History of Facebook Part 3 PDF

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Summary

Lecture notes...

Description

Timeline[edit] "Facebook timeline" redirects here. For the Facebook feature unveiled in late 2018, see Facebook features § Timeline.

Yea r

Month and date (if available)

Event type

Event

2003

October 28

Prelude

Mark Zuckerberg releases Facemash, the predecessor to Facebook. It is described as a Harvard University version of Hot or Not.[117]

2004

January

Creation

Mark Zuckerberg begins with his fellow cofounders writing Facebook.[118]

2004

February 4

Creation

Zuckerberg launches Facebook as a Harvard-only social network.[119][120]

2004

April 13

Financial/legal

Zuckerberg, Dustin Moskovitz, and Eduardo Saverin form Thefacebook.com LLC, a partnership.[121]

2004

June

Funding

Facebook receives its first investment from Peter Thiel for US$500,000.[61]

Financial/legal

Facebook incorporates into a new company,[122] and Sean Parker (early employee of Napster) becomes its president.[26]

Product

To compete with growing campus-only service i2hub, Zuckerberg launches Wirehog. It is a precursor to Facebook Platform applications.[123]

2004

2004

July 29

August

Yea r

Month and date (if available)

Event type

Event

2004

September

Financial/legal

ConnectU files a lawsuit against Zuckerberg and other Facebook founders.[121]

2004

December 30

Userbase

Facebook achieves its one millionth registered user.[124]

2005

March 10

Userbase

Facebook expands to UK universities. Cambridge, Oxford and the University of the West of England are the first three UK universities on the platform.

2005

May 26

Funding

Accel Partners invests $13 million into Facebook.[121]

2005

July 19

Acquisition talks

News Corp acquires MySpace, spurring rumors about the possible sale of Facebook to a larger media company.[67]

2005

August 23

Product

Facebook acquires Facebook.com domain for $200,000.[121]

2005

September

Product

Facebook launches a high school version of the website.[125]

2005

October

Product

Facebook launches its photos feature with no restrictions on storage (but without the ability to tag friends).[126]

2005

December

Product

Facebook introduces the ability to tag friends in photos.[126]

Yea r

Month and date (if available)

Event type

Event

2006

March 28

Acquisition talks

A potential acquisition of Facebook is reportedly under negotiations, for $750 million first, then later $2 billion.[69]

2006

April

Userbase

Facebook expands its membership requirements to include corporate employees.[127]

2006

August 22

Product

Facebook launches a blogging feature known as "Facebook Notes".[128]

2006

September 26

Userbase

Membership is opened to anyone.[129]

2006

September 6

Product (news feed)

Facebook launches News Feed.[130] The original news feed is an algorithmically generated and constantly refreshing summary of updates about the activities of one's friends. The concept was relatively new at the time, with Twitter having launched only a few months in advance.

2006

September

Acquisition talks

Facebook discusses with Yahoo! about the latter possibly acquiring the former, for $1 billion.[69]

2007

January 10

Product

Facebook launches m.facebook.com and officially announces mobile support.[131]

2007

May 24

Product

Facebook announces Facebook Platform for developers to build applications on top of Facebook's social graph.[132][133]

Yea r

2007

Month and date (if available)

October 24

Event type

Event

Funding

Microsoft announces that it will purchase a 1.6% share of Facebook for $240 million, giving Facebook a total implied value of around $15 billion. However, Microsoft also gained ad exclusivity in this deal, so the $15 billion valuation figure is disputed.[76]

2007

November 6

Product (news feed)

Facebook launches Facebook Beacon with 44 partner sites at the time of launch. Beacon is part of Facebook's advertisement system that sends data from external websites to Facebook, for the purpose of allowing targeted advertisements and allowing users to share their activities with their friends. Certain activities on partner sites are published to a user's News Feed.[134] On the same day, Facebook launched Facebook Pages.[135]

2007

November 19

Product

Facebook removes "is" from status updates, allowing users to adopt a more free-form version of status updates.[136]

2008

May

Team

Adam D'Angelo, an early employee and chief technology officer, leaves Facebook.[137]

Financial/legal

Facebook settles both lawsuits, ConnectU vs Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg et al. and intellectual property theft, Wayne Chang et al. over The Winklevoss Chang Group's Social Butterfly project. The settlement effectively had Facebook acquiring ConnectU for $20 million in cash and over $1.2 million in shares, valued at $45 million based on $15 billion company valuation.[138]

2008

June

Yea r

2008

Month and date (if available)

July 21

Event type

Event

Product

Facebook launches a complete site redesign with options for tabbed redesign, and allows users to opt into it.[139][140] By September 2008, it forces all users to opt-in.[141]

