facebook is a social networking service launched in February 2004, owned and operated by Facebook.

It was founded by Mark Zuckerberg with his college roommates and fellow Harvard University students Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes. gradually most universities in Canada and the United States, everyone of age 13 and older with a valid email address.
[6][7] [3][4] [1]

The website's membership was initially limited by

[2]

the founders to Harvard students, but was expanded to other colleges in the Boston area, the Ivy League, corporations,
[5]

and

and by September 2006, to

acebook is a social networking service launched in February 2004, owned and operated by Facebook. It was founded by Mark Zuckerberg with his college roommates and fellow Harvard University students Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin [1] Moskovitz and Chris Hughes. The website's membership was initially limited by the founders to Harvard [2] students, but was expanded to other colleges in the Boston area, the Ivy League, and gradually most [3][4] [5] universities in Canada and the United States, corporations, and by September 2006, to everyone of [6][7] age 13 and older with a valid email address.

ccording to The Harvard Crimson, Facemash "used photos compiled from the online facebooks of nine Houses, placing two next to each other at a time and asking users to choose the 'hotter' person". To accomplish this, Mark Zuckerberg hacked the "facebooks" Harvard maintained to help students identify each other and used the images to populate his Facemash website.
[12]

That the initial site mirrored peoples physical communitywith their real identitiesrepresented the [13] key aspects of what later became Facebook. "Perhaps Harvard will squelch it for legal reasons without realizing its value as a venture that could possibly be expanded to other schools (maybe even ones with good-looking people...)," Zuckerberg wrote in his personal blog. "But one thing is certain, and its that Im a jerk for making this site. Oh well. [14] Someone had to do it eventually..." The site was quickly forwarded to several campus group listservers. However, the website was shut down by Harvard executives a few days after it opened. Mark Zuckerberg faced charges of violating copyrights, breach of security, and violating individual privacy for stealing the student pictures that he used to populate the website. He later faced expulsion from Harvard [15] University for his actions. However, all the charges were eventually dropped. Zuckerberg expanded on this initial project that semester by creating a social study tool ahead of an art history final. He uploaded 500 Augustan images to a website, with one image per page along with a [13] comment section. He opened the site up to his classmates and people started sharing their notes. "The professor said it had the best grades of any final hed ever given. This was my first social hack. With Facebook, I wanted to make something that would make Harvard more open," Zuckerberg said in a TechCrunch interview. On October 25, 2010, entrepreneur and banker Rahul Jain auctioned off FaceMash.com to an unknown [16][17] buyer for $30,201.