1984: Mark Zuckerberg is born in White Plains, New York.
2004: In February, Zuckerberg and co-founders Dustin Moskovitz, Chris Hughes and Eduardo Saverin launch Facebook from their Harvard dorm. The site is for students with Harvard email addresses only, but by March it has added Stanford, Columbia and Yale. By December Facebook has 1m users.
2005: Facebook raises $12.7m from Accel Partners. It adds high schools and international school networks. By December it has 5.5m users.
2006: Facebook raises $27.5m from Greylock Partners, Meritech Capital Partners and others. Facebook Mobile is launched. By the end of the year it has 12m users.
2007: Facebook opens a virtual gift shop and advertising becomes a growing part of the business. Developers are invited to make applications for the site. In October Microsoft pays $240m for a 1.6% stake in Facebook, valuing the company at $15 billion. Microsoft squeezes out Google to do the deal. User numbers pass 50m.
2008: Facebook passes the 100m mark. It opens Spanish and French sites and a translation service for 21 languages. The US presidential debates are co-sponsored by ABC News and Facebook.
2009: Even Facebook isn’t immune to the stock market rout. Digital Sky Technologies, a Russian group, makes a $200m investment that values the company at $10 billion. However, the number of users continues to soar — to more than 350m by the end of the year — and Facebook makes its first profit.
2010: For the week ending March 13, Hitwise says Facebook.com passed Google.com, making it the biggest draw on the net for the whole week for the first time in its history. The company now accounts for 17% of the time people spend online in Britain and America, according to Nielsen. User numbers have passed 400m. Profits are thought to be $1 billion a year. Speculation mounts that Facebook will start looking to raise more money from a stock market float.
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