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Home > Companies > Facebook
Facebook Picture
General Information
Website facebook.com
Blog blog.facebook.com
Twitter @facebook
Category Consumer Web
Employees 1,000
Founded 2/04
Description Social network
Offices
Headquarters
1601 S California Ave
Palo Alto, CA, 94304
USA
See nearby companies
Europe HQ
Dublin, IRL
See nearby companies
New York
340 Madison Ave
New York, NY, 10017
USA
See nearby companies
People
Mark Zuckerberg
Founder and CEO, Board Of Directors
Bret Taylor
CTO
David Ebersman
CFO
Chris Kelly
Chief Privacy Officer
Sheryl Sandberg
COO
Carolyn Everson
VP, Global Advertising Sales
David Fischer
Vice President Advertising and Global Operations
Ted Ullyot
VP, General Counsel
Show All People
Former People
Dustin Moskovitz
Co-founder
Owen Van Natta
Chief Revenue Officer, VP of Operations
Matt Cohler
VP of Product Management
Show All Former People
Acquisitions
Total $60M
Snaptu, 3/11 1
Beluga, 3/11 2
Rel8tion, 1/11 3
Pursuit, 2011 4
Zenbe, 11/10 5
drop.io, 10/10 6
Nextstop, 9/10 7 $2.5M
Chai Labs, 8/10 8 $10M
ShareGrove, 5/10 9
Divvyshot, 4/10 10
Octazen Solutions, 2/10 11
FriendFeed, 8/09 12 $47.5M
Parakey, 7/07 13
Investments
LuckyCal 14 2/09
Wildfire Interactive 15 12/08
Funding
Total $2.34B
Angel, 9/04 16
Peter Thiel
Reid Hoffman
$500k
Series A, 5/05 17
Accel Partners
Mark Pincus
Reid Hoffman
$12.7M
Series B, 4/06 18
Greylock Partners
Meritech Capital Partners
The Founders Fund
$27.5M
Series C, 10/07 19
Microsoft
$240M
Series C, 11/07 20
Li Ka-shing
$60M
Series C, 1/08 21
European Founders Fund
$15M
Series C, 3/08 22
Li Ka-shing
$60M
Debt, 5/08 23
TriplePoint Capital
$100M
Series D, 5/09 24
Digital Sky Technologies
$200M
Unattributed, 6/10 25
Elevation Partners
$120M
Unattributed, 1/11 26
Goldman Sachs
Digital Sky Technologies
$1.5B
Competitors
MySpace, Friendster, Slide, Zvents, FriendFeed, hi5, Photobucket (Old), Webshots, Flickr, Spokeo, Piczo, ZYB, YouTube, Badoo, openPeople, Bigsight Media Group, Xiaonei, Daikana, Bebo, AOL, CityIN, Xanga, Spleak, Rekatu, Tagged, VoxOx, SideStripe, Tongxue, Friendsta, V Kontakte
Service Providers
The OutCast Agency
GTT
Transvideo Studios
Ballou PR
France
Cooley
The Local Data Company
Tags
facebook, college, students, profiles, network, online-communities, social-networking
Facebook
Facebook is the world’s largest social network, with over 500 million users.
Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg in February 2004, initially as an exclusive network for Harvard students. It was a huge hit: in 2 weeks, half of the schools in the Boston area began demanding a Facebook network. Zuckerberg immediately recruited his friends Dustin Moskowitz and Chris Hughes to help build Facebook, and within four months, Facebook added 30 more college networks.
The original idea for the term Facebook came from Zuckerberg’s high school (Phillips Exeter Academy). The Exeter Face Book was passed around to every student as a way for students to get to know their classmates for the following year. It was a physical paper book until Zuckerberg brought it to the internet.
With this success, Zuckerberg, Moskowitz and Hughes moved out to Palo Alto for the summer and rented a sublet. A few weeks later, Zuckerberg ran into the former cofounder of Napster, Sean Parker. Parker soon moved in to Zuckerberg’s apartment and they began working together. Parker provided the introduction to their first investor, Peter Thiel, cofounder of PayPal and managing partner of The Founders Fund. Thiel invested $500,000 into Facebook.
