It wasn't some grand, polished corporate gala. Nobody cut a ribbon. Honestly, the day Mark Zuckerberg hit "enter" on the code for what we now call Facebook, he was probably just hoping it wouldn't crash his laptop. If you’re asking when was fb started, the technical answer is February 4, 2004. But that’s only half the story. It wasn't even called Facebook back then; it was "TheFacebook," a name that feels incredibly clunky by today’s standards.
Harvard was the staging ground. Specifically, Kirkland House. Zuckerberg, along with Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes, essentially built a digital version of the physical "face books" that universities used to hand out to freshmen. It was a tool for stalking your classmates, basically. You wanted to see if the person sitting next to you in Intro to Psych was single or what their interests were. Simple.
The Week That Changed the Internet Forever
The launch on February 4 was quiet, yet explosive. Within twenty-four hours, about 1,200 to 1,500 Harvard students had signed up. By the end of the first month, more than half of the undergraduate population had a profile. Think about that for a second. In 2004, people weren't "online" all the time. There were no smartphones. You had to sit down at a bulky desktop or a heavy laptop and intentionally log in.
The growth was organic in a way that modern marketing teams would kill for today. It wasn't an app; it was an obsession. Soon, it leaked out of Harvard. First to Columbia, then Stanford, then Yale. By June 2004, the team moved to Palo Alto, California, and that’s when things got real. Peter Thiel, the co-founder of PayPal, dropped a $500,000 angel investment into the company. That was the fuel. It turned a dorm room project into a legitimate business entity.
Facemash: The Controversial Precursor
We can't talk about when was fb started without mentioning the drama of October 2003. A few months before the official launch, Zuckerberg created Facemash. It was a hot-or-not site that used photos swiped from Harvard’s online house "facebooks."
He hacked into the university's protected areas to get those photos.
It was messy. The site was shut down by the Harvard administration within days. Zuckerberg faced charges of breaching security, violating copyrights, and violating individual privacy. He nearly got expelled. But Facemash proved something critical: people have an insatiable, almost primal desire to look at other people's lives and rate them. It was the proof of concept, even if the execution was morally questionable and legally risky.
Why 2004 Was the Perfect Storm
Timing is everything in tech. If Zuckerberg had tried this in 1999, the dial-up speeds would have killed it. If he’d waited until 2007, someone else would have already owned the space. In 2004, Friendster was dying because it was slow and buggy. MySpace was growing, but it was chaotic, filled with glittery backgrounds and "pimp my profile" HTML that made it look like a digital fever dream.
TheFacebook offered something different: exclusivity and cleanliness. You needed an ".edu" email address to get in. That created a sense of "us vs. them." If you were on it, you were part of the elite. The interface was blue and white—clinical, organized, and reliable. It felt like a utility rather than a toy.
The Sean Parker Influence
By the summer of 2004, Sean Parker—the guy who started Napster—entered the fray. He became the company's first president. It was Parker who famously suggested dropping the "The" from the name. Just Facebook. It was cleaner. It sounded like a global brand, not a campus directory. Parker also helped navigate the Silicon Valley venture capital world, which was a wild west compared to the academic halls of Cambridge.
Legal Battles and the Winklevoss Factor
You’ve probably seen The Social Network. While movies always take liberties for drama, the core conflict was very real. Divya Narendra and the Winklevoss twins (Cameron and Tyler) claimed that Zuckerberg stole their idea. They had hired him to build a site called HarvardConnection (later ConnectU).
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The legal battle started almost immediately after the site went live in February 2004.
This wasn't just a small disagreement. It was a multi-year war. Eventually, it ended in a settlement worth millions, but it left a permanent stain on the origin story. It forces us to ask: does it matter who has the idea, or who actually writes the code and makes it work? Zuckerberg’s defense was essentially that he built something fundamentally different. The courts eventually moved on, but the debate over the "true" founder persists in tech circles even now.
Expanding Beyond the Ivy League
- September 2004: The Wall was added. This was huge. Before the Wall, you just had a profile. Now, people could leave messages on your page.
- December 2004: The site reached 1 million active users.
- September 2005: High school students were allowed to join.
- September 2006: The site finally opened to everyone over the age of 13 with a valid email address.
Opening the gates to the general public was a massive risk. The college students felt the site was being "ruined" by their parents and younger siblings. But without that move, Facebook would have gone the way of many other niche social networks—it would have faded into obscurity once the "cool" kids moved on.
The Evolution of the Platform
The Facebook of 2026 looks almost nothing like the version that launched in 2004. Back then, there was no News Feed. You had to manually click on your friends' profiles to see if they had changed their relationship status or uploaded a grainy photo from a digital camera.
The News Feed arrived in 2006 and people hated it. There were literally protest groups on Facebook against the News Feed. Users felt it was a violation of privacy because it broadcasted their every move. But Zuckerberg held his ground. He knew that the "passive consumption" of information was the future. He was right. Today, the feed is the heart of every social media platform on the planet.
Looking Back at the Legacy
Knowing when was fb started helps us understand the trajectory of the modern world. That single date in February 2004 marks the beginning of the "Big Data" era. It changed how we vote, how we buy things, and how we maintain relationships. It also birthed the attention economy.
Before Facebook, the internet was a place you "went to." After Facebook, the internet became a place you "lived in."
The company is now Meta, focusing on virtual reality and the metaverse, but the DNA of that original 2004 code is still there. It was built on the idea that human identity is the most valuable currency in the digital age. Whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing is still being debated in boardrooms and at dinner tables around the world.
How to Find Your Own History on FB
If you're feeling nostalgic about those early days, you can actually see when you started. Most people don't realize their account has a "birth date" in the settings.
- Go to your profile.
- Click on the "About" section.
- Look for "Contact and Basic Info."
- Scroll down to see the "Facebook Join Date."
It’s often a shock. You might find you've been on the platform for fifteen years, documenting your entire adult life on a site that started as a way to rank Harvard students.
Actionable Steps for the Modern User
Since the landscape of Facebook has changed so much since 2004, it’s worth doing a "digital audit" of your presence there.
First, check your privacy settings. The "Public" default is a far cry from the gated community of the 2004 Harvard era. Switch your old posts to "Friends Only" to limit the data scrapers. Second, download your information. Meta allows you to request a file of every photo, message, and poke (remember pokes?) you've ever sent. It’s a fascinating, and sometimes cringey, look at your own history. Lastly, evaluate your feed. If it's stressing you out, use the "Unfollow" feature. You stay friends with people, but their political rants or vacation photos stop cluttering your mental space.
Facebook isn't just a website anymore; it’s a historical record of the 21st century. Knowing its humble, messy, and controversial start helps put the current tech giant in a much-needed perspective.