If you were sitting in a dusty dorm room at Harvard University on the night of February 4, 2004, you might have witnessed the exact second the world changed. Most people think they know the story because they watched The Social Network, but the reality of when was facebook released is actually a lot more segmented and chaotic than a single "launch" date suggests. Mark Zuckerberg, then just a sophomore with a penchant for disruptive code, flicked the switch on "TheFacebook.com" on that cold Wednesday in February. It wasn't meant for you. It wasn't meant for the world. Honestly, it was barely meant for anyone outside of Harvard Yard.
By the time the sun came up on February 5, over 1,200 students had already signed up. That’s wild when you consider there was no marketing, no "influencers," and certainly no mobile app. It was just a digital directory that let you see if the person sitting across from you in the dining hall was single.
The Rolling Release: It Wasn't Just One Date
When we talk about when was facebook released, we have to look at it as a slow-motion explosion. It didn't just appear on the App Store (which didn't exist yet). It moved through the academic world like a virus. After Harvard, it hit Stanford, Columbia, and Yale in March 2004. By the end of that first year, a million people were using it, but it was still a gated community for "the elite."
The gates didn't actually swing wide until much later. Here is how that timeline actually looked:
- September 2005: The site finally let high schoolers in.
- September 26, 2006: This is the big one. Facebook finally opened to everyone aged 13 and older with a valid email address.
Think about that for a second. If you weren't a student, you couldn't even look at a Facebook profile for the first two and a half years of its existence. That exclusivity is basically what built the brand. It was the "cool table" at lunch that eventually invited the whole world to sit down.
Facemash: The Messy Prequel
You can't really understand the 2004 release without talking about what happened in October 2003. Zuckerberg created a site called Facemash. It was... not great. It was a "hot or not" site that pulled ID photos from Harvard’s internal servers without permission.
The university shut it down in two days. Zuckerberg almost got expelled. But that brief, controversial spark showed him that people had a massive, almost primal urge to look at their peers online. Facemash died so that Facebook could live. It was the rough draft that proved the concept: people are nosy, and they love "social" data.
Why the 2004 Version Would Be Unrecognizable Today
If you logged into the 2004 version today, you’d probably delete your account in five minutes. There was no News Feed. Seriously. You had to manually click on your friends' profiles to see if they had changed their "relationship status" or "favorite movies." It was a static experience.
The "The" in the name didn't even vanish until August 2005, when the company bought the domain facebook.com for a cool $200,000. Before that, you were "poking" people on "TheFacebook." It sounds kinda clunky now, doesn't it?
Key Features and Their Arrival
- The Wall (September 2004): This was the first time you could actually leave a message on someone’s profile.
- Photos (October 2005): Before this, Facebook was mostly text. It’s hard to imagine a social network without photos, but that’s how it started.
- News Feed (September 2006): People actually hated this at first. There were literal protest groups on Facebook about Facebook. Users thought it was creepy that their updates were being "broadcast" to their friends.
- The Like Button (February 2009): Believe it or not, we spent five years on Facebook without being able to "Like" anything.
The Business Reality of the Release
Behind the scenes of the college fun, a massive business was being built. In June 2004, Peter Thiel—the guy who co-founded PayPal—dropped $500,000 in seed funding. That was the moment it stopped being a hobby.
Then came the lawsuits. Within a week of the February 2004 release, three Harvard seniors—Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss and Divya Narendra—accused Zuckerberg of stealing their idea for a site called HarvardConnection. This legal battle dragged on for years, eventually settling for a massive sum, but it underscores just how much of a "wild west" atmosphere surrounded the site's release.
From Dorm Room to Wall Street
The final "release" for many investors wasn't the website launch, but the IPO. On May 18, 2012, Facebook went public. It was one of the most anticipated events in financial history. The stock was priced at $38 per share, valuing the company at $104 billion.
It was a total mess. Technical glitches on the NASDAQ delayed trading, and the stock price actually plummeted in the months following. It hit a low of about $17.73 in September 2012. People thought the "Facebook fad" was over. They were wrong. As of early 2026, the company (now Meta) has a market cap that makes that initial $104 billion look like pocket change.
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Actionable Insights for the Curious
Understanding the history of when was facebook released isn't just a trivia exercise. It teaches us a few things about how tech actually wins:
- Start Small: Facebook didn't try to be "the world's town square" on day one. It tried to be Harvard's directory. Niche dominance leads to global dominance.
- Iterate Fast: The 2004 site was bare-bones. They didn't wait for perfection; they launched with a profile and a search bar.
- Controversy is Fuel: From the Facemash drama to the News Feed protests, Facebook used "creepy" features to drive engagement.
If you're looking back at your own old posts, remember that the platform was designed to be a living archive. You can actually download your entire history in the "Your Information" section of your settings. It’s a trip to see what you were posting back when the site was still "new" to you.
Check your privacy settings today. Most of the stuff we posted in 2006 or 2009 was under much looser privacy rules than we have now. A quick audit of your "Old Posts" visibility can save you a lot of embarrassment.