Who Invented Facebook

Facebook is one the most popular websites that offers social-networking today with more than 800 million users around the world. Online social-networking is just like how like-minded people come together for some activities, form groups, have discussions, share photographs, etc. Similarly, a website enables all these activities by various applications, for example, providing forums, photo sharing options, video uploading, keeping a track on all the happenings in their formed-communities, people they have approved to be linked to, etc. Online gaming is one of the biggest USPs of Facebook, and indeed, games like Farmville and Mafia Wars have lured many users to the site. Similarly, Facebook also offers a platform for business. Compared to its competitors like Myspace, Orkut, and Twitter, Facebook is way ahead, both in terms of popularity as well as the number of users. Before we take a look at who invented Facebook and when, let's see how this popular website came into being.

The History of Facebook

Coming to the question of who invented Facebook and why, it would be interesting to know that initially, Facebook was just meant for Harvard University students to find and contact fellow students. It was meant to serve the purpose of keeping track of who was new in college to getting in touch with each other for project purposes. It was an online directory, and was founded on the Harvard University campus. However, as soon it was launched, almost two-third of the total number of students registered themselves on Facebook. Mark Elliot Zuckerberg, along with Chris Hughes, Dustin Moskovitz, and Eduardo Saverin, who helped in the launch of the site, saw the response, and realized that this system could generate great revenue. To pursue this, Mark dropped out of Harvard and got into making Facebook a worldwide accessible site to its current stand of being one of the top social-networking sites throughout the world.

Today, Facebook is the most popular social-networking site in the world, with every one person in fourteen using it. It is also the second most popular site in US, and is worth billions of dollars. In barely 7 years, from its launch in 2004 as an online college directory, to its rise as the most popular social-networking site in the world, Facebook has been a success story for the four co-founders, making them all accidental billionaires.

Who Invented Facebook and When: The Timeline

As mentioned above, Mark Zuckerberg ,Chris Hughes, Dustin Moskovitz, and Eduardo Saverin were Harvard University fellow mates who invented Facebook.

• Mark Zuckerberg belongs to Westchester County, New York, and is now an American Internet entrepreneur and a computer programmer. He is the CEO and president of Facebook. The 1984 born Mark is a Taurus by sun sign (May 14), and at the age of 24, he created this social-networking website, thus, becoming a sensational celebrity, basking not only in fame, but surrounded by controversies as well. Mark holds 24% of the Facebook shares.
• Chris R. Hughes, born in the year 1983 in Hickory, North Carolina, was the spokesman for the online social directory, Facebook. He is a Phillips Academy (Andover) graduate, and a 2006 Harvard Bachelor of Arts (History and Literature) graduate as well.
• Dustin Moskovitz owns 6% of Facebook's shares, and he majored from Harvard University in Economics. He was the Vice President, and led the technical staff of the company. Also, he worked on the internal tools and strategy of the site. He no longer works with Facebook now, and is into his own business venture.
• Eduardo Saverin was born in 1984 and owns 5% of Facebook's shares. He studied economics, and graduated from Harvard in 2006. Eduardo served as Harvard Investment Association's President while studying.

Aaron Greenspan, another of Mark's Harvard classmates, claims it was he who invented the site and came up with the whole idea of enabling online networking. Aaron Greenspan is not the only one who claims to be the original founder of Facebook. A group of students, called ConnectU, had approached Mark in 2003, with intentions of finishing some coding that they needed for their project, also claim and have filed a lawsuit saying they were the ones from whom Mark stole the idea. Aaron had chosen to keep mum on the issue. However, Mark Zuckerberg, Chris Hughes, Dustin Moskovitz, and Eduardo Saverin are the ones who are credited as being the inventors of Facebook.

So, this was about who invented Facebook and how they ventured into online social-networking. Starting with when was Facebook invented, an in-house project meant only for their university, to how Mark realized what he had hit upon, how he could make his living out of that single idea, and of course, the basic knowledge he acquired in implementing the idea, to Facebook's current status...all in all, an apt example of how innovative you can be and churn out something big out of a simple notion.