched under the
URL thefacebook.com.

It was an immediate hit and within just 24
hours of launch, around 1,200 students
had signed up. Within one month, around half of all Harvard
undergraduates had a profile.

It soon spread to three other college campuses around the
U.S. — Yale, Columbia, and Stanford.

“It became Facebook.com in August 2005 after the
address was purchased for $200,000. US high
schools could sign up from September 2005, then it began to spread
worldwide, reaching UK universities the following month,” according
to the Guardian ^[15].^[14]

How did Mark Zuckerberg come up with the
idea?

As we have already seen, the idea for Facebook came from
existing practices at Harvard for freshman students. He was, in his
own words, trying to solve a problem he saw around him and not
build a multi-million dollar enterprise.

“Yeah, well, I never started this to build a company,” Mark
Zuckerberg told Freakonomics Radio ^[16] as
part of its six-week series called “The Secret Life of
CEOs ^[17],” which started in
2018.

“Ten years ago, you know, I was just trying to help
connect people at colleges and a few schools.”

“That was a basic need, where I looked around at the Internet
and there were services for a lot of things that you wanted,”
Zuckerberg added.

history of facebook zuckerberg
Source: Anthony Quintano/Flickr ^[18]

“You could find music; you could find news; you could find
information, but you couldn’t find and connect with the people that
you cared about, which as people is actually the most important
thing. So that seemed like a pretty big hole that needed to get
filled.”

As we all know today, Facebook exploded beyond all expectations
for Zuckerberg and other Founders.

Today, the social media giant has a market capitalization of
more than $500
Billion ^[19]. It has more than
2 billion^[20] monthly active users
and has made Mark, one of the richest men in the world.

Who was the first Facebook user?

You won’t be surprised to hear that the first Facebook profile
belonged to none other than Mark Zuckerberg himself. Long before
user profile
URLs ^[21] were changed to their
current forms, user’s profile URLs looked something like
“http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=” and a set
number.

Zuckerberg’s was id=4.

1-3 were most likely test accounts and have since long been
deleted.

The first “real” Facebook user, with an id of 4, was Chris
Hughes, Zuckerberg’s friend, and co-founder of Facebook. The next
few dozen accounts appear to have been Zuckerberg’s friends,
classmates, and roommates.

Interestingly, Business Insider ^[22] conducted an
investigation a few years back and discovered that the first 20
Facebook accounts and their relationships with one
another.

According to their findings, after Zuckerberg and Hughes, the
next few accounts were as follows:

Dustin Moskovitz – He
helped found Facebook and was roommates with Mark.
Arie Hasit – Arie was
the first non-founder account and was friends with Chris
Hughes.
Marcel Georgés Laverdet
II – Marcel was friends with early Facebookers and
Facebook founders.
Soleio Cuervo – He
was friends with other early Facebook members like George Laverdet
above.
Chris Putnam – Chris
was also friends with other early Facebookers.
Andrew McCollum –
Andrew was one of Mark Zuckerberg’s classmates.
Colin Kelly – Colin
knew many other early facebookers.
Mark Kaganovich
– Mark also knew many other early facebookers.

What were some of the major milestones in Facebook’s
history?

Here is a brief history of some of the major milestones in
Facebook’s history. Credit to thestreet.com ^[23], for its
compilation:

February 2004 – Facebook
(then called “thefacebook”) was founded by Zuckerberg, Moskovitz,
Saverin, and Hughes.

March 2004 – Facebook
spreads to three other college campuses – Yale, Columbia, and
Stanford.

June 2004 – Facebook moves
its headquarters to Palo Alto, California.

September 2004 – The site
launches the now-infamous “wall” – which allows users to post
things and receive messages on their own page.

December 2004 – Facebook
hits 1 million users.

May 2005 – Facebook expands
to over 800 college campuses.

September 2005 – The site
expands to high school networks. It also drops the “the” to
become just “Facebook.”

October 2005 – Facebook adds
photos and goes international.

December 2005 – Facebook has
over 6 million users.

April 2006 –
Facebook goes mobile.

September 2006 – Anyone can
now join Facebook.

December 2006 – Membership
increases to 12 million.

June 2007 – Video
launches.

December 2007 – Membership
increases to 58 million.

July 2008 – Launch of
Facebook for iPhone.

February 2009 – The “like”
button is introduced.

July 2010 – Over 500 million
users are active on Facebook.

August 2010 – Engineering
center is opened in Seattle.

October 2010 – Groups are
launched.

April, 2011 – Data center
opens in Prineville, Oregon.

July 2011 – Video calling is
launched.

April 2012 – Acquisition of
Instagram is announced.

Source: Pixabay ^[24]

May 2012 – Facebook releases
its IPO – which raised $16 billion and gave the company a
$102.4 billion market value.
October 2012 – Membership
hits the 1 billion mark.