The History of Facebook: From Dorm Room to Global Stage

In 2004, a college student launched a website from his Harvard dorm room. That website would go on to change how billions of people connect, communicate, and consume content. You know it today as Facebook.

But the story behind Facebook’s rise and continued dominance isn’t just about technology. It’s about timing, bold decisions, and the relentless ambition to scale an idea far beyond its original scope.

In this article, you’ll get an in-depth look at how Facebook evolved from a campus project into a global social media empire.

2003-2004: The Harvard experiment

This is where it all began.

Facemash (2003)

In October 2003, Mark Zuckerberg, then a 19-year-old sophomore at Harvard, created "Facemash," a website that let students vote on who was hotter between two classmates. To populate the site, he hacked into Harvard's protected student ID photo directories without authorization.

In just four hours, 450 people visited the site and viewed over 22,000 photos, a staggering engagement rate for a campus of a few thousand students.

But the backlash came just as fast. Facemash used student ID photos scraped without permission. Harvard quickly shut it down, citing privacy violations and security concerns. Zuckerberg faced disciplinary hearings. He wasn’t expelled, but the message was clear: this wasn’t going to fly.

Still, the idea had legs to stand on. Not the hot-or-not part, but the desire for a digital social experience rooted in real identity.

TheFacebook (January 2004)

Motivated by the idea of creating a centralized online directory for Harvard students, Zuckerberg began coding a new website in January 2004.

He was joined by fellow students:

• Eduardo Saverin (business operations)
• Dustin Moskovitz (programming)
• Andrew McCollum (graphic design)
• Chris Hughes (promotion)

They each contributed $1,000 to fund the project.

On February 4, 2004, they launched "TheFacebook" at thefacebook.com. The site allowed Harvard students to create profiles, upload photos, and connect with others based on shared classes and interests.

Within 24 hours, over 1,200 students had registered. By the end of its first month, over half of Harvard’s undergraduates had signed up.

2004–2006: From the Ivy League to the world stage

Once TheFacebook found traction at Harvard, it didn’t wait around. Zuckerberg saw the opportunity and moved extremely fast. What began as a campus project was about to become a cultural phenomenon.

2004: Startup mode

By March, word had spread. TheFacebook opened to other Ivy League schools like Columbia, Yale, and Stanford. Then it expanded to dozens more U.S. and Canadian universities.

Zuckerberg had hit a nerve. Students craved a digital identity that mirrored their real-world social circles.

By June, the operation had outgrown Harvard. Zuckerberg and a small team moved to Palo Alto, California, setting up headquarters in a rented house.

That same month, they landed their first major funding: a $500,000 investment from Peter Thiel, PayPal’s co-founder. It was a critical bet that gave Facebook the runway to grow.

By December 2004, Facebook already hit its first major milestone: one million registered users.

2005: Growing up fast

With momentum on its side, Facebook started making bold moves to scale. In May 2005, venture capital firm Accel Partners invested $13 million, giving Facebook the firepower to expand its team, improve the product, and lay the foundation for hypergrowth.

Just a few months later, in August 2005, the company made a symbolic but strategic change: it dropped “The” and bought facebook.com for $200,000. This is when they rolled out the 'facebook' logo and 'f' icon we recognize to this day.

Then came the big leap: September 2005, Facebook launched a high school version, aiming to be the default social network for an entire generation.

In October, it rolled out photo-sharing, allowing users to upload unlimited images. For the first time, Facebook became not just a place to connect, but a place to document and share life.

2006: Facebook goes public (in spirit)

2006 was the year Facebook outgrew its college roots. In April, access expanded beyond schools. Employees at select companies like Apple and Microsoft were invited to join, a move that hinted at Facebook’s broader ambitions.

Then came one of the most important product launches in the platform's history: the News Feed, released on September 5, 2006.

At first, users hated it. Many felt it was a privacy invasion that suddenly, their activity was broadcast to everyone they knew. But Zuckerberg stood his ground.

The outrage faded. And News Feed became a cornerstone of the platform, transforming it from a profile-based network into a dynamic, real-time experience.

Just three weeks later, on September 26, 2006, Facebook opened to the public. Anyone over the age of 13 with a valid email could now join.

