Wiki #16: Facebook

Facebook is a free social network created originally by Mark Zuckerberg as Thefacebook. Thefacebook was released on February 4, 2004. OriginallyThefacebook membership was limited to Harvard college students, and later was spread to other Ivy League colleges. Zuckerberg was joined by Eduardo Saverin, who handled the business aspects, Dustin Moskovitz who became a programmer for the site, and Andrew McCollum who did graphic design for the site, as well as Chris Hughes. The four of them helped Zuckerberg spread the site to other colleges and universities, and eventually turn it into a corporation. In the summer of 2004 Thefacebook was incorporated, with Sean Parker as the president of the company, and in 2005 the name was changed to simply Facebook. Shortly after Facebook was opened to high school students, through invite only, then employees of certain companies such as Microsoft and Apple Inc., and finally in 2006 Facebook was opened to anyone over the age of 13 that had a valid e-mail address. Most of Faceboks revenue and funding comes from advertising, allowing membership to remain free to users. A Compete.com study in 2009 ranked Facebook as the most used social network worldwide, and as of July 2011 Facebook has over 800 million active users. Members can use Facebook to share photos and stay in touch with people around the world.