When I created a username on thefacebook.com in February 2004, second semester of my freshman year at Harvard, I was profile number 1,205. If when you first registered as a Facebook user had some wealth equivalent, that would put me in the top 0.0008% (based on the current monthly active users of 1.5 billion). While that sounds like a "prestigious decimal," I’m with the majority of Harvard students that used Facebook (FB) right when it launched but had no idea that it would become the business it is today -- the $300 billion behemoth and seventh-largest company in the S&P 500.
With the digital timeline news feed now a staple of Facebook, the real-life timeline of the company unfolded in a way many couldn’t have anticipated. After all, Facebook was initially seen simply as a solution for the much-requested cyber version of the handbook given to all students, a book which I received at the beginning of my freshman year and studied diligently with my friends.
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A screen-shot of the original web page -- which looks nothing like today's interface -- brings back memories from the early days:
CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s name first became known on campus in the fall of 2003 (my freshman fall) with the launch of his “Facemash” website, where you could compare pairs of Harvard students (using their official Harvard headshots) in a “hot or not” type game. The site quickly spread across email lists, hitting a negative chord with many groups on campus. Ultimately, Harvard brought Zuckerberg before the administrative board, where it was determined he would not have to leave school after being accused of breaching security and violating copyrights and individual privacy by creating the website.
While that door closed, another one opened. In The Crimson, the editorial board emphasized the much-discussed need for a campus-wide facebook. Zuckerberg met just that demand, launching thefacebook in February 2004 and telling The Crimson, “Everyone’s been talking a lot about a universal face book within Harvard. I think it’s kind of silly it would take the University a couple of years to get around to it. I can do it better than they can, and I can do it in a week.”
The Facebook at that time was seen initially as simply the answer to the long-awaited need for an online searchable list of students on campus and their photos. In fact, when other colleges were allowed to join in March 2004, many students were dismayed -- the website was seen as a private network that was now letting in outsiders. This increased when high schools could join as users in September 2005 and when people with corporate email addresses could join in May 2006. Then in September 2006, anyone over age 13 could join, completely transforming what Facebook represented, but still a far cry from what it is today. At the end of that year, the website counted 12 million active users.