2007–2010: Feature releases that shaped the platform

As Facebook’s user base exploded, so did its feature set. These were the years when the platform transformed from a social network into a powerful ecosystem — one that could host businesses, developers, and media.

Let’s start with 2007.

2007: Opening Facebook Platform and introducing Pages

In May 2007, Facebook launched Facebook Platform, which opened its doors to third-party developers. For the first time, outside creators could build apps directly on Facebook’s infrastructure.

The result? A wave of viral tools and games that took over user feeds from SuperPoke! to Causes to quiz apps. It turned Facebook into more than a networking site — it became a digital playground.

Then in November, Facebook made another major move with the introduction of Facebook Pages.

Now, businesses, bands, celebrities, and brands could set up official profiles to interact with fans. It laid the groundwork for what would eventually become Facebook’s powerful advertising ecosystem, starting with Social Ads, which were launched shortly after.

But 2007 wasn’t all wins.

That same November, Facebook launched Beacon, a program that automatically shared users’ activities from partner websites back into their Facebook feeds. Bought a movie ticket? Everyone knew. Added a product to your cart? It showed up.

The backlash was swift. Users saw it as a major privacy violation, and Facebook was forced to scale it back. By 2009, Beacon was officially shut down.

2008: Enhancing communication and leadership

In March 2008, Facebook hired Sheryl Sandberg as Chief Operating Officer.

Sandberg, a former Google executive, brought exactly what Facebook needed: business acumen, operational discipline, and a clear path to monetization. Under her leadership, Facebook would go on to build one of the most powerful advertising engines in the world.

Just a month later, in April, Facebook launched Chat, an instant messaging feature that let users have real-time conversations without leaving the site.

Communication on Facebook was no longer limited to wall posts and private messages. Chat made the platform feel alive and more personal, helping Facebook compete with standalone messaging apps.

And it sent engagement through the roof, as people now had a reason to leave a Facebook tab open all day.

2009: The rise of social signals

In 2009, Facebook introduced two small features that had massive impact. First came the Like button, launched in February 2009. It was a quick way to show you appreciated a post without leaving a comment.

That simplicity was its genius. “Like” became a universal social signal. It trained users to interact constantly and gave Facebook a powerful new layer of data to refine what you saw in your feed.

Then in September, Facebook rolled out @ tagging in status updates. When you mentioned a friend, a Page, or a group, you could tag them directly, just like on Twitter. This made conversations more dynamic and drew people into each other’s posts, driving engagement through the roof.

Together, these two features deepened the social graph and made Facebook feel more interconnected.

2010: A living map of people, interests, and places

In April, Facebook launched Community Pages, which were meant to represent shared topics like “Photography,” “Yoga,” or “Entrepreneurship.”

Unlike brand or personal pages, Community Pages weren’t run by individuals. Instead, they aimed to become crowdsourced hubs of knowledge, pulling in content from users to build comprehensive interest-based collections.

Then in July, Facebook hit a milestone that underscored just how fast it had grown: 500 million active users. And in August, Facebook moved into the real world with the launch of Places.

The new feature lets users check in at locations, share where they were, and discover nearby spots. It was Facebook’s answer to the rising trend of geolocation apps like Foursquare.

Places marked a shift from just using Facebook to connect online to navigating the physical world through your network.

2010-2012: The mobile revolution

By the early 2010s, it was clear: mobile was the present, no longer the future. And Facebook needed to adapt or risk becoming irrelevant.

In 2012, Mark Zuckerberg made a radical pivot. He redirected the entire company’s focus to mobile-first development. Product managers were made to disable their desktop access and use only the mobile version of Facebook. In meetings, if you didn’t present the mobile version first, the meeting ended.

But the shift had already begun earlier. In 2010, Facebook launched Facebook Zero, a stripped-down, text-only version of the platform designed for emerging markets with limited internet access. It was accessible via 0.facebook.com and helped Facebook expand in regions where smartphones were common but data was expensive.

In early 2012, the company launched its first mobile ads (Sponsored Stories), integrating them seamlessly into the News Feed. These allowed advertisers to reach users in a more native and engaging format.

At the same time, Facebook became a political tool. During the Arab Spring, activists across the Middle East and North Africa used Facebook to organize protests, spread information, and mobilize public support.

