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February 2004
Mark Zuckerberg starts Facebook as a sophomore at Harvard University. -
March 2004
Facebook begins allowing people from other colleges and universities to join. -
September 2004
Facebook introduces the Wall, which allows people to write personal musings and other tidbits on profile pages. Facebook becomes the target of a lawsuit claiming that Zuckerberg stole the idea for the social network from a company co-founded by twins Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss and a third person at Harvard. -
September 2005
Facebook expands to include high schools. -
May 2006
Facebook introduces additional networks, allowing people with corporate email addresses to join. -
September 2006
Facebook begins letting anyone over 13 join. It also introduces News Feed, which collects friends' Wall posts in one place. Although it leads to complaints about privacy, News Feed would become one of Facebook's most popular features. -
October 2007
Facebook agrees to sell a 1.6 percent stake to Microsoft for $240 million and forges an advertising partnership. -
November 2007
Facebook unveils its Beacon program, a feature that broadcasts people's activities on dozens of outside sites. Yet another privacy backlash leads Facebook to give people more control over Beacon, before the company ultimately scraps it as part of a legal settlement. -
May 2007
Facebook launches Platform, a system for letting outside programmers develop tools for sharing photos, taking quizzes and playing games. The system gives rise to a Facebook economy and allows companies such as game maker Zynga Inc. to thrive. -
March 2008
Facebook hires Sheryl Sandberg as chief operating officer, snatching the savvy, high-profile executive from Google Inc. -
April 2008
Facebook introduces Chat. -
February 2009
Facebook introduces Like, allowing people to endorse other people's posts. -
June 2009
Facebook surpasses News Corp.'s Myspace as the leading online social network in the U.S. -
August 2010
Facebook launches location feature, allowing people to share where they are with their friends. -
June 2011
Google launches rival social network called Plus. The Winklevoss twins end their legal battle over the idea behind Facebook. They had settled with Facebook for $65 million in 2008, but later sought more money. -
September 2011
Facebook introduces Timeline, a new version of the profile page. It's meant to show highlights from a person's entire life rather than recent posts. -
December 2011
Facebook completes a move to Menlo Park, California.. Its address is 1 Hacker Way. -
April 2012
Facebook announces plans to buy Instagram, a photo-sharing social network, for $1 billion in cash and stock. It also discloses it plans to list its stock on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol "FB." -
September 2012
Facebook closes its purchase of Instagram. With Facebook's stock price lower, the deal is now valued at about $740 million. -
January 2013
Facebook unveils a search feature that lets users quickly sift through their social connections for information about people, interests, photos and places. -
January 2014
Facebook starts to roll out "trending topics," showing users the most popular topics at any given moment. -
February 2014
Facebook celebrates its 10 year anniversary.