Talk:History of Facebook

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Unverified statement

The following statement cannot be verified from the references given. "That night, Zuckerberg was blogging about a girl who had dumped him" —Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.14.57.168 (talk) 18:06, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

IPO

Should the IPO issues be a separate article? --Ron John (talk) 16:47, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

Personally I don't think it is significant enough to warrant its own article. It seems best to continue to include the IPO issues in this article. 72Dino (talk) 16:55, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

I'd agree with 72Dino for now. If the various botches with Facebook's IPO continue to be discussed (the NASDAQ glitches, the poorly assessed price), maybe then. Let's keep expanding here for now and if it seems like this is gaining WP:UNDUE weight while still having notable discussion, we could break it out then. Khazar2 (talk) 22:57, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

How is it that

…this and the main Facebook articles differ with regard to the information they glean from the same sources, and so differs also in key historic content that appears in the articles? Compare this sentence from the main article:

Its website was launched on February 4, 2004, by Mark Zuckerberg with his Harvard College roommates and fellow students Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes.

Compare that with what appears here:

It was founded by Mark Zuckerberg with his college roommates and fellow Harvard University student Eduardo Saverin.

Should not the two websites, drawing on the same source, present the same material?

Le Prof Leprof 7272 (talk) 07:17, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

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Ref 56

"The imputed valuation of Facebook has, also, moved up to ,0bn in an early-2011 transaction ... A 5.2% share of ,0bn would be ... " What should ",0bn" be? Prisoner of Zenda (talk) 04:52, 23 April 2016 (UTC)

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Harvard did not have a face book at the time

Hi @Concord gioz: Regarding the edits made about Harvard: Please note that Fast Company states that "Harvard didn’t offer a student directory with photos and basic information, known at most schools as a face book. Zuckerberg wanted to build an online version for Harvard, but the school “kept on saying that there were all these reasons why they couldn’t aggregate this information,” he says. “I just wanted to show that it could be done.” So one night early in his sophomore year, he hacked into Harvard’s student records". Furthermore, from The Harvard Crimson itself: "Everyone’s been talking a lot about a universal face book within Harvard,” Zuckerberg said. “I think it’s kind of silly that it would take the University a couple of years to get around to it. I can do it better than they can, and I can do it in a week.” LocalNet (talk) 16:59, 27 June 2017 (UTC)

You've repeatedly deleted my edits that clearly show that Harvard did have a face book in the ~2003 timeframe. That TED Talk presented the page from the paper version that had Zuckerberg's face on it. In that same clip, this mayor of South Bend, Indiana (town of U Notre Dame) explains that he lived in the dorm next to Zuck's at Harvard. So he is clear that a paper face book existed.

Now let's look at what was available online...

With the evidence of this paper version you've repeatedly rejected, your basis for doing so was the references you've provided in your post above. If you read your Crimson reference, you'll find this:

"Lisa H. Feigenbaum ’04 said that she joined thefacebook.com because it provided an open alternative to the password-protected House facebooks."

(Crimson article)

Your very own reference tells you that facebooks existed for various houses at Harvard.--Concord gioz (talk) 21:52, 27 June 2017 (UTC)

Hi again @Concord gioz: I want us to have a proper discussion around this. This is a pretty substantial edit, changing historical statements. That's why I have reverted you. The Harvard Crimson also states that "There is a project internally with computer services to create a facebook,” Davis said. “We’ve been in touch with the Undergraduate Council, and this is a very high priority for the College. We have every intention of completing the facebook by the end of the spring semester".

We have conflicting sources in the matter. Please note that one source does not override the other just yet. Just like WP:WEIGHT, we need to present both versions rather than what we deem appropriate to fit our views. Furthermore, please note that a consensus isn't established on Wikipedia by edit-warring after posting a talk page message. Consensus is through discussion, not overriding another person. The reason I have reverted is to remain with the stable version until a discussion was established (sort of WP:BRD), and trying to figure out how reliable a YouTube video is by researching it further. I found a Guardian article that states "the name taken from the sheets of paper distributed to freshmen, profiling students and staff". So there are two opposing historical elements, and we need to present both. LocalNet (talk) 05:30, 28 June 2017 (UTC)

