One of the biggest social media websites, Facebook, was launched by a 19-year old student, Mark Zuckerberg, along with his classmates from Harvard University back on February 4th, 2004. Seventeen years ago, the website was called as “Thefacebook” and had one aim, i.e., to find your schoolmates and connect with them via the platform. The infographic below reveals how Facebook has grown over the years.
During the first year of launch, Thefacebook grew incredibly, was attracted by students of various other colleges, and by the end of 2004, the company was a family of 1 million users. The newly-found company also achieved a milestone of entering Silicon Valley. Moreover, the co-founder of PayPal, Peter Thiel, invested a massive amount of $500,000 into the company.
In 2005, the company’s name was changed to “Facebook,” and by the year 2006, the website was open for everyone. Just in the span of three years, Facebook gained 350 million registered users, and by the summer of 2012, Facebook became the first-ever online website to have as massive as 1 billion active users monthly.
Over these years, Facebook has been into several controversies, and the most recent one includes that of user privacy mishandling by the company. Despite all the hurdles, the social media giant continued to grow, and by the third quarter of 2020, it became a family of 2.74 billion users from all around the globe.
