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February 4: The Dorm Room That Changed Everything
How a 19 year old crashed Harvard's network and built an empire
On February 4, 2004, Mark Zuckerberg launched Facebook from his Harvard dorm. He was 19. The site crashed the university network within hours of going live.
Key Facts
Launch Date
February 4, 2004
Founder Age
Mark Zuckerberg was 19 years old
Build Time
Coded in approximately two weeks
Original Name
TheFacebook.com
First Users
Harvard students only with .edu emails
Launch Day Traffic
Crashed Harvard's network
First Million Users
Reached within 10 months
Initial Investment
Eduardo Saverin contributed $19,000
Current Users
Nearly 3 billion monthly active users
Name Origin
Harvard freshman photo directories called face books
About February 4: The Dorm Room That Changed Everything
On February 4, 2004, a 19 year old Harvard sophomore launched a website from his dorm room that would eventually connect nearly three billion people. Within hours, so many students rushed to sign up that the site crashed Harvard's entire network. Mark Zuckerberg had built it in about two weeks.
The Name Came From Freshman Orientation
Harvard gave incoming students physical booklets containing photos and names of their classmates. Students called these directories face books and used them to learn who was who on campus. Zuckerberg simply digitized the concept and let students connect with each other online instead of flipping through printed pages.
You Needed a Harvard Email to Join
The original TheFacebook required a harvard.edu email address to register. This exclusivity created instant demand. Students at other universities heard about the site and wanted access. Within weeks, Zuckerberg expanded to Columbia, Stanford, and Yale. The Ivy League spread fueled mystique that a public launch never could have created.
A $19,000 Investment Worth Billions
Eduardo Saverin, Zuckerberg's friend and business major, invested $19,000 to cover initial server costs. That money bought him a significant ownership stake. When the company went public in 2012, Saverin's shares were worth over $5 billion. The partnership later dissolved in lawsuits dramatized in The Social Network.
One Million Users Without Any Advertising
Facebook reached one million users by December 2004 without spending money on marketing. Students simply told other students. The site grew through word of mouth and the fear of missing out. By the time it opened to the general public in 2006, the growth pattern was already unstoppable.
The Movie Got Some Things Wrong
The Social Network portrayed Zuckerberg as building Facebook to impress a girlfriend who dumped him. In reality, he was already dating Priscilla Chan, whom he later married. The film compressed timelines and invented dramatic confrontations. Zuckerberg called the movie's portrayal of his motivations fiction.
From Dorm Room to Global Infrastructure
What started as a way for college students to see who was in their classes became infrastructure for global communication. Facebook now owns Instagram and WhatsApp. The company renamed itself Meta in 2021 to reflect ambitions beyond social networking. Nearly three billion people use its platforms every month.
📊
Historical Analysis
⚡Historical Significance
- •
Facebook pioneered the real identity social network, requiring users to present themselves as who they actually were rather than anonymous usernames.
- •
The platform created the modern concept of the social graph, mapping real world relationships digitally in ways that transformed how people maintain connections.
- •
Facebook's growth pattern from exclusive college network to global platform became the template for how startups think about controlled expansion.
📝Critical Reception
- •
Early critics dismissed Facebook as another college fad that would disappear like previous social networks had.
- •
Privacy advocates warned from the beginning that centralizing personal information would create unprecedented surveillance capabilities.
- •
Tech industry observers initially underestimated how defensible Facebook's network effects would be against competitors.
🌍Cultural Impact
- •
Facebook fundamentally changed how people maintain relationships, enabling connections that geography would have previously ended.
- •
The platform created new social anxieties around friend counts, likes, and the curated presentation of life events.
- •
Facebook became the primary news source for millions, transforming journalism and political communication in ways still being understood.
Before & After
📅Before
Before Facebook, social networks like Friendster and MySpace existed but used pseudonyms and attracted spam and fake profiles. Online identity was separate from real identity. People maintained relationships through phone calls, emails, and physical visits. Losing touch with old classmates and distant friends was expected and normal.
🚀After
After Facebook, real identity became the norm for social platforms. People expected to stay connected with everyone they had ever met. The platform changed how events were organized, how news spread, how businesses marketed, and how people presented themselves. Facebook created a world where your social graph was always visible and your past was never truly gone.
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Did You Know?
•
Facebook crashed Harvard's entire network within hours of launching
•
You originally needed a Harvard email address to create an account
•
Eduardo Saverin's $19,000 investment became worth over $5 billion
•
The site reached one million users without spending any money on advertising
•
Zuckerberg built the original version in approximately two weeks
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Why It Still Matters Today
•
Nearly three billion people use Facebook platforms monthly, making it one of the largest human gatherings in history
•
The company's data practices sparked global conversations about privacy that led to regulations like GDPR
•
Facebook's advertising model became the template for how the modern internet monetizes attention
•
The platform's role in elections and social movements demonstrated how social media shapes democracy
•
Meta's pivot to virtual reality shows how the company continues attempting to define digital social interaction
🧠
Test Your Knowledge
How much do you know? Take this quick quiz to find out!
1. What did you need to sign up for Facebook when it launched?
2. How much did Eduardo Saverin invest in Facebook initially?
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Original Insights
•
The exclusivity strategy of requiring college emails created artificial scarcity that drove demand, a growth hack now taught in business schools
•
Zuckerberg chose to stay at Harvard briefly after launch rather than immediately dropping out, showing more caution than the mythology suggests
•
Facebook succeeded partly because it launched after Friendster and MySpace had already trained users to expect social networking
•
The site crashed Harvard's network on day one because Zuckerberg had not anticipated how quickly students would sign up
•
Saverin's business skills in the early days are often overlooked because The Social Network focused on the lawsuit drama rather than his contributions
Frequently Asked Questions
Facebook launched on February 4, 2004 from Mark Zuckerberg's dorm room at Harvard University. The site was originally called TheFacebook and required a Harvard email address to join. It crashed the university network on launch day due to overwhelming traffic.
This article is reviewed by the Pagefacts team.
Editorial Approach:
This article focuses on the dorm room origins of a platform that now connects billions, examining the early decisions like email exclusivity and word of mouth growth that created unstoppable momentum, while separating movie mythology from documented history.
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