Update: When you reverted me, I discovered something. That particular paragraph focuses on Facemash, not on Facebook, and it states that Facemash used "photos compiled from the online facebooks of nine Houses, placing two next to each other at a time and asking users to choose the “hotter” person". That confirms private online directories. But why is it even necessary to feature information on paper versions there? It doesn't have relevance for Facemash but rather Facebook? I don't have time right now, but I'll try to take a look at this later and get it corrected. LocalNet (talk) 06:09, 28 June 2017 (UTC)

Yes. I agree that this is a substantial edit. When I found that TED Talk with the mayor who lived in the dorm next to Zuck's and he showed that slide of the paper "facebook", it was a jaw-dropping moment for me. Given that movies and books and stuff have been made about how facebook.com came about, I would think these facts would be widely known and thoroughly covered.

Yes, we do have conflicting info. At the end here, I will go into my reasons why certain parts of that FastCompany.com article look quite dubious to me. That will be done later, because I see these other points to take precedence. The mayor is a credible source. And he is showing a photo of an entire page from the paper version. I see that to be a solid reference. So is the Harvard Crimson.

Now about the topic of sequencing. I agree with your criticism about these points being raised in the Facemash section. Here's what I suggest:

The best fix to this is to have the very first section in this article explain how there were paper and online versions of a "facebook" available at Harvard. Facemash came later, so that would be good to move down to a second section.

Ok, now on to Ellen McGirt... She wrote:

"That’s where the hacking episode occurred. Harvard didn’t offer a student directory with photos and basic information, known at most schools as a face book."

Is there any other reference out there to support this angle? She is going against some very solid references that say the opposite. Here is one possible reason why she published those words: She knew that Harvard was in the process of building a larger online thing for students to use and connect with, but this was not released yet. She might have taken an accurate fact and then distorted it into "Harvard didn't offer a student directory..."

Supporting evidence... Look at the beginning of the article:

"Mark Zuckerberg ...came face-to-face with the barrel of a gun."

A statement like that is typically understood to be that a person had a gun pointed at them and was threatened with being shot. Now look at her very next paragraph:

"...a man appeared from the shadows, waving a gun and ranting."

So she took this one incident, and has painted two distinctly different pictures with the words she crafted, from the opening paragraph to the second. Taken on the whole, it can be read that this man never verbally threatened Zuckerberg's life, and that this gun was never pointed at him. And while it is totally understandable why Zuck would say that he's lucky to be alive, the more detailed explanation given in the second paragraph tells me that this gun was never pointed at him.

So that is just one example of McGirt adding drama to her article in a way that appears to distort the accurate facts.

Now that most pertinent part of her article. It is much more dramatic to tell a story that Zuckerberg invented the entire concept. It is far less engaging to say that Zuck just took what was already out there and then privatized it for his own benefit, and for the more immediate benefit of Harvard students.

Ok, I've written all of this for the purpose of telling you that I do not agree that it would help the article to present both versions of this story. We have plenty of reason to believe that McGirt's version does not hold water. We have clear evidence that a paper version existed. And we also have solid evidence from the Crimson that an online version existed.

My own suggestion here is that we use our best critical efforts and dismiss McGirts single statement as a possible example of freewheeling, if not outright fabrication for the purpose of dramatization and increasing her readership. I do not know why she wrote what she did. But it is clear to me that it is inaccurate.

I find it curious that you watched that TED Talk and your position is to question the veracity of this mayor of the city where U Notre Dame is. I myself see him to be a credible source, particularly when compared to McGirt. And you also found that Guardian article that supports the mayor. And notice how that article's info seems to be wanting as well:

"The facebook", as it was originally known; the name taken from the sheets of paper distributed to freshmen, profiling students and staff.

Those words give an impression that this paper directory info was given on loose leaf sheets of paper. But the mayor's photo in that slide clearly show that there was a spiral-type wire binding to all these sheets. Hence the reason why it was called a "...book".

Overall, I see no reason why McGirt's statement should be given sufficient weight to be considered credible given that we now have at least four solid sources that contradict her.--Concord gioz (talk) 23:10, 28 June 2017 (UTC)

@Concord gioz: Good argumentation! I agree to dismiss Fast Company's article. But regarding "The Guardian", I think "sheets of paper" might be an informal way to describe physical, as opposed to digital, information, rather than a description of the actual physical face book. But that might be WP:SYNTH. Originally, my concern with the TED talk was the conflicting evidence, from sources dating further back in time. Sorry for not having previously disclosed why I thought it was unreliable, stupid of me not to explain. But in light of the feedback you've given me here, and the Harvard Crimson's own information that I missed while reading it (sorry about that too!), it becomes clear that it takes precedence.

