Happy birthday, Facebook! We're celebrating with a look back at some of Facebook's more eye-opening moments over the past eight years.
In typical Facebook fashion, it's only fair that the service's 850+ million users all log on, hit up Facebook's official profile, and bombard its wall with messages for the service's eighth birthday today.
Then again, if we were to go by the official Facebook rules, Facebook wouldn't even be allowed on its own service for another five years – the world's biggest social network only just turned eight today.
But what an eight years it's been! From a few IM conversations at Harvard to a to-be-public company valued at nearly $100 billion, Facebook will soon be sitting on a great deal of cash and the growing need to hammer out a clear strategy for connecting the world's users and profiting from their data – or, at least, from the advertisers interested in connecting with specific demographics of Facebook's users.
It hasn't been a perfect path to public for the social network, however. Join us as we track some of the key moments on Facebook's timeline (ha ha) – some of its greatest features, strategic hits, and failures over the past eight years.
February 2004: Mark Zuckerberg launches Facebook at Harvard University. That's after he previously launches "Facemash," a site that asks Harvard students to rate their peers' headshots in a hot-or-not-like fashion (it's shut down by Harvard administrators after a few days' existence). Within a month or so, half of Harvard's undergraduate population signs up for Facebook.
September 2004: Here comes the Facebook wall! Facebook users now gain the ability to post witty messages to each other. But they won't be able to download an archive of this data (from mid-2006 onward) until October of 2010.
September 2005: High school students are given the ability to join Facebook. College students, saddened that their social network is no longer exclusive to just them, freak out – but keep Facebooking.
October 2005: Flash a smile and say hello to the debut of Facebook Photos! And so begins the tragic downfall for Facebook users who take sick days after posting a night's worth of party pictures.
December 2005: Facebook reaches one million users.
January 2006: Wirehog dies. The Facebook-endorsed (and designed) service allowed both Facebook and non-Facebook users to tap into each other's connected systems and exchange files – only legal videos and music, right?
May 2006: Facebook opens itself up again, now allowing users within certain "work networks" to join. Non-Facebooked friends start begging their connected peers for fake corporate email addresses.
July 2006: Mark Zuckerberg turns down a $1 billion-turned-$800 million offer from Yahoo to acquire Facebook. Yahoo CEO Terry Semel tries to renegotiate and ups Yahoo's offer back to $1 billon months later, but it's too late.
September 2006: Facebook launches News Feed to user complaints – individual users can now see a "history" of everything their friends are up to on the service instead of having to stalk their friends via their individual profiles. Facebook also opens itself to any and all users this month, so long as those registering for the service are 13 or older.
On the next page: Facebook 2007-Present!