History of Facebook

Facebook is a social networking service originally launched as Facemash in 2003. It became TheFacebook on February 4, 2004, before changing its name to simply Facebook in August 2005.^[1] Facebook was rebranded to Meta on October 28, 2021 during the Connect 2021.^[2]

Mark Zuckerberg in 2005

Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg, Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes.^[3] A brief history of what has become of Zuckerberg's roommates can be found here.

TheFacebook's membership was initially limited by the founders to Harvard students, but was expanded to other colleges in the Boston area, the Ivy League,^[4] and gradually most universities in the United States and Canada,^[5][6] corporations,^[7] and by September 2006 - since 2005 under the name Facebook - to everyone with a valid email address along with an age requirement of being 13 or older.^[8][9]

“Facemash” was a website designed to evaluate the attractiveness of female Harvard students. The students were unaware that their images were being used for this rating, judging by the complaint from Fuerza Latina and the Harvard Association of Black Women.

The site operated by pairing faces together to compare them against one another. It used ID photos of female undergraduates that were taken without permission from the university’s online directories. Users were presented with pairs of women and asked to rank who was "hotter." The homepage stated, “Were we admitted for our looks? No. Will we be judged by them? Yes.”^[3]

By the end of Facemash’s launch day, at least 22,000 votes from a total of approx. 400 to 450 users were cast on the site.^[10]

According to a 2003 article from The Harvard Crimson, Mark Zuckerberg created the site in less than a week and documented the process in a blog. He hacked into the online intranets of Harvard Houses to obtain photos, developing algorithms and codes along the way. He referred to his hacking as “child’s play.”

In one blog entry, Zuckerberg noted, “The Kirkland Facebook (referring to the Kirkland House intranet) is open on my computer desktop, and some of these people have pretty horrendous Facebook pictures. I almost want to put some of these faces next to pictures of farm animals and have people vote on which is more attractive.”

Zuckerberg faced scrutiny from the university’s Administrative Board in November 2003 after Facemash caused an uproar within the Harvard community. As Weigel points out, groups such as Fuerza Latina and the Harvard Association of Black Women protested, and the computer services department filed a complaint with the Administrative Board. Zuckerberg was accused of breaching security, violating copyrights, and infringing on individual privacy.^[11]

This approach would eventually shape Facebook's business model, leading to numerous scandals such as the Cambridge Analytica.^{[12][13][14][15]}

As a consequence, the Harvard Administrative Board removed the site on November 2nd. The actions taken against Zuckerberg, if any, are unknown. He was not made to withdraw or leave school. He didn't elaborate on whether the board took any other lesser actions.^[16]

Zuckerberg let the domain facemash.com expire in 2007^[17] when it was purchased by Rahul Jain. By 2010, Jain put the site up for sale through the online auction site Flippa. It was sold for $30,201 to an anonymous buyer.^[18][19]<