text: Image courtesy of Facebook 
   
   
   
   On Feb. 4, 2004, in his Harvard dorm room, Mark Zuckerberg launched thefacebook.com, a website where college students could post information about themselves, trade messages, and become virtual “friends” with one another. It was entering an already-crowded field of social networks. Friendster was the world’s most popular at the time, but it was about to be overtaken by a one-year-old upstart called MySpace. Google had launched Orkut just weeks earlier. 
   
   Will Oremus Will Oremus is Slate’s senior technology writer. Email him at will.oremus@slate.com or follow him on Twitter. 
   
   Facebook was different because it was only for college students, featured a clean layout devoid of spam, and had no immediate plans to make money. It was an instant hit. “I assume I’ll eventually make something profitable,” Zuckerberg shrugged in a June 2004 interview with the Harvard student newspaper. (It took him a while, but Facebook turned its first profit in 2009, and last year it reported a profit of some $1.5 billion on nearly $8 billion in revenues.) 
   
   By December the site had 1 million users, and it hadn’t even added its photo-upload feature yet. Here’s what thefacebook.com looked like in 2005, a year after it launched: 
   
   Image courtesy of Facebook 
   
   Image courtesy of Facebook 
   
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   Over the years it piled on the features. Some, like News Feed and the like button, changed the Internet forever. Others, like Facebook Gifts, not so much. For its 10th birthday, Facebook has put together a timeline of significant events in its own history. It reflects a bit of a selective memory—you won’t find Gifts, Beacon, or the site’s short-lived experiment with democracy on this timeline. But then, that’s part of what made Facebook so appealing in the first place: the ability to edit your own image to your liking. 
   
   Image courtesy of Facebook 
   
   The timeline is one of several features that Facebook released Monday night, on the eve of its anniversary. On Tuedsay it will unveil a product called “A Look Back” that lets users make a personal movie or slideshow of their favorite moments in their lives since they joined Facebook. The company also launched a slick new iPhone app, Paper, in the App Store on Monday. 
   
   
   
   Here’s Zuckerberg’s statement on the eve of his brainchild’s 10th birthday: 
   
   It's been an incredible journey so far, and I'm so grateful to be a part of it. It's been amazing to see how people have used Facebook to build a real community and help each other in so many ways. In the next decade, we have the opportunity and responsibility to connect everyone and to keep serving the community as best we can. 
   
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   ||||| When Mark E. Zuckerberg ’06 grew impatient with the creation of an official universal Harvard facebook, he decided to take matters into his own hands. 
   
   After about a week of coding, Zuckerberg launched thefacebook.com last Wednesday afternoon. The website combines elements of a standard House face book with extensive profile features that allow students to search for others in their courses, social organizations and Houses. 
   
   “Everyone’s been talking a lot about a universal face book within Harvard,” Zuckerberg said. “I think it’s kind of silly that it would take the University a couple of years to get around to it. I can do it better than they can, and I can do it in a week.” 
   
   As of yesterday afternoon, Zuckerberg said over 650 students had registered use thefacebook.com. He said that he anticipated that 900 students would have joined the site by this morning. 
   
   “I’m pretty happy with the amount of people that have been to it so far,” he said. “The nature of the site is that each user’s experience improves if they can get their friends to join it.” 
   
   But Director of Residential Computing Kevin S. Davis ’98 said that the creation of a Harvard facebook was not as far off as Zuckerberg predicted. 
   
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   “There is a project internally with computer services to create a facebook,” Davis said. “We’ve been in touch with the Undergraduate Council, and this is a very high priority for the College. We have every intention of completing the facebook by the end of the spring semester.” 
   
   Davis said that the principle complication with the creation of an official facebook was figuring out how to design an interface so that directory information could not easily be compiled without authorization. 
   
   Zuckerberg’s site allows people with Harvard e-mail addresses to upload their pictures and personal and academic information. Just as with the popular website Friendster, which Zuckerberg said was a model for his new website, members can search for people according to their interests and can create an online network of friends. 
   
   Lisa H. Feigenbaum ’04 said that she joined thefacebook.com because it provided an open alternative to the password-protected House facebooks. 
   
   “If there was a situation where you needed to identify someone for an organization or a meeting, it would be very helpful,” she said. 
   
   Zuckerberg said that the most innovative feature of the site is that people can search for other students in their classes so that they can branch out to form friendships and study groups. 
   
   “If you’re in a class where you don’t vknow anyone and want to ask somebody for help, this is a way to find out the names of people in that class,” said thefacebook.com user Roberto C. Acosta ’05. 
   
   Zuckerberg said that the extensive search capabilities are restricted by a myriad of privacy options for members who do not want everyone to be able to look up their information. 
   
   “There are pretty intensive privacy options,” he said. “You can limit who can see your information, if you only want current students to see your information, or people in your year, in your house, in your classes. You can limit a search so that only a friend or a friend of a friend can look you up. People have very good control over who can see their information.” 
   
   Zuckerberg said that he hoped the privacy options would help to restore his reputation following student outrage over facemash.com, a website he created in the fall semester. ||||| As Mark Zuckerberg reflects upon Facebook's first 10 years today, he's encouraging the community he built to do the same. Starting this morning, hundreds of millions of Facebook users will receive a notification that a video summary of their life so far on Facebook is ready to watch. Each user's "Look Back" compilation contains 15 or so of their most-liked photos, statuses, and life events set to a catchy tune. The videos are a bit cheesy, but are potent reminders that for many of us, Facebook has become a very normal way to document our daily lives. 
   
   A small team at Facebook spent the last few months crafting the videos and ensuring that the company had the necessary resources to render hundreds of millions of HD videos and send them out to users. Facebook has issued Year In Review compilations before, after all, but never in video form. Two groups within Facebook played a particularly important role: Everstore, the team in charge of media storage, and Moonshot, the team tasked with allocating idle server power to doing some heavy lifting whenever possible. 
   
   The social network is still 'A Mark Zuckerberg Production' 
   
   Facebook's engineering lead on the project, Nick Kwiatek, calls Look Back one of the company's largest video projects of all time. "One of the things that motivated us was that there's really only a handful of companies that could take on something like this — that could render videos for as many people as we can," he says. After spending several weeks optimizing the company's servers for the unusual task, his team effectively cut down the time required to render one video from 17 minutes to just one. The final result might look more like a Bar Mitzvah video than an epic montage of your life, but for most people, it will be worth watching. And if you look hard, you'll find Mark Zuckerberg's signature below each video. A lot has changed in 10 years, but perhaps one thing hasn't: the social network is still "A Mark Zuckerberg Production."
target: – In Internet terms, Facebook is already ancient. Today, the social network marks its 10th anniversary, and it's inviting hundreds of millions of users to share in the fun via "Look Back" videos. The project, overseen by multiple teams within the company, shows about 15 of your "most-liked" posts over music, the Verge reports. They began appearing this morning. "One of the things that motivated us was that there's really only a handful of companies that could take on something like this—that could render videos for as many people as we can," says the project's head. Mark Zuckerberg also offers a note to users: "It's rare to be able to touch so many people's lives, and I try to remind myself to make the most of every day and have the biggest impact I can," he writes. "It's been amazing to see how all of you have used our tools to build a real community." He also addresses the future: "Today, social networks are mostly about sharing moments. In the next decade, they'll also help you answer questions and solve complex problems." Feeling nostalgic? Here's the Harvard Crimson's 2004 report on the "hundreds" joining thefacebook.com, or Slate has its own "look back."