Zuckerberg launches thefacebook from a Harvard dorm room
A campus-only directory signs up half of Harvard's undergraduates within a month
Quick facts
- Founder
- Mark Zuckerberg, with Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz, Andrew McCollum, and Chris Hughes
- Launched
- 4 February 2004, Kirkland House, Harvard
- Early growth
- 650 users in 24 hours; over half of Harvard undergraduates within a month
- Milestone
- One millionth user by 30 December 2004
What happened
Mark Zuckerberg, a Harvard sophomore, launched thefacebook on 4 February 2004 from his Kirkland House dorm room, running on a single rented server costing $85 a month. It began as an internal directory limited to Harvard students, letting them build profile pages and connect with classmates. Within 24 hours, 650 students had registered; within two weeks, that had grown to 4,300, and by the end of the first month, more than half of Harvard's undergraduates had signed up. Zuckerberg had built the site with roommates and classmates including Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz, Andrew McCollum, and Chris Hughes.
Why it matters
Facebook expanded from Harvard to other universities and eventually anyone with an email address, and by the end of 2004 had already registered its millionth user, the beginning of a growth curve that made it, for over a decade, the dominant social network and the template every later platform copied and adapted.
How we know
The Harvard Crimson's own retrospective account, published by the university's student newspaper for the tenth anniversary, documents the exact launch date, dorm room, hosting cost, and early registration figures. The Computer History Museum separately records Facebook reaching its one millionth user by the end of December 2004.
Sources
- The Harvard Crimson. Ten Years Later, Facebook's First Users Look Back at Site's Earliest Days · General sourcethecrimson.com · Cited as a "reference" source (no stronger domain match). · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
- Computer History Museum (This Day in History). December 30: Facebook Registers One Millionth User · Reputable sourcecomputerhistory.org · The domain "computerhistory.org" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
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