By the end of 2012, Facebook had over 680 million monthly active mobile users, which was a 57% jump from the previous year. And the reason for that was the shift that paralleled the massive uptick in cell phone usage.

2012-2021: Major acquisitions and business growth

When Facebook went public on May 18, 2012, it was one of the most anticipated IPOs in tech history. The company raised $16 billion, valuing it at over $100 billion, an incredible leap for an eight-year-old startup.

Going public gave Zuckerberg and Facebook the cash and confidence to make bold strategic moves. And nobody held back.

Instagram (2012)

Just weeks before the IPO, Facebook announced its first major acquisition: Instagram, bought for $1 billion.

At the time, Instagram was a rising photo-sharing app with only 13 employees. But it was dominating mobile engagement, and Facebook knew it needed to own the next generation of visual content.

WhatsApp (2014)

Two years later, they made an even bigger splash, acquiring WhatsApp for $19 billion.

It was one of the largest tech acquisitions ever. But WhatsApp had what Facebook didn’t: a massive global user base, particularly in emerging markets where messaging apps were more popular than social media platforms.

To own the infrastructure of global communication (and the data behind it), that's what Facebook needed.

Oculus VR (2014)

Also in 2014, Facebook acquired Oculus VR for $2 billion.

This move looked beyond mobile, beyond messaging, into the future of immersive technology. It signaled Zuckerberg’s long-term bet on virtual reality and what would eventually become the metaverse.

Giphy (2020)

In 2020, Facebook purchased Giphy for $400 million, adding a vast library of GIFs and animations to enhance visual expression across its platforms, including Messenger and Instagram.

Kustomer (2020)

That same year, Facebook acquired Kustomer, a CRM startup focused on customer service tools for businesses. This strengthened Facebook’s value to brands, making it easier to manage support and sales directly through its ecosystem.

The growth that followed

These moves paid off.

• From 2012 to 2023, Facebook’s user base grew by over 2 billion people, a 190% increase, averaging 10.3% growth annually.
• By 2021, the company generated $114.93 billion in ad revenue, up 16.2% from the previous year.
• By 2021, Meta’s ad platform supported over 10 million businesses, contributing to $360 billion in global economic activity.

This wasn’t just a social platform anymore. Facebook had become a tech empire spanning communication, commerce, entertainment, and emerging tech, with the infrastructure to shape how billions of people live, connect, and do business.

2021-present: Facebook rebrands to Meta

On October 28, 2021, at the company’s annual Connect conference, Mark Zuckerberg made it official: Facebook, the parent company, was now called Meta. Zuckerberg wasn’t content being the biggest social media company in the world. He wanted to own the next version of the internet.

That next version? The metaverse.

What is the metaverse, and why is Zuckerberg betting big on it?

At its core, the metaverse is a vision of a fully immersive, shared digital world. Think 3D spaces where people can work, hang out, play games, attend concerts, or build virtual lives, all through VR and AR technology.

Meta rolled out early metaverse products like:

• Horizon Home: your personal VR space
• Horizon Worlds: a social universe where users build and explore virtual experiences
• Horizon Workrooms: a VR workspace designed for remote collaboration

To Zuck, the metaverse is a platform shift, just like the move from desktop to mobile in the 2010s. And he wants to lead it.

With this shift, his company will be able to...

• Control the ecosystem. On mobile, Facebook depends on Apple and Google. In the metaverse, Meta builds the hardware, the OS, and the platform. No middlemen.
• Escape the legacy reputation. The Facebook brand became associated with data scandals, misinformation, and an aging user base. A rebrand gives Meta a fresh narrative.
• Build long-term relevance. With younger audiences drifting to TikTok and new platforms, Meta has to place an aggressive bet on what the next generation might care about in 10+ years.

A big bet with a steep price

This moonshot comes at a cost. Meta’s Reality Labs division, which leads its metaverse efforts, has already lost over $60 billion since late 2020.

That’s not a typo. It’s one of the most expensive tech bets ever made, with no guarantee of mainstream adoption.

The future of this pivot depends on:

• User adoption: Will everyday people actually spend hours in the metaverse?
• Technological readiness: Can the hardware (like VR headsets) become affordable, comfortable, and desirable?
• Regulatory hurdles: With antitrust heat and privacy concerns, Meta is walking a tightrope.

