facebook
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Mark Zuckerberg's profile (viewed from the login page)
| |
| Type of business | Public |
|---|---|
Type of site
| Social networking service |
| Available in | Multilingual (140) |
| Traded as |
|
| Founded | February 4, 2004 in Cambridge, Massachusetts[1] |
| Headquarters |
,
U.S.
|
| Coordinates | 37.4848°N 122.1484°WCoordinates: 37.4848°N 122.1484°W |
| Area served | United States (2004–present) Worldwide, except blocking countries(2005–present) |
| Founder(s) | |
| Key people | Mark Zuckerberg (Chairman and CEO) Sheryl Sandberg (COO) David Wehner (CFO) Mike Schroepfer (CTO) Chris Cox (CPO) |
| Industry | Internet |
| Products | Messenger Watch |
| Revenue |  US$40.653 billion (2017)[2] |
| Operating income | US$20.203 billion (2017)[2] |
| Net income | US$15.934 billion (2017)[2] |
| Total assets | US$84.524 billion (2017)[2] |
| Total equity | US$74.347 billion (2017)[2] |
| Employees | 30,275 (June 30, 2018)[3] |
| Subsidiaries | Instagram Oculus VR |
| Website | www www |
| Alexa rank |  3 (January 2019)[4] |
| Registration | Required |
| Users | 2.2 billion monthly active users (January 2018) |
| Current status | Active |
| Written in | C++, PHP (as HHVM),[5] D[6] |
Facebook, Inc. is an American online social media and social networking service company based in Menlo Park, California. Its website was launched on February 4, 2004, by Mark Zuckerberg, along with fellow Harvard Collegestudents and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes. It is considered one of the Big Four technology companies along with Amazon, Apple and Google.[7][8]
The founders initially limited the website's membership to Harvard students and subsequently Columbia, Stanfordand Yale students. Membership was eventually expanded to the remaining Ivy League schools, MIT, and higher education institutions in the Boston area. Facebook gradually added support for students at various other universities, and eventually to high school students. Since 2006, anyone who claims to be at least 13 years old has been allowed to become a registered user of Facebook, though variations exist in this requirement, depending on local laws. The name comes from the face book directories often given to American university students. Facebook held its initial public offering (IPO) in February 2012, valuing the company at $104 billion, the largest valuation to date for a newly listed public company. It began selling stock to the public three months later. Facebook makes most of its revenue from advertisements that appear onscreen.
Facebook can be accessed from a large range of devices with Internet connectivity, such as desktop computers, laptops and tablet computers, and smartphones. After registering, users can create a customized profile indicating their name, occupation, schools attended and so on. Users can add other users as "friends", exchange messages, post status updates, share photos, videos and links, use various software applications ("apps"), and receive notifications of other users' activity. Additionally, users may join common-interest user groups organized by workplace, school, hobbies or other topics, and categorize their friends into lists such as "People From Work" or "Close Friends". Additionally, users can report or block unpleasant people.
