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Dormitory Origins
Mark Zuckerberg releases Facemash, the predecessor to Facebook. It is described as a Harvard University version of Hot or Not. -
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The first steps of launching the Facebook
Mark Zuckerberg begins with his fellow co-founders writing Facebook -
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Facebook expands
To compete with growing campus-only service i2hub, Zuckerberg launches Wirehog. It is a precursor to Facebook Platform applications. Facebook expands to UK universities. Cambridge, Oxford and the University of the West of England are the first three UK universities on the platform. -
The launch of Facebook
Zuckerberg launches Facebook as a Harvard-only social network. -
Domain
Facebook acquires Facebook.com domain for $200,000 -
High School users
Facebook expands beyond college campuses for the first time and opens to high school students. -
"No" for Yahoo!
In a controversial, but prescient move, Facebook turns down a $1 billion acquisition offer from Yahoo. Zuckerberg reportedly thought Yahoo! undervalued the company’s potential. -
News Feed Introduction
Facebook launches News Feed. The original news feed is an algorithmically generated and constantly refreshing summary of updates about the activities of one's friends. The concept was relatively new at the time, with Twitter having launched only a few months in advance. -
Facebooks on phones
Facebook launches m.facebook.com and officially announces mobile support. -
Big money from Microsoft
Microsoft purchases a 1.6% share of Facebook for $240 million. The investment values the company at $15 billion. A month later the company launches its Beacon ad program, which tracks a Facebook user’s behavior on third party sites. The product turns into a public relations disaster because of user privacy concerns. -
Winklevoss twins settle
Facebook settles a longstanding lawsuit with ConnectU, a company started out of Harvard by the Winklevoss brothers. The twins had accused Mark Zuckerberg of stealing their idea and turning it into Facebook. The settlement doesn’t end the battle. The Winklevoss twins continue to pursue legal action into 2011. -
Power player
Facebook hires Google executive Sheryl Sandberg as COO. Sandberg brings leadership experience as well as political acumen from her time as chief of staff for the Treasury Department under Bill Clinton. Many consider her an adult in the room with Zuckerberg. -
"Yes" for Like button, "No" for Beacon
Facebook activates the Facebook like button, and shuts down Beacon. -
The Hollywood treatment
David Fincher and Aaron Sorkin’s “The Social Network” arrives in US theaters. The movie debuted at No. 1 and ultimately made $225 million globally. . -
Arab Spring
Protests in Tunisia erupt and spark the Arab Spring, which spreads to neighboring countries over the next few weeks and months. Facebook is credited as one of the catalysts for a youth revolution in the Middle East. The event shows just how powerful a tool Facebook can be for the purposes of political organizing. -
Timeline changes everything
Zuckerberg introduces the Facebook Timeline at the company’s F8 developer conference and effectively kills “The Wall.” The new feature reorganizes a user’s posts and puts them in chronological order. -
Big bet on photos
The company agrees to acquire Instagram for $1 billion. The purchase would go on to become one of Facebook’s most important, and most defensive moves. The photo sharing service later provides a platform with which to fend off Snapchat’s growing influence. -
Facebook goes public
Facebook raises $16 billion in a public offering, making it the largest technology IPO at the time. The first day of trading is plagued by problems on the Nasdaq; it starts late and encounters glitches. Some investors aren’t sure if their trades went through, and some later sue. -
Happy couple
The day after Facebook IPOs on the Nasdaq, Mark Zuckerberg marries longtime girlfriend Priscilla Chan. -
Worst stock day
Facebook stock falls below $18 and hits its all-time low after months of concerns about the company’s ability to make money from mobile users. -
Big neighborhood
Facebook crosses 1 billion monthly active users. The company, which now touches one out of every seven people on Earth, thrills investors and advertisers as it continues to march toward internet dominance. -
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Stickers
Facebook launches Stickers, initially only for its iOS apps in April, but later expanding to its web version in July. -
Warning: Graph content
Facebook introduces Graph Search, a feature that lets users search for information about people in their network or in the network if any of their connections. The searches can reveal all sorts of data including location, behaviors, job status, likes, etc. The tool demonstrates the power, scale and interconnectivity of Facebook’s growing social media platform and reminds users once again to stay on top of their privacy settings. -
Investors get happy
Facebook finally returns to its IPO price, more than a year after debuting on the Nasdaq. Its efforts to become a mobile-first company begin to pay off. -
Swing and a miss
Facebook offers to buy Snapchat for a rumored $3 billion, according to the Wall Street Journal. Snap CEO Evan Spiegel refuses, but Snapchat later finds itself in direct, sometimes overwhelming, competition with the social networking site. -
