Facebook Inc Debuts Paper App As It Turns 10 Years Old

What started off ten years ago as a modest website for Harvard University students to connect with classmates and friends is now…well, who doesn’t know the story of Facebook?

There was a time when Facebook made no money from the use of its mobile products — and its ability to do so, in the company’s own words, was “unproven.”

Now, almost two years since admitting those and other risks in a prospectus for its IPO, Facebook just enjoyed its first billion dollar quarter for mobile ad revenue, which makes up 53% of its revenue overall.

It was on Feb. 4, in 2004, that what was then known as “The Facebook” first came online. But what is now the world’s largest social network – forever immortalized by Hollywood, recounted in countless profiles, and parodied in books and TV – was, at the beginning, just a thing that existed in current chief executive officer Mark Zuckerberg’s dorm room, created with fellow Harvard students and co-founders Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes.

Though the company had nothing planned for the occasion, Mr. Zuckerberg in a statement called the past decade “an incredible journey,” adding that, “in the next decade, we have the opportunity and responsibility to connect everyone and to keep serving the community as best we can.”

In Canada, at least, Facebook is already well on its way to that goal. Over half of the country’s population of 35 million use Facebook each month, according to data from last August, while 14 million people access the social network daily.

Over 1.2 billion people now use Facebook worldwide.business financial post.com