TypePublicTraded asNASDAQ:FBFoundation dateFebruary 4, 2004(10 years ago)HeadquartersMenlo Park,California, USArea servedUnited States(2004–05)Worldwide (2005–present)Founder(s)*.Mark Zuckerberg*.Eduardo Saverin*.Andrew McCollum*.Dustin Moskovitz*.Chris HughesKey peopleMark Zuckerberg(ChairmanandCEO)Sheryl Sandberg(COO)IndustryInternetRevenueUS$7.872billion (2013)[1]Operating incomeUS$2.804billion (2013)[1]Net incomeUS$1.5billion (2013)[1]Total assetsUS$17.895billion (2013)[1]Total equityUS$15.47billion (2013)[1]Employees6,337 (December 2013)[1]SubsidiariesInstagram,WhatsAppWebsitefacebookWritten inC++andPHP[2]Alexarank2 (March 2014)[3]Type of siteSocial networking serviceRegistrationRequiredUsers1.23 billion (monthly active, December 2013)[4]Available inMultilingual(70)Current statusActiveFacebookHistoryTimelineAcquisitionsCriticismFeaturesFacebookis an onlinesocial networking service. Its name comes from acolloquialism for the directorygiven to students at some American universities.[5]Facebook wasfounded on February 4, 2004 byMark Zuckerbergwith his college roommates and fellowHarvard UniversitystudentsEduardo Saverin,Andrew McCollum,Dustin MoskovitzandChris Hughes.[6]The founders had initially limited the websites membership to Harvard students, but later expanded it to colleges in the Boston area, theIvy League, andStanford University. It gradually added support for students at various other universities before it opened to high-school students, and eventually to anyone aged 13 and over. Facebook now allows anyone who claims to be at least 13 years old to become a registered user of the website.[7]Users must register before using the site, after which they may create apersonal profile, add other users asfriends, exchange messages, and receive automatic notifications when they update their profile. Additionally, users may join common-interest user groups, organized by workplace, school or college, or other characteristics, and categorize their friends into lists such as People From Work or CloseFriends. As of September 2012, Facebook has overone billion activeusers,[8]of which approximately 9% are fake.[9]Facebook (as of 2012) has about 180petabytesof data per year and grows by over half a petabyte every 24 hours.[10]In May 2005, Accel partners invested $12.7 million in Facebook, andJim Breyer[11]added $1 million of his ownmoney. A January 2009Competestudy ranked Facebook the most used social networking service by worldwide monthly active users.[12]Entertainment Weeklyincluded the site on its end-of-the-decade best-oflist, saying, How on earth did we stalk our exes, rememberour co-workers birthdays, bug our friends, and play a rousing game ofScrabulousbefore Facebook?[13]Facebook eventually filed for aninitial public offeringon February 1, 2012; it is headquartered inMenlo Park, California.[14]Facebook Inc. began selling stock to the public and trading on theNASDAQon May 18, 2012.[15]Based on its 2012 income of US$5 billion, Facebook joined theFortune 500list for the first time on the list published inMay 2013, being placed at position 462.[16]In 2012, Facebook was valued at $104 billion, and by January 2014 its market capitalization had risen to over$134 billion.[17][18]At the end of January 2014, 1.23 billion users were active on the website every month, while on December 31, 2013, 945 million of this total were identified by the company as mobile users. The company celebrates its tenth anniversary in the week beginning February 3, 2014.[19]On January 2014, during the week previous to the companys tenth anniversary, chief operating officer of Facebook,Sheryl Sandberg, clarified: He [Mark] always said Facebook was started not just to be a company, but tofulfill a vision of connecting the world.HistoryMain articles:History of FacebookandTimeline of FacebookPre-IPOZuckerberg wrote a program called Facemash on October 28, 2003 while attendingHarvardas asophomore. According toThe Harvard Crimson, the site was comparable toHot or Notand used photos compiled from the online facebooks of nine houses, placing two next to each other at a time and asking users to choose the hotterperson[20][21]To accomplish this, Zuckerberghackedinto protected areas of Harvards computer network and copied private dormitoryIDimages. Harvard did not have a student Facebook (a directory with photos and basic information) at the time, although individual houses had been issuing their own paper facebooks since the mid-1980s. Facemashattracted 450 visitors and 22,000 photo-views in its first four hours online.[20][22]The site was quickly forwarded to several campus group list-servers,[clarification needed]but was shut down a few days later by the Harvard administration. Zuckerberg faced expulsion and was charged by the administration with breach of security, violatingcopyrights, and violating individual privacy. Ultimately, the charges were dropped.[23]Zuckerberg expanded on this initial project that semester by creating a social study tool ahead of anart historyfinal. He uploaded 500Augustanimages to a website, and each image was featured with a corresponding comments section.[22]He shared the site with his classmates and people started sharing notes.The following semester, Zuckerberg began writing code for a new website in January 2004. He said he was inspired byan editorial about the Facemash incident inThe Harvard Crimson.[24]On February 4, 2004, Zuckerberg launchedThefacebook, originally located at thefacebook.[25]Six days after the site launched, three Harvard seniors (Cameron Winklevoss,Tyler Winklevoss, andDivya Narendra) accused Zuckerberg of intentionally misleading them into believing he would help them build a social network calledHarvardConnection. They claimed he was instead using their ideas to build a competing product.[26]The three complained toThe Harvard Crimsonand the newspaper began an investigation. They later filed a lawsuit against Zuckerberg, subsequently settling in 2008[27]for 1.2 millionshares(worth $300 million at Facebooks IPO).[28]
Posted on: Mon, 24 Mar 2014 07:37:49 +0000
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