Facebook is a social networking service that was founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg, Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Chris Hughes, and Dustin Moskovitz while they were students at Harvard University. The website was launched to a limited group of students at Harvard, but quickly expanded to other colleges in the Boston area and eventually to Ivy League schools and universities across the United States.
In 2005, Facebook opened up registration to high school students, and in 2006, to anyone over the age of 13 with a valid email address. This rapid expansion helped Facebook grow to over 1 billion users by 2012.
Over the years, Facebook has introduced many new features, such as the News Feed (2006), which shows users updates from their friends on their home page, and the Like button (2009), which allows users to quickly indicate their approval of a post. The company has also acquired other popular social media apps, such as Instagram (2012) and WhatsApp (2014).
In 2012, Facebook went public and was listed on the NASDAQ stock exchange under the ticker symbol FB. The company faced several controversies in the years following its initial public offering, including privacy issues, fake news, and the Cambridge Analytica scandal in which data from millions of Facebook users was harvested without their consent and used to influence the 2016 US presidential election.
In response to these controversies, Facebook has taken steps to improve transparency and security, such as introducing new tools for users to control their data and introducing fact-checking for news articles. Despite these controversies, Facebook has remained one of the most popular and widely-used social media platforms in the world, with over 2.8 billion monthly active users as of 2021.
In recent years, Facebook has also been increasingly focused on expanding its reach in emerging markets, as well as developing new products such as virtual reality and augmented reality. The company has also begun to develop other social media platforms, such as Messenger Rooms, which allow users to create virtual rooms for group video chats, and Instagram Reels, which allows users to create short, music-backed videos similar to TikTok.
Overall, Facebook has been a major player in the world of social media since its launch in 2004 and continues to be one of the most popular and widely-used platforms in the world. Despite controversies and criticism, the company has continued to grow and evolve, introducing new features and expanding into new markets and areas.