Facebook History

Every social networking website has a history behind it and Facebook is no exception to that rule. It has grown from relative obscurity to its current position as the second largest social networking website on the internet in terms of traffic (with MySpace being the very large first place social networking website). Facebook itself was actually initially called thefacebook and was started as a hobby website at Harvard University. As the website itself became well received and people started to tell their friends about it, thefacebook spread to other University campuses across the country and then eventually spread internationally. When the website became so popular, the name was changed to Facebook and the domain name of facebook.com was purchased for upwards of $200,000 American.

Considering the small bit of history mentioned in the preceding paragraph, it should come as no surprise that the founder of Facebook was a student at Harvard University. A man by the name of Mark Zuckerberg founded Facebook and ran it for a very long time as a hobby project during his time at University. It is reasonably safe to assume that Mr. Zuckerberg had no idea just how popular his idea would become but after Mark had started the website and promoted it around the dorm rooms at Harvard, the popularity of Facebook quite literally took off. Two of his fellow Harvard classmates, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes, started helping him take care of the website and under the guidance of the three of them it expanded outward from the Harvard campus.

Now that facebook has become so popular, two of the three initial creators have dropped out of university and dedicated themselves full time to improving and maintaining Facebook and all of its facilities. Today the Facebook website is used by people from thousands of University campuses across the English speaking world and is also enjoyed by a number of different companies and religious groups as well.

Zuckerberg understood when he was designing the website that it was not going to be easy to make it initially popular, with the existence of other well established social networking websites making things difficult for him. In order to make up for this, Facebook was initially set up so that only certain kinds of people could join. Initially it was just restricted to the people of Harvard University and then it expanded to the Stanford campus. As the popularity of the website itself began to grow more Universities were included until it came to the point where most of the campuses in the English speaking world were supported. The restriction has resulted in Facebook having a lower than average number of users registered but at the same time has made it appealing to a wide audience.

Historically, an e-mail address of a supported school or company was required but as time has gone on those restrictions has become to get less and less important in the grand scheme of things. Facebook is now widely available and many people are able to enjoy it day after day.