Contradicting Facebook’s Origin Stories

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Contradicting Facebook’s Origin Stories

In overview, Facebook is one of the most globally diverse social networks to come out of the digital age. With over 750 million subscribers, the social media site has amassed considerable corporate wealth and popularity not only in the United States, but also across the globe. The main founder, Mark Zuckerberg, has been credited with discovery of the media site since its revelation in 2004. Based on this, popular media has focused significantly on this specific information without delving into the complex specifics of how Facebook originated. Through television interviews, radio shows and even motion pictures, most people associate Zuckerberg as the sole person responsible for establishing the online networking site, unveiling it and even dispersing to populations around the world. However, in light of research, this is an origin story that fails to capture the convoluted way through which Facebook emerged to global networking stardom.

Since its inception, several avenues have documented Mark Zuckerberg as the significant founder of Facebook without being attentive to other factors that influenced the establishment of the site. For most individuals, the origin of Facebook is a narrative complete with innovation and success. In summary, Mark Zuckerberg, a computing prodigy studying at Harvard University, while sitting in his dormitory, created an online site dubbed as Facemash. The media platform was used as a tool for enabling communication among individuals who were familiar with each other as well as bound by unique and mutual interests. In this respect, all Zuckerberg required in order to guarantee the operation of the website was a Harvard email address, which would enable him to gain control of the signees’ personal information as they registered. Even though the site had considerable rivals, Zuckerberg largely extended the notion of making friends. It is through this innovation that the entrepreneur was able to turn Facebook into a worldwide social networking phenomenon (Geller 2).  

Even though this synopsis provides significant information regarding the inception of Facebook, it fails to capture much of the important and technical information encompassing the creation of Facebook and its reach globally. Accordingly, before the establishment of Facebook, Zuckerberg engaged in ethically controversial activities that inspired the creation of the site. While making the media platform, Facemash, Zuckerberg hacked inside the secured location of the university’s computer network and duplicated personal dormitory identity images. At this point, Harvard lacked a learner’s ‘Facebook’, despite houses issuing particular paper facebooks from the 1980s. After the implementation of the site, Facemash appealed to 450 persons leading to 22000 picture views within the initial four hours (Carlson 5). Due to its popularity, Facemash was rapidly forward to a myriad of university faction list-servers.

However, not long after the incident, Zuckerberg nearly experienced expulsion. The administration at Harvard charged him security violations, corporate breach and violation of personal privacy. In the end, the charges were expelled from court. From this point, Zuckerberg extended Facemash by developing a social study technique. Through this, he was capable of uploading 500 images to a respective website. Moreover, he devised a comments section that would be featured on the bottom of each image. Nonetheless, the innovation did not stop from developing. Undeniably, in the proceeding semester, Zuckerberg started on creating a new code for a website at the start of 2004 (Carlson 7). By February, he had already launched ‘thefacebook.com’.

The success of this site was immediately followed by litigation claims against Zuckerberg by three Harvard seniors. According to them, Zuckerberg deliberately misled them into thinking that he would assist them into creating a social media site called HarvardConnection.com. In addition to this, they also alleged that he was utilizing the ideas they came up with in order to create a rival product. The claims against Zuckerberg later led to a lawsuit, forcing him to provide 1.2 million shares of his company with them. Hence, contrary to what popular media projected, Facebook was never under the sole ownership of Mark Zuckerberg. In addition to this, other persons such as Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz, Andrew McCollum and Chris Hughes, involved in the development of the website also managed to gain a percentage share of Facebook (Geller 9). Hence, by 2004, Facebook had managed to extend to the universities of Yale, Columbia and Stanford.

Throughout 2004 and 2005, Facebook experienced considerable investment from Peter Thiel and Accel Partners, with the latter investing approximately $12.7 million in the website. Moreover, $1 million was injected into the site by Jim Breyer. Even after being open to any person with a reasonable email address, Facebook sold 1.6 percent of its share to Microsoft for $240 million, further allowing the site to maintain a global presence especially by 2009. Hence, to this end, Facebook became one of the sites to have even more visits than Google. In conclusion, the story covering the origin of Facebook constitutes several pieces of intricate information that are not availed to a considerable number of people. Based on the provided information, the story of Facebook’s ascent to global success illustrates the involvement of several people and strategic actions that enabled the site to become a global networking phenomenon.

Works Cited

Carlson, Nicholas.  “The Origins of Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg.” Business Insider. 5 Mar. 2010. Web. 30 Sep. 2014. <http://www.businessinsider.com/the-origins-of-facebook-and-mark-zuckerberg-2010-3>

Geller, Adam. “Movie Tells Story and Myth of Facebook Founder.” Business Insider. 10 Mar. 2010. Web. 30 Sep. 2014. <http://www.nbcnews.com/id/39486750/ns/business-us_business/t/movie-tells-story-myth-facebook-founder/#.VCs1MVdFl74/>