February 4, 2004. If you want the short answer, there it is. That's the day a nineteen-year-old Mark Zuckerberg hit "enter" on his laptop and changed the way the world talks, fights, and shares photos of their lunch. But honestly, the question of what year did fb start is kinda more complicated than just a single date on a calendar.
It didn't just appear out of nowhere. Before the "blue giant" we know today, there were messy experiments, angry university admins, and a lot of Red Bull-fueled coding sessions in Kirkland House.
The Messy "Pre-History" of 2003
Most people think it all began in 2004, but the DNA of the site was actually written in late 2003. Zuckerberg was a sophomore at Harvard, and he was known for building random little apps. One was called CourseMatch, which let people see who was in their classes. It was useful. People liked it.
Then came Facemash. This was the controversial one.
In October 2003, Zuckerberg hacked into Harvard’s protected dormitory ID files to pull photos of students. He built a site where you’d see two photos side-by-side and had to vote on who was "hotter." It was basically a localized version of Hot or Not. Within four hours, it had 22,000 page views. Harvard shut it down in days. Zuckerberg almost got expelled.
But here’s the thing: Facemash proved that students were desperate for a centralized way to see each other online. At the time, Harvard didn't have a universal digital "facebook" (the paper directories schools used to give out). Zuckerberg realized he could build something better—and actually useful—in about a week.
The Official Launch: February 4, 2004
In January 2004, Zuckerberg started writing the code for what he then called "TheFacebook." He wasn't alone, though the movie The Social Network makes it look like he was a solo genius. He had help from his roommates and friends:
🔗 Read more: Peach Bottom Nuclear Station: Why It’s Not Going Anywhere Anytime Soon
- Eduardo Saverin: Handled the business and initial $1,000 investment.
- Dustin Moskovitz: The "marathon coder" who helped scale the site.
- Andrew McCollum: The graphic artist who designed the original logo (which featured Al Pacino's face covered in binary code, weirdly enough).
- Chris Hughes: The "empath" who worked on growth and features.
When the site launched on Wednesday, February 4, 2004, at thefacebook.com, it was only for Harvard students. It was an instant hit. Over 1,200 students signed up in the first 24 hours. Within a month, half of the undergraduate population had a profile.
Why 2005 and 2006 Changed Everything
If the site had stayed at Harvard, we wouldn't be talking about it now. By March 2004, they expanded to Stanford, Columbia, and Yale. By the end of that year, they hit 1 million users.
2005 was the year of the name change. The company bought the domain name facebook.com for $200,000 and dropped the "The." That same year, they let high school students join. People forget that for a long time, you couldn't just "join" Facebook. You needed a specific email address from a school or a company.
September 26, 2006, is the date for everyone else.
This is when the platform finally opened to the general public. As long as you were at least 13 and had a valid email, you were in. This was also the year they introduced the "News Feed." Believe it or not, people hated it at first. Users protested, saying it was a privacy nightmare to see a constant stream of what their friends were doing. Zuckerberg didn't back down.
The Timeline of Growth
Looking back, the speed of the expansion is still pretty mind-blowing.
- February 2004: Launches at Harvard as TheFacebook.
- June 2004: Moves operations to Palo Alto, California.
- September 2004: A lawsuit is filed by the Winklevoss twins alleging Zuckerberg stole their idea (this would drag on for years).
- December 2005: Introduction of photo tagging (this basically made the site go viral).
- September 2006: The site goes public to anyone 13+.
- 2012: Facebook hits 1 billion users and goes public on the stock market.
What Most People Get Wrong
There's a common misconception that Facebook was the "first" social network. It wasn't. MySpace was already huge. Friendster was a thing. Even Orkut was popular in places like Brazil.
Facebook won because it felt "clean" and "exclusive." In the early days, it felt like a digital velvet rope. You had to be a college student to get in, which made it feel safer and more "real" than the chaotic, glitter-gif-filled pages of MySpace.
The other big thing people miss is that the "Like" button didn't even exist until 2009. For the first five years, you just "wrote on walls" or "poked" people. Sorta wild to think about now, right?
Actionable Takeaways
If you're looking into the history of Facebook for business or research, here is what actually matters about its start:
🔗 Read more: How Do You Read Binary? Why Computers Love Two Numbers and You Should Too
- Solve a local problem first: Zuckerberg didn't try to "connect the world" on day one. He tried to help Harvard students see who was in their Art History class.
- The Power of "The": Removing "The" from the name in 2005 was a masterclass in branding—simple is better.
- Privacy has always been the friction point: From the 2003 Facemash scandal to the 2006 News Feed protests, the tension between "sharing" and "privacy" has been there since the very first line of code.
To see how the platform looks today compared to the early days, you can check out the Facebook Archive or browse the WayBack Machine for the original 2004 layout. It was basically just a blue box with some text—a far cry from the AI-integrated Meta ecosystem we have in 2026.