History of Facebook

Zuckerberg wrote a program called "Facemash" in 2003 while attending Harvard University as a sophomore (second-year student). According to The Harvard Crimson, the site was comparable to Hot or Not and used "photos compiled from the online facebooks of nine Houses, placing two next to each other at a time and asking users to choose the "hotter" person". Facemash attracted 450 visitors and 22,000 photo-views in its first four hours online. The Facemash site was quickly forwarded to several campus group list-servers, but was shut down a few days later by the Harvard administration. Zuckerberg faced expulsion and was charged by the administration with breach of security, violating copyrights, and violating individual privacy. Ultimately, the charges were dropped.Zuckerberg expanded on this initial project that semester by creating a social study tool ahead of an art history final exam. He uploaded all art images to a website, each of which was featured with a corresponding comments section, then shared the site with his classmates, and people started sharing notes. Stock price's decline.Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Mary Schapiro, and Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) Chairman Rick Ketchum, called for a review of the circumstances surrounding the IPO.

Facebook's IPO was consequently investigated, and was compared to a "pump and dump" scheme. A class-action lawsuit was filed in May 2012 because of the trading glitches, which led to botched orders. Lawsuits were filed, alleging that an underwriter for Morgan Stanley selectively revealed adjusted earnings estimates to preferred clients.
The other underwriters (MS, JPM, GS), Facebook's CEO and board, and NASDAQ also faced litigation after numerous lawsuits were filed, while SEC and FINRA both launched investigations.It was believed that adjustments to earnings estimates were communicated to the underwriters by a Facebook financial officer, who used the information to cash out on their positions while leaving the general public with overpriced shares.By the end of May 2012, Facebook's stock lost over a quarter of its starting value, which led The Wall Street Journal to label the IPO a "fiasco". Zuckerberg announced to the media at the start of October 2012 that Facebook had passed the monthly active users mark of one billion. The company's data also revealed 600 million mobile users, 219 billion photo uploads, and 140 billion friend connections.

2013–2014: Site developments, A4AI and 10th anniversary

On January 15, 2013, Facebook announced Facebook Graph Search, which provides users with a "precise answer", rather than a link to an answer by leveraging the data present on its site. Facebook emphasized that the feature would be "privacy-aware", returning results only from content already shared with the user. On April 3, 2013, Facebook unveiled Facebook Home, a user-interface layer for Android devices offering greater integration with the site. HTC announced the HTC First, a smartphone with Home pre-loaded.

On April 15, 2013, Facebook announced an alliance across 19 states with the National Association of Attorneys General, to provide teenagers and parents with information on tools to manage social networking profiles.On April 19, 2013, Facebook officially modified its logo to remove the faint blue line at the bottom of the "F" icon. The letter F moved closer to the edge of the box.
Following a campaign by 100 advocacy groups, Facebook agreed to update its policy on hate speech. The campaign highlighted content promoting domestic and sexual violence against women, and used over 57,000 tweets and more than 4,900 emails that caused withdrawal of advertising from the site by 15 companies, including Nissan UK, House of Burlesque and Nationwide UK. The social media website initially responded by stating that "while it may be vulgar and offensive, distasteful content on its own does not violate our policies". It decided to take action on May 29, 2013, after it "become clear that our systems to identify and remove hate speech have failed to work as effectively as we would like, particularly around issues of gender-based hate".

On June 12, 2013, Facebook announced on its newsroom that it was introducing clickable hashtags to help users follow trending discussions, or search what others are talking about on a topic. A July 2013 Wall Street Journal article identified the Facebook IPO as the cause of a change in the U.S.' national economic statistics, as the local government area of the company's headquarters, San Mateo County, California, became the top wage-earning county in the country after the fourth quarter of 2012. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the average weekly wage in the county was US$3,240, 107% higher than the previous year. It noted the wages were "the equivalent of $168,000 a year, and more than 50% higher than the next-highest county, New York County (better known as Manhattan), at $2,107 a week, or roughly $110,000 a year."
Facebook was blocked by the Chinese government in 2009.[88] In September 2013, the South China Morning Post announced that the block would lifted in the Shanghai Free Trade Zone "to welcome foreign companies to invest and to let foreigners live and work happily in the free-trade zone".However, a few days later, the People's Daily, the official newspaper of the Communist Party of China, dismissed the earlier report, reiterating the block on Facebook.
Facebook was announced as a member of The Alliance for Affordable Internet (A4AI) in October 2013, when the A4AI was launched. The A4AI is a coalition of public and private organizations that includes Google, Intel and Microsoft. Led by Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the A4AI seeks to make Internet access more affordable so that access is broadened in the developing world, where only 31% of people are online. Google will help to decrease Internet access prices so that they fall below the UN Broadband Commission's worldwide target of 5% of monthly income.[92] A Reuters report, published on December 11, 2013, stated that Standard & Poor's announced the placement of Facebook on its S&P 500 index "after the close of trading on December 20".[93] Facebook announced Q4 2013 earnings of $523 million (20 cents per share), an increase of $64 million from the previous year,[94] as well as 945 million mobile users.

In 2014, Facebook bought Oculus VR for $2.3 billion in stock and cash,[95] which released its first consumer virtual reality headset in 2016.

