When I created a username on thefacebook.com in February 2004, second semester of my freshman year at Harvard, I was profile number 1,205. If when you first registered as a Facebook user had some wealth equivalent, that would put me in the top 0.0008% (based on the current monthly active users of 1.5 billion). While that sounds like a "prestigious decimal," I’m with the majority of Harvard students that used Facebook (FB) right when it launched but had no idea that it would become the business it is today -- the $300 billion behemoth and seventh-largest company in the S&P 500.
With the digital timeline news feed now a staple of Facebook, the real-life timeline of the company unfolded in a way many couldn’t have anticipated. After all, Facebook was initially seen simply as a solution for the much-requested cyber version of the handbook given to all students, a book which I received at the beginning of my freshman year and studied diligently with my friends.
More on Facebook: Yahoo Finance 2015 Company of the Year: Facebook
A screen-shot of the original web page -- which looks nothing like today's interface -- brings back memories from the early days:
CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s name first became known on campus in the fall of 2003 (my freshman fall) with the launch of his “Facemash” website, where you could compare pairs of Harvard students (using their official Harvard headshots) in a “hot or not” type game. The site quickly spread across email lists, hitting a negative chord with many groups on campus. Ultimately, Harvard brought Zuckerberg before the administrative board, where it was determined he would not have to leave school after being accused of breaching security and violating copyrights and individual privacy by creating the website.
While that door closed, another one opened. In The Crimson, the editorial board emphasized the much-discussed need for a campus-wide facebook. Zuckerberg met just that demand, launching thefacebook in February 2004 and telling The Crimson, “Everyone’s been talking a lot about a universal face book within Harvard. I think it’s kind of silly 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.”
The Facebook at that time was seen initially as simply the answer to the long-awaited need for an online searchable list of students on campus and their photos. In fact, when other colleges were allowed to join in March 2004, many students were dismayed -- the website was seen as a private network that was now letting in outsiders. This increased when high schools could join as users in September 2005 and when people with corporate email addresses could join in May 2006. Then in September 2006, anyone over age 13 could join, completely transforming what Facebook represented, but still a far cry from what it is today. At the end of that year, the website counted 12 million active users.
At the time, a good portion of undergraduate talent was still scared by the Internet bust of the early 2000s, and gravitated instead to the financial world as the stock market approached new highs. As Zuckerberg enthusiastically recruited candidates in Kirkland dining hall and by the Science Center, many still remained skeptical. By 2007, Facebook had clearly filled a social networking hole when MySpace faded in popularity and fell by the wayside. But even in 2007, the success of Facebook was far from a sure thing. Zuckerberg zigged when others zagged -- and created something unprecedented.
Of course, now, one of the most embraced features of Facebook is its universality. As of last quarter, 1.55 billion people use Facebook (at least) every month and more than 1 billion people use Facebook every day; 1.39 billion use it on mobile devices. The website is also expanding globally, with specific aims to get into India. Zuckerberg has emphasized India as important region to grow both the Internet and Facebook, citing that more than 1 billion people of the 1.25 billion total population are not online. He said on the company’s latest conference call, “We want to serve the entire global community, not just the people who are on Facebook today,” and added that when you connect a place like India, it makes a very big difference socially and for the economy.
Quite a long way we’ve come from a replacement hard-copy Facebook. And even amid talk of high valuations in the social media space, for Facebook the real upside still remains as it expands globally to unreached regions -- with India as the new frontier. Most users, of course, didn't have a clue as to how big and essential Facebook could become in its early days at Harvard, and that might still be true of today's Facebook users. Zuckerberg continues to look forward -- both in terms of geographic expansion and mission. The social networking giant is aiming to create a real entertainment and content ecosystem with virtual reality features, messaging, payments and more.
The Facebook of today is more than a $300 billion version of the 2004 website we used to quickly ID classmates during my freshman year. It has become not only one of the most valuable companies in the world, but also a way of life.
