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Mark Zuckerberg launched 'Thefacebook' from his Harvard dorm room on February 4,
Featured Event 2004 Event

February 4

Facebook Founded: Zuckerberg Launches Global Connection

Mark Zuckerberg launched 'Thefacebook' from his Harvard dorm room on February 4, 2004, initially restricting it to Harvard students with a valid .edu email address. The site gained 1,200 users within 24 hours and spread to Columbia, Stanford, and Yale within a month. What distinguished Facebook from existing social networks like Friendster and MySpace was its insistence on real identities: users registered with their real names and university affiliations rather than anonymous handles. By 2006, registration opened to anyone over thirteen with an email address. The platform grew to one billion users by 2012 and fundamentally altered how humans communicate, consume news, organize politically, and conduct commerce. Its advertising model, which monetized user data to deliver targeted ads, became the dominant business model of the internet age and sparked ongoing global debates about privacy, misinformation, and the power of technology platforms.

February 4, 2004

22 years ago

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What Else Happened on February 4

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