Behind the Success: The History of Facebook

According to Facebook statistics, there were 500 million active users in July of 2010. A recent study by Compete.com, ranked Facebook as the most used social network beating out MySpace. Whether you are a college student, business owner or just a stay at home mom, chances are you are part of the Facebook phenomenon. But you might be wondering, how Facebook get started and what are all of the available features. Keep reading to find out the answers to these questions.
Facebook was created by Mark Zuckerberg as a sophomore at Harvard University. Mark created a social networking site which enabled users to rate the attractiveness of fellow students. But in order to get this information, he needed to hack into the University’s computer system to get private dorm images. Mark got in trouble with the University for hacking into their computer system. But the charges were dropped and he was able to finish up the creation of this social networking site which happened to be part of a class project.
Soon, the Facebook phenomenon was born. Originally, only Harvard University students were allowed to join. In the first month, more than half of the undergraduate students were members. Soon Facebook expanded to all Ivy League schools like New York University. In September 2005, a version was created for high school students and in 2006 membership on Facebook was open to anyone 13 years of age or older who had a valid email address. The success of Facebook became blatant when Microsoft purchased shares for $240 million making it worth $15 billion dollars.
Now that our history lesson is over, let’s talk about some of Facebook features. Facebook provides users with the opportunity to make friends. You can share photos, personal information, and communicate through private and public messages. Public messages are written on a person’s wall while private messages can go directly to the person or take place through the chat features. You can also share certain likes which can be anything from a person’s photo album to a favorite retail store.
Wow! That was a lot of information that I jammed into this short blog. More information on this topic can be found on Wikipedia.com. Its time for me to take a break and change my own Facebook status. Until next time, see you on Facebook!