Facebook is the most popular social media site on earth. Created by students at Harvard College in 2004, it was originally intended as a campus-wide network. But before long, Facebook spread to other colleges and universities in the Boston area. By the end of the year the fledgling website had over 1 million users.
In 2005, Facebook expanded to high school networks. Anyone over 13 years of age was permitted to create their own account free of charge. By the end of the year, Facebook had over 5 million users and had received substantial investment offers from several high-profile businessmen.
After raising over 20 million pounds from various investors, Facebook partnered with 20 popular websites. By the end of the year they were one of the most popular social media sites on the internet with 13 million users.
After offering its free service to users in the US for more than a year, Facebook decided to expand overseas. Their first stop was Canada. A few months later, Facebook came to the UK. By the end of 2007 there were over 50 million users, one million of them in the UK.
In 2008, the translation application turned Facebook into a truly global phenomenon. With more than 100 million users by year's end, Facebook was easily the most popular social networking site as well as one of the most popular addresses on the internet.
Facebook memberships doubled each year after 2008. At present, the site has over 400 million active users and revenues of over 800 million pounds per annum. About ninety percent of these revenues are from advertising.