Alongside other American technology figures like Jeff Bezos and Tim Cook, Zuckerberg hosted visiting Chinese politician Lu Wei, known as the "Internet czar" for his influence in the enforcement of China's online policy, at Facebook's headquarters on December 8, 2014. The meeting occurred after Zuckerberg participated in a Q&A session at Tsinghua University in Beijing, China, on October 23, 2014, where he attempted to converse in Mandarin—although Facebook is banned in China, Zuckerberg is highly regarded among the people and was at the university to help fuel the nation's burgeoning entrepreneur sector. A book of Chinese president Xi Jinping found on Zuckerberg's office desk attracted a great deal of attention in the media, after the Facebook founder explained to Lu, "I want them to understand socialism.
As of January 21, 2015, Facebook's algorithm is programmed to filter out false or misleading content, such as fake news stories and hoaxes, and will be supported by users who select the option to flag a story as "purposefully fake or deceitful news". According to Reuters, such content is "being spread like a wildfire" on the social media platform. Facebook maintained that "satirical" content, "intended to be humorous, or content that is clearly labeled as satire", will be taken into account and should not be intercepted.[104] The algorithm, however, has been accused of maintaining a "filter bubble", where both material the user disagrees with[105] and posts with a low level of likes, will also not be seen.[106] In November 2015, Zuckerberg prolonged period of paternity leave from 4 weeks to 4 months.

On April 12, 2016, Zuckerberg revealed a decade-long plan for Facebook in a keynote address. His speech outlined his vision, which rested on three main pillars: artificial intelligence, increased connectivity around the world and virtual and augmented reality.[108] In June 2016 Facebook announced Deep Text, a natural language processing AI which will learn user intent and context in 20 languages.

In July 2016, a US$1 billion lawsuit was filed against the company alleging that it permitted the Hamas group to use it to perform assaults that ended the lives of four people.Facebook released the blueprints of Surround 360 camera on GitHub under open-source license. In September 2016, it won an Emmy for its Visual animated short "Henry".

In October 2016, Facebook announced a fee-based communications tool called Workplace that aims to "connect everyone" while at work. Users can create profiles, see updates from co-workers on their news feed, stream live video and participate in secure group chats. Facebook annually has an Oculus Connect conference.Following the 2016 presidential election, Facebook announced that it would further combat the spread of fake news by using fact checkers from sites like FactCheck.org and Associated Press (AP), making reporting hoaxes easier through crowdsourcing, and disrupting financial incentives for spammers.

On January 17, 2017, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg planning to open Station F, a startup incubator campus in Paris, France. On a six-monthly cycle, Facebook will work with ten to 15 data-driven startups in the location to help them develop their businesses. On April 18, Facebook announced the beta launch of Facebook Spaces at Facebook's annual F8 developer conference in San Francisco. Facebook Spaces, a virtual reality app version of Facebook for the Facebook-owned Oculus VR goggles. In a virtual and shared space, users can access a curated selection of 360-degree photos and videos using their avatar, with the support of the controller. Users can also access their own photos and videos, and any media shared on their Facebook newsfeed. The beta app is currently available in the Oculus Store.
In September 2017, Facebook announced it would be spending up to US$1 billion on original shows for its Facebook Watch platform. On October 16, 2017, Facebook acquired the anonymous compliment social media app tbh for an undisclosed amount, announcing intentions to leave the app independent, similar to Instagram and WhatsApp. In May 2018, at its annual F8 developers conference in San Jose, California, Facebook announced it would make its own dating service. Shares in the dating business Match Group fell by 22% following the announcement. In July 2018, Facebook was charged £500,000 by UK watchdogs for failing to respond to data erasure requests. On July 18, 2018, Facebook established a subsidiary named Lianshu Science & Technology in Hangzhou City, Zhejiang Province, China, with US$30 million of registered capital. All its shares are held by Facebook Hong Kong branch. However, the approval of the registration of the subsidiary was withdrawn quickly, due to the disagreement between officials in Zhejiang province and the Cyberspace Administration of China.

On July 26, 2018, Facebook became the first company to lose over $100 billion worth of stock in one day. It fell from nearly $630 billion to $510 billion, a 19% loss, after disappointing sales reports.

On July 27, 2018, Facebook suspended the official page of pundit and political commentator Alex Jones for 30 days. The website claims that Jones participated in hate speech against Robert Mueller.

On July 31, 2018, Facebook revealed that the company had deleted 17 accounts related to 2018 American elections for national, state and local political elections. The company released a statement relating the attempts to previous security breaches saying "It's clear that whoever set up these accounts went to much greater lengths to obscure their true identities than the Russian-based Internet Research Agency (IRA) has in the past. We believe this could be partly due to changes we've made over the last year to make this kind of abuse much harder.

On September 19, 2018, Facebook announced that, for news distribution outside the United States, it would work with the U.S. funded democracy promotion organizations, International Republican Institute and the National Democratic Institute which are loosely affiliated with the Democratic and Republican parties. Through the Digital Forensic Research Lab Facebook partners with the Atlantic Council, a think tank affiliated with NATO.They have made a grants to Agência Lupa and Aos Fatos, Brazilian factcheckers, to better communicate with Facebook users during the Brazilian elections scheduled in 2018.