History of Facebook and the Real Story of the Website:
Facebook is currently the internets largest and most commonly used social networking site. In April of 2008 Facebook officially took the reigns in social networking from Myspace by about 15 million monthly users even though it has been blocked by several countries including Syria, China, Iran and Vietnam. Currently Facebook has over 350 million users worldwide. Facebook actually started out as a “boredom” project by Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg, under the name of Facesmash. Mark had just gotten out of a relationship and admittedly was bitter. He came up with the hilarious idea of taking photos of other Harvard students and putting them up against farm animals in a comedic version of Hot or Not (Hot or Not is a popular rating site where users post their photos online and other users rate the person as either “hot” or “not”).

How To Use Facebook and Why It Became So Popular:
Zuckerberg eventually hacked into the dorm room servers of Harvard to “borrow” the id photo's of the Harvard students for his project. He launched his Facesmash website in the wee hours of the morning on October 28, 2003 and within hours had thousands of campus students perusing his newly formed site. Unfortunately, even quicker than he created the site, Harvard officials were notified and he was forced offline. He faced several repricussions, though none of them could dissuade him from his internet adventures. Zuckerberg got together with a few other Harvard students; Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes to create the new project, Facebook. Facebook was originally limited to Harvard students, but eventually the team was persuaded to allow in other colleges in the Boston area. After that they also included the rest of the Ivy League as well as Stanford University. Shortly thereafter, they included any university student, then high school students followed and finally they made the final ruling that anyone 13 and over was allowed in. Appealing to a more “mature” audience and already having some ground from its university users, Facebook received several nice boosts of capital throughout its social networking conquest. In June 2004 it received its first substantial investment in the tune of $500,000 from PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel. Just one year later Facebook received $12.7 million in venture capital from Accel Partners and then another $27.5 million from Greylock Partners.

Facebook Finances and How Facebook got Investors
There are also rumors that in late 2004 or early 2005 the social networking giant-in-the-making turned down a buyout offer of $750 million and another rumor that Facebook turned down an offer as high as $2 billion. As well in 2006 Yahoo! reportedly bid $1 billion dollars but was turned down as Thiel had reported that value around $8 billion dollars with projected annual revenues of over $1 billion by the year 2015. The investment scramble continued with a proposed investment from software giant Microsoft, of somewhere in the $300 - $500 million range in September 2007, for a 5% stake in the social networking site. Later that month internet giant Google expressed interest in Facebook as well. On October 24, 2007 Microsoft settled on a purchase of 1.6% share of the company for $240 million. This reportedly gave the company an implied value of around $15 billion. One month later, Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-Shing invested $60 million into Facebook. And just 2 years later (September 2009) Facebook claimed it had finally generated a positive cash flow for the first time since its inception.

Facebook Website Visitors:
All in all the site has taken what was first made popular by Myspace and turned it on its axis to create a more simplified social networking site that appeals to more than just the “younger” crowd. Even companies and small dotcoms are jumping on the bandwagon to keep their respective local consumers abreast of changes and promotions for their businesses. With Facebook users can find lost friends and family and join specific groups in effort to keep in touch with like-minded people across the globe. As with a lot of successful dotcoms, Facebook has taken a simple project and turned itself into a successful enterprise generating billions of dollars in advertisement revenue over it's still youthful lifespan.