Overview of Facebook's development

Facebook was created by Harvard University student Mark Zuckerberg and three of his classmates Chris Hughes, Eduardo Saverin and Dustin Moskovitz. However Mark was the initiator of their idea. He was the "inventor" of what we call nowadays Facebook. It all began with a website called Facemash. Facemash was the predecessor of Facebook which opened on 28th of October 2003. Mark wrote the software for Facemash on his second year in the university. The website was basically based on the "hot or not" game for Harvard students. In other words the website allowed visitors to compare side-by-side pictures of two students and decide which one is hot and which is not. Photos were compiled from the online facebooks of nine Houses. The idea of Facemash was definitely inspired by Mark's sense of humor. Facemash gained a very fast popularity. For example in the first 4 hours online the website had 450 visitors and 22 000 pictures views. Although big success, Mark Zuckerberg had to hack into the Harvad's security network and copied student ID images. And after several days the site was closed by Harvard executives. Mark was guilty in front of the university of violating copyrights, break of security network, and violating individual privacy (private images stolen). He was mentioned the possibility that he can be kicked out of university. However the charges over Mark were dropped. He continued to extend his website. He created a social study tool. Fro example he uploaded 500 Augustan images to a website and made a comment section which was available for his classmates. Students started to share their notes. "The professor said it had the best grades of any final he’d ever given. This was my first social hack. With Facebook, I wanted to make something that would make Harvard more open," Zuckerberg said in a TechCrunch interview.

In January 2004 Mark Zucherberg began writing computer codes for the website called "thefacebook". He was inspired to do so by his previous webesite "facemash". Mark said that "thefacebook" would be the best universal face book in Harvard and he can do it in just a week rather than in a couple of years. On 4th of February 2004 Zuckerberg launched "thefacebook" on domain thefacebook.com. To promote the site one of Zuckerberg's friends suggested putting it on the Kirkland House online mailing list, which was 300 hundred people. By the end of the day all of Zuckerbergs team (Chris Hughes, Eduardo Saverin and Dustin Moskovitz) were enjoying watching the lively registration process. After one day there were about 14'000 users. By that time it was only available to Harvard students. However 6 days after the launch of "thefacebook" three seniors:  Cameron Winklevoss, Tyler Winklevoss, and Divya Narendra incriminated Zuckerberg of stealing their idea of a social network called HarvardConnection.com and using it in his own social network. All of the lawsuits were later settled. By now there were 5 members of "thefacebook" team. Mark Zuckerberg-founder, Dustin Moskovitz-programmer,  Chris Hughes-promoter,   Andrew McCollum-graphic artist, and  Eduardo Saverin-business aspects. In March 2004 social network expanded Yale, Columbia, and Stanford. "Thefacebook" eventually reached all universities in USA and Canada. Facebook was made a company the summer of 2004 and an entrepreneur Sean Parker became the president of the company. In June 2004, Facebook moved its base of operations to California. "The" was drope out after the company had bought the domain name in 2005.

On the first of October Facebook expanded to 21 universities in United Kingdom and one major university in Mexico. Facebook launched a high school version in September 2005. Facebook greed on a membership with big companies such as Microsoft and Apple. In the early December 2005 Facebook included universities in Australia and New Zealand to the network. So by now Facebook had about 2,000 colleges and 25,000  high schools in United States, Canada, Mexico, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, and Ireland. Finally, Facebook was opened to everybody over the age of 13 with a valid e-mail on 26th September 2006. In October 2008 Facebook announced it now had international headquarters in Dublin. Facebook continued to upgrade their services until now. They changed user interface, made more options for users, etc.

As of 2010 Facebook always tries to integrate with companies such as Google. And to have the advertisements on the social network. By the way, that is how Facebook earn money. As well as integrating with large companies, Facebook made the mobile version of their website that works on iPhones, Android phones and tablets. Nowadays Facebook has 800 million users.

Resources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Facebook, http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2007/jul/25/media.newmedia