Meta's Quest headsets commanded 84% of the global VR headset market in Q4 2024. And 1 in 12 titles listed on the Meta Quest Store have done over $10 million in gross revenue. Growth has slowed in both categories, though.

Zuckerberg's investments into AI

While the world focused on Meta’s metaverse ambitions, Zuckerberg was also quietly (and now very loudly) betting big on AI, not just as a tool, but as a foundational pillar of Meta’s future.

On the side, Meta is building a vertically integrated AI empire:

• The infrastructure layer: Custom silicon chips, like the MTIA (Meta Training and Inference Accelerator) and massive AI supercomputers, such as the Research SuperCluster (RSC).
• The model layer: Llama models trained at massive scale while cultivating an open-source developer community.
• The application layer: Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger, and the standalone Meta AI assistant.

Controversies and challenges along the way

There are almost too many to count. From the very beginning, Zuck's career was rooted in controversy. The idea that led to Facebook, Facemash, was literally a website allowing students to rate peers' attractiveness, and the student photos it used were illegally scraped and published without anyone's permission.

Then, they just kept coming:

Facebook’s rise as a social media giant

Facebook’s growth was explosive. After opening to the public in 2006, it scaled from millions to half a billion users in just six years, and only two more to double that. By 2008, it had surpassed MySpace. And by 2012, it became the world’s largest social network.

Four things drove the rise:

• Network effects: Everyone was joining, so you had to, too.
• Feature innovation: News Feed, Likes, Groups, Pokes, all addictive.
• Mobile-first shift: As phones took over, Facebook was already there.
• Strategic expansion: Localized efforts captured Asian, Latin American, and African users.

Eventually, it wasn’t just “Facebook” anymore. It became a full ecosystem. Messenger, Groups, Pages, Marketplace, Login with Facebook — all tightly integrated into daily online life.

Timeline of key milestones

The people behind Facebook

Of course, there were dozens of people who played pivotal roles in Facebook's growth over the years. But there were five people involved in the company's founding, early development, and monetization:

• Mark Zuckerberg was the face of Facebook. From coding the first version in his Harvard dorm to steering the company through IPO, acquisitions, scandals, and the pivot to Meta, he's been at the center of every major move for the last two decades.
• Dustin Moskovitz was the early CTO, and he was instrumental in scaling Facebook’s infrastructure. He left in 2008 to start Asana.
• Chris Hughes helped launch the platform and shape its early messaging as the only non-technical founder. Later, he became a vocal critic of Big Tech’s power.
• Eduardo Saverin was an early investor in addition to co-founding the platform. He handled business development before Zuckerberg reportedly diluted his shares and cut him off, which was dramatized in The Social Network.
• Andrew McCollum designed Facebook’s original logo, web interface, and prototype, but quietly exited the company in its early years to finish school.

Another honorable mention here would be Sheryl Sandberg, who joined in 2008 as COO. Her leadership turned Facebook into a revenue machine, building the ad business that powers it to this day.

What was the Cambridge Analytica scandal?

In 2018, a political consulting firm called Cambridge Analytica harvested data from 87 million Facebook users without their consent. Most of those people had never even interacted with the app that collected the data to begin with.

Here’s how it happened:

• A researcher built a personality quiz app.
• Around 300,000 people used it, giving access to their personal data.
• But because of Facebook’s policies at the time, the app also collected data from those users’ friends.
• That data was later sold to Cambridge Analytica, which used it to target political ads during major elections, including the 2016 U.S. presidential race.

The fallout was massive. Zuckerberg testified before Congress. Lawmakers called for regulation. Users started deleting their accounts under the hashtag #DeleteFacebook. And Facebook lost billions in market value.

The scandal exposed how easily personal data could be misused (and how unprepared Facebook was to stop it).

The bottom line

Facebook started as a college project, now it’s a global ecosystem.

Along the way, it didn’t just build a platform. It built tools that changed the internet itself: React, React Native, massive-scale ad tech, and one of the most advanced AI stacks in the world.

It bought Instagram. It bought WhatsApp. It rebranded as Meta. And it’s still evolving.

What began as a way to connect with friends is now powering businesses, creators, and global communities at scale.