It's a good idea to move info on Harvard's face book to the top of the section. Might I suggest a rewording, though? Something along the lines of "In 2003, there were no universal online face books at Harvard, with only private online directories, and physical books.

Thoughts? :) LocalNet (talk) 06:07, 29 June 2017 (UTC)

I like your suggestion. I think that I myself will be taking a break from editing these facebook articles for a while, so please do this change yourself. Or there may be others who would like to as well. I am sure that there are plenty of people out there who have loads more info about what was available at Harvard in the 2003 timeframe. And I am amazed that this story isn't documented more thoroughly. Very curious, considering the impact that facebook has come to have across our planet.

I don't know if I had expressed my apology well enough before. I had totally missed that statement in McGirt's article. Thank you for pointing that out. And I'm very glad to know that we have gotten a satisfying resolution to this. I will take my steps as a lesson learned for next time I find myself in a similar situation. I look forward to seeing you around somewhere on the interwebs.--Concord gioz (talk) 14:53, 29 June 2017 (UTC)

@Concord gioz: We both made mistakes in our communication in this case, as per this and the discussion on your talk page, as well. But if anything, the fact that we both realize we made mistakes in how we responded and handled this information, and how we are able to apologize and move forward with newfound knowledge and respect, should indicate we make a good team! I don't want you to think that this dispute should put you off Facebook articles. If you hadn't shown me that Fast Company as factually false, one of the most visited technology pages on Wikipedia would have incorrect information. That's not good, even if it fits the bill for verifiabiliity. Thank you for bringing forth this argumentation! There will always be disputes on Wikipedia; even if you go on pages with much lower pageview count and popularity. This situation here showed us how we can get better at communicating during disputes, which is valuable knowledge! If you want to take a break from Facebook articles, I respect that fully, but if not, you are more than welcome to stay here as well. :) LocalNet (talk) 16:12, 29 June 2017 (UTC)

Thank you, LN. I've been through plenty of disagreements here on Wikipedia. A few years ago it even got so bad that I took a flight to California and visited Wikipedia headquarters in San Francisco seeking a rational solution to these kinds of messes. This history probably has a lot to do with why I can get shellshocked at stuff like this and why I had initially overreacted with you. But discussion with you has been refreshing. You probably know some of the big horror stories of Wikipedia editing, even involving the guys who created this site. Both of them went through the ringer. One of them refused to come back.

Most of the problems I've seen here on this site I see to simply be basic problems that are common to human interaction. So leaving Wikipedia does not make these things go away. You just have to deal with them in other parts of life. And as I had shared over on my Talk page, I have a solid expectation that we as a species are well on our way to figuring these things out. Like how fire used to be this random thing of lightning strikes, and now we have it almost totally under control, with fires being used to cook our food and to propel our vehicles.

Right now we might be in an era of "flame wars". But the current "verbal fires" are a huge improvement over the days when people settled disputes with dueling pistols (a la Hamilton). And those days were not all that long ago. So it isn't hard for me to imagine when we will have our creative impulses harnessed like the internal combustion engine ...at which point we'll be turning our attention to the next problems, analogous to how gas engines pollute, so we make electric cars.

I don't know what those social problems will be, after we've all learned to live with each other and 'play nice'. It will be that generation's source of frustration. And maybe someone will remind them of how it used to be in the early 21st Century, when people used to be nasty to each other on the interwebs.--Concord gioz (talk) 01:14, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

Wow. That's.... Wow. I had never thought of it in that way before. I would normally like to comment on that back, but I just need to address the article content. This is a little tricky to edit. Sources are a little mixed up in each other, and to fix it, I will have to do one large edit rather than easy small fixes. Will try to do it, though, but want to quality-check everything before I click "Save", so might take a little bit of time. LocalNet (talk) 12:37, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

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by country penetration of Facebook, and history of Terms & Conditions

Hi, is there anywhere

• a timeline of when Facebook launched in various countries? (notably at this moment I am looking for anything about the negotiations they did with the Myanmar/Burmese government when they came in to be THE portal in that country.)
• an archive of all of the versions of facebook's T&C?

