Since Facebook started, it has gone from strength to strength,
attracting in excess of 800 million active users, 50% of which log on
every day. According to
Alexa,
Facebook is the second most visited site in the world (after Google)
attracting 43% of the worlds internet users each day, generating a
whopping 5.2 billion page views daily (12.5 pages per user).
Facebook is the world’s largest social networking site. It was
launched in February 2004 and contrary to “The Social Network” film’s
portrayal of Facebook’s origins, it was founded by
.
area,
before opening the site up to the public. The founders then gradually
allowed access for students at other universities, and then to high
school students. Today, Facebook is available to anyone over the age of
13. However, according to ConsumersReports.org, 7.5m kids under the age
of 13 currently have an account, violating the site’s usage policy.
Mark Zuckerberg developed Facemash, the predecessor to Facebook, in 2003. Facemash was similar to
Hot or Not,
except that instead of rating a photo in a scale of 1-10, two photos
would appear next to each other and user would choose the hotter person.
To get all the pictures of everyone on campus for the website, Mark
Zuckerberg hacked into Harvard’s network and copied private student
images from a protected server. Facemash got 450 unique visits and an
incredible 22,000 page views in the first 4 hours of going live, but
Harvard shut down the site a couple of days later. Mark faced being
expelled after being charged for a breach of security, violating
individual privacy, and violating Copyrights. Although the charges were
later dropped by the Harvard administration.
Six days after The Facebook was launched, the Winklevos twins, and a
man called Divya Harendra accused Mark of tricking them into thinking
that he’d help them build a similar site called
HarvardConnection.com, while he stole their ideas to build The Facebook. The three of them filed a lawsuit, but ended up settling for $65 million.
In October 2007, Microsoft announced that they had bought a 1.60%
share in Facebook for around $240 million, giving Facebook an implied
value of about $15 billion. However, in November 2010, Facebook’s
reported value was $42 billion, making it the third biggest web company
after Google and Amazon. Today, Facebook is valued at an estimated $100
billion, with their IPO planned for the first quarter of 2012, making it
the most valuable company in the world.
In 2011, Facebook reported that they remove around 20,000 profiles
every day for a verity of reasons, including inappropriate content, spam
and under-age use.
The Ownership & Percentages of Shares:
Mark Zuckerberg has 24%, Accel Partners has 10%, Sean Parker
with 4%, Digital Sky Technologies with 10%, Peter Thiel with 3%, Dustin
Moskovitz with 6%, Eduardo Saverin with 5%,, Greylock Partners with
around 4%, Li Ka-shing with 0.75%, Microsoft with 1.3%, the Interpublic
Group with less than 0.5%. A small group private individuals own less
than 1% each. The remaining 30% is owned by undisclosed private
investors.
All About Facebook – The Revenue
The vast majority of their revenue comes from ads. Facebook serves ads from Microsoft’s advertisement inventory.
The following is Facebook’s estimated revenue from 2006 to 2011.
Revenue
(in millions US$)
2006 |
$52 |
— |
2007 |
$150 |
188% |
2008 |
$280 |
87% |
2009 |
$775 |
177% |
2010 |
$2,000 |
158% |
2011 |
$4,270 |
114 |