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Look Back
On February 4, on the occasion of its tenth anniversary, Facebook introduces its Look Back feature that creates an automated video for each person looking back on the person's life as recorded on Facebook. On February 7, Facebook adds the ability to edit the Look Back videos. -
How people talk
Facebook buys WhatsApp for a jaw dropping $19 billion in a bold bid to dominate the latest frontier of social media: messaging apps. By the time the deal closed, the price tag would hit $22 billion thanks to the rising value of Facebook’s shares. -
Virtual Reality
Mark Zuckerberg makes a $2 billion-dollar bet on what he thinks may be one of the big “platforms of tomorrow.” Facebook buys Oculus, a virtual reality startup that first gained prominence with a successful Kickstarter campaign. -
GIFs
Facebook confirms official support for GIFs. -
Live Streaming
Facebook launches live-streaming, initially restricted only to celebrities -
M
Facebook begins rolling out a human- and AI-powered virtual assistant called "M". -
Growing and giving
Zuckerberg announces plans to give away nearly all of his Facebook money to charity as part of a new philanthropic effort with his wife, Dr. Priscilla Chan. -
Reactions
Facebook releases Facebook Reactions to the general public. -
Oculus debuts
The Oculus Rift begins shipping its long awaited Rift VR headsets, two years after Facebook acquired the company. But there is turbulence ahead, including price cuts and the departure of Palmer Luckey, the cofounder and face of Oculus, almost exactly a year later. -
A left lean?
Facebook is hit by a PR crisis for allegedly censoring conservative news in its Trending section, after the website Gizmodo publishes interviews with journalists who once worked at Facebook and make that claim. It’s a harbinger of political scandals to come after the election. -
Marketplace
Facebook launches Marketplace -
Zuck’s listening tour
Zuckerberg pledges to travel and meet people from every US state. The trip helps him escape Silicon Valley after a shocking election result, but sparks rumors about his potential presidential ambitions, which he later shoots down. -
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Fundraising
Facebook Fundraising is launched -
More Billions
Facebook crosses 2 billion monthly active users, a nearly unprecedented scale for an internet company. -
Rohingya
The Guardian publishes an article accusing Facebook of enabling ethnic cleansing in Myanmar after it labeled a minority group as a “dangerous organization.” It’s another sign of the platform’s staggering global influence. -
VR PR fail
Mark Zuckerberg apologizes for his VR tour of Puerto Rico during the aftermath of Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico. He billed the event as a way to help PR recover, but it felt like a product demonstration. -
Messenger Kids
Facebook launches Messenger Kids, a version of Messenger for children from ages six to 12. -
Bigger than Facebook?
Facebook announces that WhatsApp has 1.5 billion monthly users, opening up the possibility that its audience could one day be bigger than Facebook’s main app. -
Mr. Zuckerberg on the Hill
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testifies before the Senate and the House about a series of data privacy scandals. By most accounts, Zuckerberg handles himself well during the two days of testimony, despite some awkward questioning by luddite lawmakers. Zuckerberg is warned, however, that regulation could soon be coming. -
More time on the Hill, Talent exodus
Facebook’s COO Sheryl Sandberg testifies before Senate Intelligence Committee about election interference. Later that month, Facebook reveals that its platform was hacked and the data for as many as 30 million users could have been exposed. -
Fixing the Mess
Facebook ends the year with “more than 30,000” people working on safety on the platform, according to Zuckerberg, and a commitment to invest “billions of dollars” in security annually. -
Cambridge Analytica scandal
Details emerge about Cambridge Analytica, a firm that worked on the Trump 2016 campaign. It gained access to information on more than 87 million Facebook users. The firm used quiz tools to get information about users’ personalities and influence their voting behavior. -
Data privacy scandals pile up
The New York Times reports that Facebook had agreements with device makers to share large amounts of personal data with them. The revelation leads to a renewed wave of regulatory and consumer scrutiny of how the company handles user data. -
Story Ads + Conversations
Facebook updates Story ads with ability to start conversations in Messenger -
FB5
A redesign of the website and mobile app was introduced, dubbed as "FB5" -
Partnership with University of California, San Francisco
Partnership with University of California, San Francisco to build a non-invasive, wearable device that lets people type by simply imagining themselves talking. -
Dating in Facebook
Facebook launched Facebook Dating in the United States. -
Masks as a mush-have
Facebook now allows advertising of masks positioned as fashion accessories -
Integrating DMs
Integrating the direct messaging service of Instagram with its own Messenger for both iOS and Android devices. -
Climate Science
Facebook launched a climate science information centre to promote authoritative voices on climate change and provide access of “factual and up-to-date” information on climate science.
