Video: 'Mark Zuckerberg: Building the Facebook Empire'

(Wednesday, February 4, 2004) — The social networking website Facebook had its beginnings today as Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg launched “Thefacebook.”

Zuckerberg intended to create a website that could connect people around the university. Upon finishing the site, Zuckerberg told a couple of friends, one of whom suggested sharing it on the Kirkland House online mailing list, which included several hundred people.

According to his roommate, Dustin Moskovitz, “By the end of the night, we were … actively watching the registration process. Within twenty-four hours, we had somewhere between twelve hundred and fifteen hundred registrants.”

Video: '2005: The first "CBS Evening News" report on Facebook'

Since 2006, Facebook allows everyone to register from 13 years old (or older), except in the case of a handful of nations, where the age limit is 14 years.

As of December 2022, Facebook claimed 3 billion monthly active users.

As of October 2023 Facebook ranked as the 3rd most visited website in the world with 22.56% of its traffic coming from the United States.

It was the most downloaded mobile app of the 2010s.