Facebook has more than 2.2 billion monthly active users as of January 2018. Its popularity has led to prominent media coverage for the company, including significant scrutiny over privacy and the psychological effects it has on users. In recent years, the company has faced intense pressure over the amount of fake news, hate speech and depictions of violence prevalent on its services, all of which it is attempting to counteract
Zuckerberg wrote a program called "Facemash" in 2003 while attending Harvard University as a sophomore (second-year student). According to The Harvard Crimson, the site was comparable to Hot or Not and used "photos compiled from the online facebooks of nine Houses, placing two next to each other at a time and asking users to choose the "hotter" person".[9] Facemash attracted 450 visitors and 22,000 photo-views in its first four hours online.[10] The Facemash site was quickly forwarded to several campus group list-servers, but was shut down a few days later by the Harvard administration. Zuckerberg faced expulsion and was charged by the administration with breach of security, violating copyrights, and violating individual privacy. Ultimately, the charges were dropped.[9] Zuckerberg expanded on this initial project that semester by creating a social study tool ahead of an art history final exam. He uploaded all art images to a website, each of which was featured with a corresponding comments section, then shared the site with his classmates, and people started sharing notes.[11]
A "face book" is a student directory featuring photos and basic information.[10] In 2003, there were no universal online facebooks at Harvard, with only paper sheets distributed[12] and private online directories.[9][13] Zuckerberg told the Crimsonthat "Everyone's been talking a lot about a universal face book within Harvard. ... I think it's kind of silly that it would take the University a couple of years to get around to it. I can do it better than they can, and I can do it in a week."[13] In January 2004, Zuckerberg began writing code for a new website, known as "TheFacebook", with the inspiration coming from an editorial in the Crimson about Facemash, stating that "It is clear that the technology needed to create a centralized Website is readily available ... the benefits are many."[14] On February 4, 2004, Zuckerberg launched "TheFacebook", originally located at thefacebook.com.[15]
Six days after the site launched, Harvard seniors Cameron Winklevoss, Tyler Winklevoss, and Divya Narendra accused Zuckerberg of intentionally misleading them into believing that he would help them build a social network called HarvardConnection.com. They claimed that he was instead using their ideas to build a competing product.[16] The three complained to The Harvard Crimson and the newspaper began an investigation. They later filed a lawsuit against Zuckerberg, subsequently settling in 2008[17] for 1.2 million shares (worth $300 million at Facebook's IPO).[18]
Membership was initially restricted to students of Harvard College; within the first month, more than half the undergraduates at Harvard were registered on the service.[19] Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz, Andrew McCollum, and Chris Hughes joined Zuckerberg to help manage the growth of the website.[20] In March 2004, Facebook expanded to the universities of Columbia, Stanford, and Yale.[21] It later opened to all Ivy League colleges, Boston University, New York University, MIT, Washington and gradually most universities in the United States and Canada.[22][23]
In mid-2004, Napster co-founder and entrepreneur Sean Parker—an informal advisor to Zuckerberg—became the company's president.[24] In June 2004, Facebook moved its operations base to Palo Alto, California.[25] It received its first investment later that month from PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel.[26] In 2005, the company dropped "the" from its name after purchasing the domain name facebook.com for US$200,000.[27] The domain facebook.com belonged to AboutFace Corporation before the purchase. This website last appeared on April 8, 2005;[28] from April 10, 2005, to August 4, 2005, this domain gave a 403 error.[29]
In May 2005, Accel Partners invested $12.7 million in Facebook, and Jim Breyer[30] added $1 million of his own money. A high-school version of the site was launched in September 2005, which Zuckerberg called the next logical step.[31] (At the time, high-school networks required an invitation to join.)[32] Facebook also expanded membership eligibility to employees of several companies, including Apple Inc. and Microsoft.[33]
2006–2012: Public access, Microsoft alliance and rapid growth
On September 26, 2006, Facebook was opened to everyone at least 13 years old with a valid email address.[34][35][36] In late 2007, Facebook had 100,000 business pages (pages which allowed companies to promote themselves and attract customers). These started as group pages, but a new concept called company pages was planned.[37] Pages began rolling out for businesses in May 2009.[38] On October 24, 2007, Microsoft announced that it had purchased a 1.6% share of Facebook for $240 million, giving Facebook a total implied value of around $15 billion. Microsoft's purchase included rights to place international advertisements on the social networking site.[39][40]