With millions more users, Friendster attempted to acquire the company for $10 million in mid 2004. Facebook turned down the offer and subsequently received $12.7 million in funding from Accel Partners, at a valuation of around $100 million. Facebook continued to grow, opening up to high school students in September 2005 and adding an immensely popular photo sharing feature the next month. The next spring, Facebook received $25 million in funding from Greylock Partners and Meritech Capital, as well as previous investors Accel Partners and Peter Thiel. The pre-money valuation for this deal was about $525 million. Facebook subsequently opened up to work networks, eventually amassing over 20,000 work networks. Finally in September 2006, Facebook opened to anyone with an email address.
In the summer of 2006, Yahoo attempted to acquire the company for $1 billion dollars. Reports actually indicated that Zuckerberg made a verbal agreement to sell Facebook to Yahoo. A few days later when Yahoo’s stock price took a dive, the offer was lowered to $800 million and Zuckerberg walked away from the deal. Yahoo later offered $1 billion again, this time Zuckerberg turned Yahoo down and earned instant notoriety as the “kid” who turned down a billion. This was not the first time Zuckerberg turned down an acquisition offer; Viacom had previously unsuccessfully attempted to acquire the company for $750 million in March, 2006.
One sour note for Facebook has been the controversy with social network ConnectU. The founders of ConnectU, former classmates of Mark Zuckerberg at Harvard, allege that Zuckerberg stole their original source code for Facebook. The ordeal has gone to court, and has now been resolved.
Notwithstanding this lingering controversy, Facebook’s growth in the fall of 2007 was staggering. Over 1 million new users signed up every week, 200,000 daily, totaling over 50 million active users. Facebook received 40 billion page views a month. Long gone were the days of Facebook as a social network for college students. 11% of users are over the age of 35, and the fastest growing demographic is users over 30. Facebook has also seen huge growth internationally; 15% of the user base is in Canada. Facebook users’ passion, or addiction, to the site is unparalleled: more than half use the product every single day and users spend an average of 19 minutes a day on Facebook. Facebook is 6th most trafficked site in the US and top photo sharing site with 4.1 billion photos uploaded.
Based on these types of numbers, Microsoft invested $240 million into Facebook for 1.6 percent of the company in October 2007. This meant a valuation of over $15 billion, making Facebook the 5th most valuable US Internet company, yet with only $150 million in annual revenue. Many explained Microsoft’s decision as being solely driven by the desire to outbid Google.
Facebook’s competitors include MySpace, Bebo, Friendster, LinkedIn, Tagged, Hi5, Piczo, and Open Social.
Milestones
Check
Facebook added Benjamin Joe as Strategist.
Posted 5/17/11 at 8:49pm
Check
Facebook added Carolyn Everson as VP, Global Advertising Sales. (2/1/11)
Posted 5/6/11 at 5:34am
Check
Facebook added Amin Zoufonoun as Corporate Development.
Posted 3/14/11 at 10:28am
Check
Facebook added Vaughan Smith as Corporate Development.
Posted 3/14/11 at 10:24am
Check
Facebook added Eduardo Saverin as Co-Founder.
Posted 3/4/11 at 3:40pm
Check
Facebook added Julien Codorniou as Head of platform partnerships. (2/17/11)
Posted 2/23/11 at 12:41pm
Check
Facebook added Keith Schacht as Product Manager. (12/1/10)
Posted 1/27/11 at 9:59pm
Check
Facebook added Deborah Liu as Manager of Product Marketing, Facebook Credits.
Posted 1/25/11 at 3:53pm
Check
Facebook added Julio Vasconcellos as Country Manager - Brazil.
Posted 1/12/11 at 2:49pm
Check
Facebook added Ömer Özgün Işıkman as Engineer.
Posted 12/8/10 at 3:32am
Check
Facebook added David Fischer as Vice President Advertising and Global Operations. (3/1/10)
Posted 12/4/10 at 7:55am
Check
Facebook added Christian Hernandez as Head of International Business Development. (10/1/09)
Posted 11/3/10 at 5:57am
Check
Facebook added Steve King as Director, Media Sales.
Posted 10/21/10 at 5:31am
Check
Facebook added Eugene Letuchy as Software Engineer.
Posted 10/4/10 at 1:30am
Check
Facebook added Hadi Partovi as Advisor. (4/1/10)
Posted 9/10/10 at 7:28am
Check
Facebook added Michael Brown as Manager Corporate Development.
