Ruling the planet

‘Facebook’, says the excitable author of this hero-gram, ‘may be the fastest-growing company of any type in history.’

‘Thefacebook.com’ went live on 4 February 2004, as an on-line directory for students at Harvard, inviting them to upload a picture of themselves and some basic info, such as their ‘relationship status’, favourite books, music, movies and a quotation. Once they had set up their own profiles, they could ask others to be their ‘friend’ and direct a jokey ‘poke’ (never defined) at them. Thefacebook offered no content whatsoever of its own, being merely a platform for content uploaded by its users.

By the end of the first week, more than half of all Harvard undergraduates had signed up; by the end of the month, three-quarters. Within a few weeks, it had expanded to Columbia, Stanford and Yale, and then moved on to other Ivy League universities.

In June of that year, a financier offered the creator of Thefacebook, Mark Zuckerberg, then just 20, $10 million for it. ‘He didn’t for a minute think seriously about accepting,’ says David Kirkpatrick admiringly. By March of the following year, he was offered $75 million, by Viacom, and he didn’t accept that either, nor a subsequent offer of $1.5 billion. And he hasn’t yet sold up or lost control of the company, at present worth somewhere between $10 and $15 billion.

Facebook now has half a billion active users around the world. Although Google boasts more, Facebook is the site on which most time is spent:

In 17 countries around the world, more than 30 per cent of all citizens — not internet users but citizens — are on Facebook . . . They include Norway (46 per cent), Canada (42 per cent) and the United Kingdom (40 per cent).