MOSCOW (Sputnik) – Facebook marks its birthday on February 4. On that day in 2004 Mark Zuckerberg and his Harvard University roommates and classmates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes launched Thefacebook.com.
"Over the past five years, the global Facebook community has more than doubled in size," the social network said in a post dedicated to its 12th birthday, which the company recognizes as "Friends Day" inviting "the world to celebrate and reflect on the importance of connecting."
A special Friends Day feature shows users a video in their news feeds that cycles through pictures of their friends.
Facebook was initially limited to Harvard students, but later expanded to other educational institutions in the United States, eventually opening up to a wide range of users around the world.
Facebook had 1.59 billion monthly active users as of the end of December, 2015, according to its website. In 2011, the social network had 845 million active users. Just short of a year after its launch, in December 2004, Facebook had 1 million users.
The earliest version of Facebook was Facemash, a site designed to rate undergraduates as "hot or not" based on pictures. Facesmash was launched in October 2003 by Zuckerberg, McCollum, Moskovitz and Hughes.