Posted 9/6/10 at 12:41pm
Videos
Above:
Robert Scoble’s video from www.podtech.net/scobleshow:
Added: 8/5/08
Above:
This video was originally published on Beet.TV
Added: 8/5/08
Above:
This video was originally published on Beet.TV
Added: 4/9/09
Screenshots
Facebook screenshot
Above: Facebook Screenshot -- #1
Uploaded: 4/28/09
Products
Facebook Chat
Facebook Connect
Facebook Lite
Facebook Mobile
Facebook News Feed
Facebook Places
Facebook Platform
Facebook Touch
Facebook Zero
Traffic Analytics
Quantcast
Livegraph
Compete
Facebook
Sources
Confirmed: Facebook Acquires Snaptu (For An Estimated $60 – $70 Million) (techcrunch.com) []
techcrunch.com []
All Things D (emoney.allthingsd.com) []
techcrunch.com []
Facebook Buys Yet Another NYC Startup -- Why Doesn't It Just Open An Engineering Office Here Already? (businessinsider.com) []
Facebook Acquires Drop.io, Nabs Sam Lessin (techcrunch.com) []
Facebook Acquires Social Travel Recommendation Site Nextstop (techcrunch.com) []
Facebook Makes Another ‘Acq-Hire’ Chai Labs; Deal Estimated At $10 Million (paidcontent.org) []
mashable.com []
Facebook Acquires Divvyshot to Improve Facebook Photos (techcrunch.com) []
techcrunch.com []
Facebook Acquires FriendFeed (techcrunch.com) []
techcrunch.com []
fbFund (marlenevergaraborquez.com) [edit]
Citation Needed [add]
Citation Needed []
Jim Breyer: Extra $500 Million Round For Facebook A “Total Fiction” (techcrunch.com) []
Facebook Funding (facebook.com) []
Liveblogging Press Conference (techcrunch.com) []
Facebook gets $60M from Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing (venturebeat.com) []
techcrunch.com []
Updated: Facebook Investor Li Ka-Shing Upping Stake To $120 Million: Report (paidcontent.org) []
businessweek.com []
Facebook Takes That $200 Million Investment From The Russians At A $10 Billion Valuation. (techcrunch.com) []
Elevation Invests Another $120 Million in Facebook as that IPO Looks More Distant (techcrunch.com) []
Facebook Raises $1.5 Billion (prnewswire.com) []
Facebook adds comments to the Mini-Feed. It’s like FriendFeed is looking in the mirror (venturebeat.com) []
Citation Needed []
The fbFund Gives Out Cash To 25 Facebook Developers (techcrunch.com) []
Facebook Movie Poster Announces 500 Million Facebook Users Before Facebook Does (techcrunch.com) []
By the way, Facebook for iPhone has 57.8 million monthly active users. (Versus 8,810 for the Microsoft Kin.) (businessinsider.com) []
Zuckerberg Makes It Official: Facebook Hits 500 Million Members (techcrunch.com) []
Facebook To Begin Giving Y Combinator Startups VIP Treatment (techcrunch.com) []
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg Donates $100 Million To Fix Newark New Jersey Public Schools (businessinsider.com) []
Facebook, KPCB Announce $250 Million Social Networking Fund (businessinsider.com) []
200 Million People Use Facebook Mobile – Up 3X From Last Year (businessinsider.com) []
Facebook Acquired FB.com From The American Farm Bureau To Use Internally (techcrunch.com) []
Facebook Connect: 250 million monthly users, adding 10,000 sites every day (bgr.com) []
Facebook Shares Hit $28.26 Per Share, That’s a $70+ Billion Valuation (techcrunch.com) []
Facebook Users Uploaded A Record 750 Million Photos Over New Year’s (techcrunch.com) []
Facebook Considering A Leaseback Deal Worth As Much As $420 Million For New HQ (techcrunch.com) []
Facebook Teams With Snaptu To Launch Rich App For Feature Phones (techcrunch.com) []
Kevin Rose Invests In Facebook On SecondMarket (techcrunch.com) []
Wow. Just… Wow: Facebook Hits Record $75 Billion Valuation On SecondMarket (techcrunch.com) []
Facebook Now Has 250 Million Mobile Users (techcrunch.com) []
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