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History of the creation of Facebook
11.11.2010 23: 50 | Author: Evgenia Polozova | |
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(32 voted, average score 4.56)
Library - Short essays
Tags: 12.7 | brands | internet history | cinema history | structures of everyday life | student work |
Polozova E.
Let the hacking begin.
- Mark Zuckerberg's blog, October 28, 2003
To be honest, the idea to write about the history of the creation of Facebook came to my mind after I saw the trailer of the movie "Social Network" in the cinema.
Before its release on the screens, I did not have time to make up my own opinion about how the first popular social network in the world actually appeared and developed.
However, now, after I watched this film, it became even more interesting to me: firstly, the story of Mark Zuckerberg and his company was excitingly retold, and secondly, I wanted to check how much artistic fiction the authors brought to the Hollywood tape.
FACEBOOK'S PREDECESSORS
The fall of 2003 for Mark Zuckerberg, a second year student at Harvard University, perhaps really became a kind of"point of no return".
Then he created the very network projects that eventually formed the basis of Facebook.
The first of them was the so called CourseMatch, with which Harvard students could easily find out which subjects their friends had chosen to study.
The site was quite popular.
A much more important milestone for the future of Facebook was the launch of the Facemash website.
On October 28, 2003, after breaking up with his girlfriend, Mark tried to switch to something else.
Like a real computer genius, he decided that not only alcohol, but also programming could well distract... together programming and alcohol gave rise to an amazing idea: the young man decided that he should create a website where people would evaluate girls – choose from two photos the one that is "sexier".
And to find the photos, he hacked into the Harvard computer network.
And the figure of 22,000 views in the first four hours of Facemash's existence is true.
Zuckerberg was threatened with expulsion for hacking the Harvard network, but everything went well.
Another rather interesting project of Mark was the soon to be created website for preparing for the art history exam.
It was very simple: 500 images of paintings from the Augustan era were uploaded to the hosting, each of which was shown on a separate page with comments.
Mark opened his invention for discussion by classmates, and through the website they shared their knowledge with each other.
The teacher later said that no thread in his memory had ever passed the exam so well.
THEFACEBOOK
Mark started writing code for his new website in January 2004, registering the domain on the 11th thefacebook.com.
Thefacebook itself was launched on February 4, 2004.
Back then, it was a social network exclusively for Harvard students.
TheFacebook Home page, February 12, 2004
During the first 24 hours of the site's existence on thefacebook.com more than a thousand people have registered.
And a month later, more than half of the university students had their own page on the website.
Of course, such a rapid growth of the site required an increase in the number of people who worked on it.
Mark took his friends to the team – Eduardo Saverin (Eduardo Saverin), Dustin Moskowitz (Dustin Moskovitz), Andrew McCollum (Andrew McCollum) and Chris Hughes (Chris Hughes).
The first expansion of the network occurred in March 2004: Facebook became available at Stanford, Columbia and Yale universities.
A little later, not only almost all universities in Canada and the United States were added to the list of places available for registration, but also all schools of the Ivy League (Ivy League) and the Boston Area (Boston area).
The subsequent story developed rapidly: in the summer of 2004, Facebook was founded; Sean Parker, an entrepreneur who had been giving advice to Mark for quite a long time, became its president.
At the same time, the company moved to Palo Alto, California.
FACEBOOK
"The" disappeared from the site name in 2005 after the company acquired the domain Facebook.com for fabulous money – $ 200,000.
In September of the same year, students of high schools in the United States had the opportunity to register, however, then it was necessary to receive an invitation from one of the already registered participants.
Then the circle expanded to employees of some companies, for example, Apple and Microsoft.
September 26, 2006 was one of the most important milestones in the history of the project: the site opened registration for everyone who has a working e mail address.
Only the age limit remained – 13 years.
Since then, both the site and the company have been actively developing, and huge investments in the most popular social network in the world only proved this.
In October 2008, Facebook's international headquarters moved from Silicon Valley to Dublin, Ireland.
In September 2009, the company made a profit from the site for the first time.
However, this is not surprising: in 2009-2010, despite the "small" audience growth figures, Facebook was used especially actively.
Facebook Home Page today
Mark Zuckerberg, thanks to his brainchild, became the youngest billionaire in the history of the United States.
He holds 35% of the company's shares.
At the age of 23, he occupies the 29th place in the rating of Forbes magazine (as of September 2010), and the amount of $ 6,900,000,000 is listed opposite his last name.
LEGAL PROCEEDINGS
Of course, such a commercial success could not pass just like that.
Mark Zuckerberg had to act as a defendant twice.
The first of the court cases related to the social network and its creator began just six days after the launch of Thefacebook.
Three Harvard undergraduates brothers Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss (Cameron Winklevoss, Tyler Winklevoss) and their partner Divya Narendra (Divya Narendra) – said in the Harvard Crimson newspaper that Mark stole their ideas.
Allegedly, they hired a programmer to work on their website HarvardConnection.com and they provided him with the source code of their ConnectU project, and he misled them for about a month, using their ideas to write his own code.
The trial itself was initiated later, but in the end the dispute was settled.
The second lawsuit was more serious, since it was connected with one of the founders of Facebook.
Eduardo Saverin, in fact, the first sponsor of the project and his business manager, was initially close to Zuckerberg.
Then Mark dropped out of university and took up a website, and the young people became estranged from each other.
In April 2005, when investors and Sean Parker "seized" control of the young company, Eduardo discovered that his original share in the project – 34% of the shares – had been eroded to 0.03%.
Of course, he sued.
This matter was also settled.
As a result, Eduardo received 5% of the company's shares and the right to have his name indicated in the company's constituent documents.
"SOCIAL NETWORK" AND THE REAL HISTORY OF THE CREATION OF THE SITE
Poster of the film "Social Network", 2010
The Facebook Social Network film is based on the book "The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook", published in 2009 by Ben Mezrich.
As a person who has not read the book, but has seen the film and is a little interested in the history of the site, I can say that the film is quite reliable in terms of irrefutable facts – dates, the number of visits, the blurring of the Saverin share, and so on.
However, it is already more difficult to talk about the motivations of the main characters.
First of all, it should be said that none of the creators of Facebook was involved in the work on the film; however, Eduardo Saverin was a consultant for Mezrich for some time, but he stopped communicating with the writer after settling their legal dispute with Mark.
The founder of Facebook himself called the "Social Network ""inaccurate", explaining that the authors of the film did not understand the main reason for creating the site.
Nevertheless, the reviews of critics are extremely positive, and I myself was satisfied: the real facts are not distorted, the plot of the film is dynamic, the humor is quite decent, and the acting is just great.
So for those who have not yet watched the "Social Network", I still advise you to do it.
Two hours fly by unnoticed checked.
Sources:
History of Facebook // http://www.buzzle.com/articles/history of facebook.html
History of Facebook // http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History of Facebook
The History of Facebook // http://www.webhostingreport.com/learn/facebook.html
A Brief History of Facebook // http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2007/jul/25/media.newmedia
Mark Zuckerberg Calls The Social Network inaccurate // http://www.limelife.com/blog entry/Mark Zuckerberg Calls The Social Network Inaccurate VIDEO/77351.html
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