In October 2008, Facebook announced that it would set up its international headquarters in Dublin, Ireland.[41] Almost a year later, in September 2009, Facebook said that it had turned cash flow positive for the first time.[42] A January 2009 Compete.com study ranked Facebook the most used social networking service by worldwide monthly active users.[43] Entertainment Weekly included the site on its end-of-the-decade "best-of" list saying, "How on earth did we stalk our exes, remember our co-workers' birthdays, bug our friends, and play a rousing game of Scrabulous before Facebook?"[44]
Traffic to Facebook increased steadily after 2009. The company announced 500 million users in July 2010,[45] and according to its data, half of the site's membership used Facebook daily, for an average of 34 minutes, while 150 million users accessed the site by mobile. A company representative called the milestone a "quiet revolution."[46] In November 2010, based on SecondMarket Inc. (an exchange for privately held companies' shares), Facebook's value was $41 billion. The company had slightly surpassed eBay to become the third largest American web company after Google and Amazon.com.[47][48]
In early 2011, Facebook announced plans to move its headquarters to the former Sun Microsystems campus in Menlo Park, California.[49][50] In March 2011, it was reported that Facebook was removing about 20,000 profiles every day for violations such as spam, graphic content, and underage use, as part of its efforts to boost cyber security.[51] Statistics by DoubleClick showed that Facebook reached one trillion page views in the month of June 2011, making it the most visited website tracked by DoubleClick.[52][53] According to a Nielsen study, Facebook had in 2011 become the second-most accessed website in the U.S. behind Google.[54][55]
2012–2013: IPO, lawsuits and one-billionth user
Facebook eventually filed for an initial public offering on February 1, 2012.[56] Facebook held an initial public offering on May 17, 2012, negotiating a share price of US$38. The company was valued at $104 billion, the largest valuation to date for a newly listed public company.[57][58][59] Facebook began selling stock to the public and trading on the NASDAQ on May 18, 2012.[60] Based on its 2012 income of $5 billion, Facebook joined the Fortune 500 list for the first time in May 2013, ranked in position 462.[61]
Facebook filed their S1 document with the Securities and Exchange Commission on February 1, 2012. The company applied for a $5 billion IPO, one of the biggest offerings in the history of technology.[62] The IPO raised $16 billion, making it the third-largest in U.S. history, after Visa Inc. in 2008 and AT&T Wireless in 2000.[63][64]
The shares began trading on May 18; the stock struggled to stay above the IPO price for most of the day, but set a record for the trading volume of an IPO (460 million shares).[65] The first day of trading was marred by technical glitches that prevented orders from going through;[66][67] only the technical problems and artificial support from underwriters prevented the stock price from falling below the IPO price on the day.[68] In March 2012, Facebook announced App Center, a store selling applications that operate via the website. The store was to be available on iPhones, Android devices, and mobile web users.[69]
On May 22, 2012, the Yahoo! Finance website reported that Facebook's lead underwriters, Morgan Stanley (MS), JP Morgan(JPM), and Goldman Sachs (GS), cut their earnings forecasts for the company in the middle of the IPO process.[70] The stock had begun its freefall by this time, closing at 34.03 on May 21 and 31.00 on May 22. A "circuit breaker" trading curb was used in an attempt to slow down the stock price's decline.[71] Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Mary Schapiro, and Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) Chairman Rick Ketchum, called for a review of the circumstances surrounding the IPO.[72]
Facebook's IPO was consequently investigated, and was compared to a "pump and dump" scheme.[66][70][72][73] A class-action lawsuit was filed in May 2012 because of the trading glitches, which led to botched orders.[74][75] Lawsuits were filed, alleging that an underwriter for Morgan Stanley selectively revealed adjusted earnings estimates to preferred clients.[76]
The other underwriters (MS, JPM, GS), Facebook's CEO and board, and NASDAQ also faced litigation after numerous lawsuits were filed, while SEC and FINRA both launched investigations.[77] It was believed that adjustments to earnings estimates were communicated to the underwriters by a Facebook financial officer, who used the information to cash out on their positions while leaving the general public with overpriced shares.[78] By the end of May 2012, Facebook's stock lost over a quarter of its starting value, which led The Wall Street Journal to label the IPO a "fiasco".[79] Zuckerberg announced to the media at the start of October 2012 that Facebook had passed the monthly active users mark of one billion.[80] The company's data also revealed 600 million mobile users, 219 billion p.
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