Thanks!138.38.98.67 (talk) 09:50, 17 August 2018 (UTC)

The EFF and ToSDR track changes to terms of service over time. https://tosback.org/ 138.38.98.67 (talk) 21:04, 19 August 2018 (UTC)

Proposed merger from Timeline of Facebook into History of Facebook

I'm proposing to merge Timeline of Facebook into History of Facebook. Both articles are out-of-date, but History of Facebook contains almost no information after Facebook's IPO, and would benefit from the more recent entries from the History of Facebook list. Prose is preferred for most Wikipedia content, and the two pages have enough WP:OVERLAP overlap that merging them would eliminate duplication and make the content easier to maintain. — Newslinger talk 11:15, 30 January 2019 (UTC)

  Y Merger complete. Klbrain (talk) 14:28, 12 February 2020 (UTC)

Ref. 57

On 23 April 2016 I drew attention to Ref. 56, thus:
"The imputed valuation of Facebook has, also, moved up to ,0bn in an early-2011 transaction ... A 5.2% share of ,0bn would be ... " What should ",0bn" be?
It's now ref. 57 - but it still makes no sense:
The imputed valuation of Facebook has, also, moved up to, 0bn in an early-2011 transaction with Goldman Sachs ... A 5.2% share of, 0bn would be worth .58bn.
By my calculations, this should be
The imputed valuation of Facebook has, also, moved up to 11.15 bn in an early-2011 transaction with Goldman Sachs ... A 5.2% share of $11.15 bn would be worth 0.58bn.
Prisoner of Zenda (talk) 11:20, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

FashMash as Facebook's predecessor

Are there any sources that back up the claim that FaceMash was Facebook's predecessor? donnellan Donnellan0007 (talk) 04:25, 30 October 2021 (UTC)

Merge Facebook article History section into History of Facebook article

The readable prose size of the Facebook article is currently 92 kB. The readable prose size of History of Facebook is currently 19 kB. Per the WP:Splitting rule of thumb for size splits, the Facebook article is an article that should probably be divided strictly on its size alone. Per Criteria 2 of WP:Merging about article overlap, much of the content in the History section of the Facebook article is about the company rather than the Facebook service which substantially overlaps with the content of the History of Facebook article. -- CommonKnowledgeCreator (talk) 21:18, 1 August 2023 (UTC)

I agree with you. Mslhsn (talk) 19:27, 13 September 2023 (UTC)

I guess it can be done. Cwater1 (talk) 13:14, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

@Cwater1 103.115.100.167 (talk) 18:14, 10 November 2023 (UTC)

@ 192.145.170.220 (talk) 01:59, 17 November 2023 (UTC)

14.240.67.172 14.240.67.172 (talk) 20:07, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

As of this writing, the readable prose size of the Facebook article is currently at 94 kB and the History section alone accounts for 29 kB. -- CommonKnowledgeCreator (talk) 03:35, 12 October 2023 (UTC)

Also, the readable prose size of the History of Facebook article is still 19 kB. -- CommonKnowledgeCreator (talk) 03:42, 12 October 2023 (UTC)

Requested move 1 August 2023

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: not moved. (non-admin closure) - 🔥𝑰𝒍𝒍𝒖𝒔𝒊𝒐𝒏 𝑭𝒍𝒂𝒎𝒆 (𝒕𝒂𝒍𝒌)🔥 22:31, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

---

History of Facebook → History of Facebook, Inc. – As I have argued on the Criticism of Facebook talk page and per the precision criterion of WP:Article titles, most of the content in this article is about Facebook, Inc. (i.e. the company) rather than the Facebook service and only includes the history of the company before the Cambridge Analytica data scandal. The business history that is included here stops in April 2018 even though the company renamed itself Meta Platforms in October 2021, while the Facebook service continues to be offered to this day alongside Meta Platforms' other subsidiaries. -- CommonKnowledgeCreator (talk) 21:39, 1 August 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose this can be about the history of the website and company (now Meta) so its probably best to keep it at the simple title. Crouch, Swale (talk) 21:15, 3 August 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose. Completely unnecessary. -- Necrothesp (talk) 15:39, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.