Facebook

Butler 1 Intellectual Growth and Inquiry 14 March 2011 Facebook: From Whiteboard to World The evolution of the Internet over the past twenty years has changed the way we communicate with others across the world. However, it was not until the late 1990s that the Internet really hit a growth spurt. With such concepts as email and online advertising catching on, the Internet began to expand quickly. Shortly after this rapid growth, MySpace was created and was one of the first websites under the category of social network. With it becoming instantly popular among young users and musicians, it seemed as though MySpace would just be another online meeting point for younger generations; yet at the same time, another of its kind was being created in a Harvard University dorm room that would redefine social networking and, eventually, the internet. Birth of a Nation On a whiteboard in 2003, Harvard sophomore Mark Zuckerberg began conceptualizing a new social network. Zuckerberg was a computer science major and already had previous success with computer engineering. During his senior year of high school at Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire, Zuckerberg and a classmate co-wrote Synapse, a music recommendation program (Grossman, “Person of The Year 2010: Mark Zuckerberg). The program had caught the attention of Microsoft and AOL, both of whom unsuccessfully made attempts to buy it for around one million dollars (Grossman, “Person of The Year 2010: Mark Zuckerberg).

Butler 2 In his dorm room, Zuckerberg’s white board was covered with computer programming formulas and different application concepts that he had developed, but one particular coding idea on the board was different. On January 11, 2004, Mark went online and registered for a web address, thefacebook.com (Kirkpatrick 27). The domain name cost $35 per year, and Zuckerberg used the website to combine ideas from other projects he had previously created. Zuckerberg continued to develop the website until its