Facebook

HISTORY

The mainstream online social network Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg on February 4, 2004, along with four fellow Harvard College students and roommates.

Internet entrepreneur Steve Chen worked at Facebook for a few months before quitting to set up a website that he called YouTube.

Originally known as 'TheFacebook,' the company changed the name to just Facebook after purchasing the domain name facebook.com in 2005 for $200,000.

Original layout and name of Thefacebook, 2004. By Source, Fair use, $3

In 2005, MySpace was in talks to buy Facebook, but rejected their asking price of $75 million as too expensive.

Facebook approached artist David Choe in 2005 with a proposition. The fledgling social network asked Choe to paint his famous murals on their office walls for $60,000 or company stock. Choe choice the stock and it's now estimated worth is $200,000,000.

The Facebook "like button" was launched on February 9, 2009. The social network site describes "liking" as a way for users to "give positive feedback and connect with things [they] care about."

The “Like” button in Facebook originally was going to say “Awesome”, rather than “Like” according to Facebook Engineer Andrew Bosworth. Zuckerberg eventually vetoed the “Awesome” button in favor of the shorter “Like”.

By Enoc vt - Wikipedia Commons

In 2011, more than 1 in 3 divorce filings in the United States contained the word “Facebook”.

Facebook's initial public offering (IPO) on May 18, 2012 was one of the largest and most anticipated IPOs in history. The shares were priced at $38 per share. The shares opened at $42.05 per share and closed at $38.23 per share on the first day of trading. The IPO was a huge success for Facebook, and it made Mark Zuckerberg the world's youngest self-made billionaire.

Four days after Facebook went live it had just 650 users. On September 14, 2012, the team at Facebook watched the one-billionth user sign up. There are a few reasons for Facebook's success. First, it was incredibly easy to use. Anyone with a college email address could sign up, and the interface was simple and intuitive. Second, Facebook was very social. It allowed users to connect with their friends, family, and classmates in a way that no other platform had done before. Third, Facebook was constantly innovating. It added new features and services that kept users engaged, such as the News Feed, the Marketplace, and the Groups feature.

Facebook, Inc. raised US$16 billion with its initial public offering in 2012, the third largest in U.S. history.

The Facebook logo is blue because of founder Mark Zuckerberg’s color blindness. The color that he can see best is blue - decision made.

The original Facebook website had an image of a man’s face on it. Dubbed the "Facebook guy" it was recently revealed that the photo was actually movie actor Al Pacino.

Columbian singer Shakira made social media history in July 2014 when she became the first person to ever reach 100 million likes on Facebook.

The 362 UK-based staff of internet giant Facebook were handed out more than £35 million in a share bonus scheme in 2014— an average of £96,000 each.

On August 24, 2015, Facebook reached a new milestone: one billion people used the social network in a single day. This was the first time that any website had ever reached this number of users. The milestone was announced by Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg in a post on the company's blog. He said that the achievement was "a testament to the power of connection."

Mark Zuckerberg announced on October 28, 2021 that the company is changing its name to “Meta.” Facebook, the social media network, would now become an independent subsidiary of Meta, the same as other applications like Instagram and WhatsApp.

According to the Guinness Book of Records, Guru Shri Rajendraji Maharaj Jaap Club from India held the record the most comments ever made on a Facebook post, in response to a post made on March 27, 2012. A massive 15,626,405 people decided to have their say on his page.

Italian Marco Mandia and the T.D.C. group, an online Facebook community with over 200,000 members that considers themselves to be like a big family, broke the Guinness World Record for the most comments on a Facebook item with a total of 30,019,620 comments verified on January 18, 2023. The group came together with the goal of attempting this record title and succeeded in their efforts.

FUN FACTS

As at February 2014, there are  more than 1.25 billion Facebook users across the world.

An average Facebook user spends about 55 minutes a day on the site.

70% of Facebook users are on the site daily.

Facebook loses $24,420 for every minute it is down.

There are currently more people on Facebook, than there were on our planet 200 years ago.

Around 78% of all traffic to Facebook comes from our smartphones and we upload around 350 million photos to the site every day.

Facebook Addiction Disorder, or FAD, is a term psychologists use for the estimated 350 million people who are addicted to Facebook.

Despite the fact that China blocks Facebook, the country still has 95 million Facebook users.

An Egyptian father named his newborn daughter "Facebook" to commemorate the role the social network played in the 2011 Egyptian revolution.

A 10-year-old Finnish boy was given $10,000 by Facebook for finding an Instagram bug that allowed him to delete other user's comments.

Facebook's headquarters are located at 1 Hacker Way, Menlo Park, California.

Source Daily Star