Facebook's History: From Dorm To IPO Darling
May 18, 2012 11:00 AM Facebook's IPO brings the world's most popular social network into Wall Street's big league. After a wild ride, Facebook's future depends on profiting from an increasingly mobile user base.
Outrageous Origins
Facebook's controversial genesis goes something like this: In October 2003 Harvard student and coding whiz Mark Zuckerberg created Facemash, a Facebook predecessor similar to Hot or Not; hacked into the school's computer network to copy private dorms' ID photos of students; and nearly got expelled for his efforts.
In January 2004, Zuckerberg started writing code for a Harvard-only social network, which launched in February 2004 as "thefacebook." Soon after, three Harvard seniors accused Zuck of tricking them into thinking he would help them create a social network called HarvardConnection.com, when in fact he used their idea to create a rival site, according to a Wikipedia account of the incident. Subsequent lawsuits were settled, and the major players involved became fabulously wealthy.
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