2008

August

Financial/legal

Employees reportedly privately sell their shares to venture capital firms, at a company valuation of between $3.75 billion to $5 billion.[77]

2008

October

Physical location

Facebook sets up its international headquarters in Dublin, Ireland.[142]

2008

November

Product

Facebook launches Facebook Credits in order to help users purchase Facebook gifts.[143]

2009

February 9

Product

Facebook activates the Facebook like button.[144]

2009

August

Acquisition

Facebook acquires FriendFeed.[83]

2009

September

Financial/legal

Facebook claims that it has turned cash flow positive for the first time.[145]

2009

September 10

Product

Facebook announces a feature whereby people can @-tag friends in their status updates and comments.[146][147]

2009

September

Product

Facebook shuts down Beacon.

Yea r

Month and date (if available)

Event type

Event

2010

February

Acquisition

Facebook acquires Malaysian contactimporting startup Octazen Solutions. [148]

2010

April 2

Acquisition

Facebook announces the acquisition of photo-sharing service called Divvy-shot for an undisclosed amount.[149]

2010

April 19

Product

Facebook introduces Community Pages, which are Pages that are populated with articles from Wikipedia.[150]

2010

June

Financial/legal

Facebook employees sell shares of the company on SecondMarket at a company valuation of $11.5 billion.[151]

2010

June

Product

Facebook introduces the option to Like individual comments.

Popular culture

The Social Network, a film about the beginnings of Facebook directed by David Fincher & stars Jesse Eisenberg as Mark is released. The film is met with widespread critical acclaim as well as commercial success; however, Mark Zuckerberg says that the film is a largely inaccurate account of what happened.

Product

Facebook launches a redesign that emphasizes the most important parts of someone's life, including one's biographic information, photos, education, work experience, and important relationships. It replaces the tabs at the top of each profile page with links on the left side of the page.[152]

2010

2010

October 1

December

Yea r

Month and date (if available)

Event type

Event

2011

January

Funding

$500 million is invested into Facebook for 1% of the company, placing its worth at $50 billion.[153]

2011

February

Product

Facebook application and content aggregator Pixable estimates that Facebook will host 100 billion photos by summer 2011.[154]

2011

June 28

Competition

Google launches Google+, widely perceived as a competitor to Facebook. Commentators believe that Facebook's subsequent rapid release of new features and improvements may have in part been hastened due to competition from Google+.[155][156]

2011

July 6

Product

Facebook partners with Skype to add video chat and updates its website interface. [157]

2011

August 9, then October 19

Product

Facebook Messenger is launched for Android and IOS. October 19, 2011 update makes the app available to Blackberry os. [158]

2011

September, then November 30

Product

Facebook increases the character limit for status update posts from 500 to 5,000 in September and to 63,206 on November 30.[156]

Product

Facebook allows people to subscribe to nonfriends and to set the extent to which they receive updates from their existing friends and people they are subscribing to.[159]

2011

September 14

Yea r

Month and date (if available)

Event type

Event

2011

September 15

Product

Facebook partners with Heroku for Facebook application development using the Facebook Platform.[160]

2011

September 22

Product

Facebook launches new UI Timeline in F8 Convention.

2011

October 6

Accessibility

Facebook for SIM, a client/server SIM application developed by international digital security company Gemalto that enables people to access Facebook using the SMS protocol on their mobile phones, without needing a data plan, is released in partnership with select carriers.[161]

2011

October 10

Accessibility

Facebook launches iPad app.[162]

2011

December 21

Product

Facebook login page changes due to Facebook Timeline addition.

2012

January 10

Product (news feed)

Facebook starts showing advertisements (called Featured Posts) in the news feed. The advertisements are generally for pages that one's Facebook friends have engaged with.[163][164]

2012

April

Acquisition

Facebook acquires Instagram for $1 billion.[165]

2012

May 12

Financial/legal

Facebook IPO: Facebook goes public, negotiating a share price of $38 apiece, valuing the company at $104 billion, the

Yea r

Month and date (if available)

Event type

Event

largest valuation to date for a newly listed public company.[166]

2012

June 13

Product

Facebook launches Facebook Exchange (FBX), a real-time bidding ad system where advertisers can bid on users based on third-party websites visited by the users (as tracked by a cookie on the thirdparty website).[167][168]

2012

October

Userbase

Facebook reaches 1 billion active users.[169]

2013

January 15

Product

Facebook announces and begins rolling out Facebook Graph Search.[170]

Product

Facebook rolls out detailed and finegrained emoticons to express different actions and emotional states in one's status updates (experimental launch January 30, official launch with universal availability April 9).[171][172]

2013

January 30, then April 9

2013

March 7

Product (news feed)

Facebook announces major planned changes to the News Feed.[173] However, it is later revealed that Facebook abandoned these changes after getting negative feedback from users.[174]

2013

March 8

Acquisition

Facebook announces that they acquired the team from Storylane, but not the product itself.[92]

2013

April 4, then April 12

Product (mobile-only)

Facebook launches Facebook Home, a user interface layer for Android-compatible phones that provides a replacement home screen

Yea r

Month and date (if available)

Event type

Event

that makes it easier for users to browse and post.[175][176]

2013

April 15

Product

Facebook launches a new timeline with Video Autoplay.

