It's been 10 years of change for Facebook, the social network founded February 4, 2004, by Mark Zuckerberg, right, Dustin Moskovitz and three other classmates in a Harvard dorm room.
From its awkward beginnings to an international phenomenon with a billion users, here's a look at the many faces of Facebook.
It was first known as "Thefacebook" when it launched at Harvard University as a way for students to connect. The social-networking site spread to Columbia, Stanford and Yale universities the following month, and the Facebook Wall made its debut in September. By December, Thefacebook had nearly 1 million users.
The site grew beyond the Ivy League to include more than 800 colleges and universities by May 2005, and its official name changed from Thefacebook to just Facebook that August. Facebook began allowing high school students to join in September.
By 2006, anyone 13 and up was allowed to join Facebook. That same year Facebook introduced the News Feed, which highlighted new updates and photos within your social networks. As they would after almost every major change, Facebook users revolted, starting a petition to change Facebook back. One petitioner said, "I don't need to know everything about EVERYONE."
Facebook updated its site design in April 2007, moving friends, networks and the inbox to the top of each page and photos, notes, groups and events to a bar on the left. Facebook Platform launched in May, which allowed for developers to create third-party apps. (Another backlash erupted when those apps started requesting personal information.) Later that year, Facebook introduced ads, which convinced some users the site was going the way of MySpace.
Facebook profile pages were redesigned in 2008 to add five main tabs: Feed, Wall, Info, Photos and Boxes. The new design was, as usual, met with negative comments from users resistant to change. Facebook also debuted its Chat feature that year, allowing real-time instant messaging.
The "Like" button was introduced on Facebook in 2009, letting users show appreciation for clever status updates or pictures of their friends' cats getting into shenanigans. Cynical users demanded a "Dislike" button. Facebook also launched Pages to let fans follow celebrities, sports teams or causes.
Facebook introduced instant personalization, which gave partner websites information about users so they could personalize your experience. Advocacy groups like the ACLU reacted negatively to the new feature, saying users should have to opt in instead of getting the setting by default. Under pressure, Zuckerberg tweaked Facebook's settings to give users greater control over privacy.
Taking a cue from apps like Foursquare (and rival Gowalla, which it eventually bought in 2011), Facebook launched Places, which allowed mobile users to check in at their locations. The most "checked-in" spot? Disneyland.
2011: Photos, photos everywhere
By February 2011, Facebook had become the Web's largest host of photographs. Over its decade, users have uploaded more than 250 billion photos to the site. And by the end of the year, it began scrapping users' Walls in favor of another layout change. Fast forward to 2012 ...
Facebook reported that 945 million of its 1.2 billion users visited the site via a smartphone or tablet in the last few months of 2013. After years as a Web-first product, Facebook began putting a new emphasis on mobile tools, growth and revenue.
Facebook published this map in 2013 that shows its global reach. The lighter a country or region, the higher its concentration of Facebook users (note the black hole of China). Some believe the social network has reached a saturation point and is poised for a decline, especially among fickle younger users.
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