2013

April–July

Product

Facebook launches Stickers, initially only for its iOS apps in April,[177][178] but later expanding to its web version in July.[179]

Product

Facebook announces support for hashtags, initially only for the web (June 12).[180][181] Later (June 27), more functionality is added and hashtags are extended to the mobile site and apps.[182]

Political activism

Zuckerberg joins 700 Facebook employees for the June 2013 Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Pride Celebration march in San Francisco, U.S. The 2013 Pride celebration was especially significant, as it followed a Supreme Court of the United States ruling that deemed the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) unconstitutional.[183][184]

Userbase/accessibilit y

Facebook launches Internet.org in collaboration with six cellphone companies (Samsung, Ericsson, MediaTek, Nokia, Oper a Software, and Qualcomm). Internet.org aims to bring affordable Internet access to everybody by increasing affordability, increasing efficiency, and facilitating the development of new business models around the provision of Internet access.[185][186][187][188]

2013

2013

2013

June 12, then June 27

June 30

August 20

Yea r

Month and date (if available)

2013

September 26

Product

Facebook begins letting people edit their posts and comments after publishing.[189][190]

2013

September 29

Product

Facebook announces that it will begin rolling out Graph Search for posts and comments.[191][192]

2013

October 13

Acquisition

Facebook acquires Onavo, an Israeli analytics company, for approximately $120 million.[93][94][95]

2013

November 13

Acquisition talks

A number of news outlets reports that Facebook offered to buy Snapchat for US$3 billion but was spurned.[193][194]

2013

December 18

Financial/legal

Facebook, Zuckerberg, & banks face IPO lawsuit.[195]

Acquisition

Facebook acquires Branch Media, and it is announced that the team working on the startup will join Facebook to work on conversations products for Facebook that builds on similar ideas as Branch Media's products, while Branch Media's existing products will continue to operate separately. Facebook confirms that the acquisition is a talent acquisition.[196][197]

Product

Facebook launches Trending Topics for its web version in the US, UK, Canada, India, and Australia.[198][199] This is based on feedback to a pilot version tested both on the web and mobile starting August 2013.[200][201]

2014

2014

January 13

January 16

Event type

Event

Yea r

2014

2014

2014

Month and date (if available)

January 30, then February 3

February 4

February 4–7

Event type

Event

Product (mobile-only)

On January 30, Facebook announces Facebook Paper, a separate iOS app that provides a newspaperlike or magazine-like experience for reading on the phone, scheduled for launch on February 3.[202] Facebook also announces Facebook Creative Labs, an intracompany effort to have separate teams working on separate mobile apps that specialize in different facets related to the Facebook experience, rather than trying to make changes to Facebook's main web version, mobile version, or its iOS and Android apps, and says that Facebook Paper is the first product of Facebook Creative Labs.[174][203][204] Facebook Paper receives mixed reviews, and some commentators note its similarity with Flipboard.[205][206]

Milestone

Facebook marks the ten-year anniversary of its launch (February 4, 2004), and Mark Zuckerberg writes a public post about why he is proud of Facebook so far.[207][208][209] The Pew Research Center releases a report about increasing Facebook usage by adults to mark the occasion.[210] Many other commentators write articles about Facebook to honor the occasion.[174][211][212][213]

Product

On February 4, on the occasion of its tenth anniversary, Facebook introduces its Look Back feature that creates an automated video for each person looking back on the person's life as recorded on Facebook.[214] On February 7, Facebook adds the ability to edit the Look Back videos.[215]

Yea r

2014

2014

2014

2014

Month and date (if available)

February 13

February 19

March 3

March 6

Event type

Event

Political activism

Facebook opens up many new LGBTQfriendly gender identity and pronoun options.[216][217][218][219]

Acquisition

Facebook announces that it is acquiring the Sequoia Capital-backed multi-platform mobile messaging app WhatsApp for US$16 billion ($4 billion in cash, $12 billion in Facebook shares) plus an additional $3 billion in restricted stock un...