February 4, 2004. If you were a student at Harvard that morning, you probably didn't realize you were about to witness the birth of a global superpower. Mark Zuckerberg, along with his roommates Dustin Moskovitz, Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, and Chris Hughes, hit the "go" button on a site called "TheFacebook." It wasn't the blue giant we see today. Honestly, it was a glorified digital directory.
Most people think Facebook just appeared out of nowhere as a fully formed social network. Not quite. The reality is that when Facebook was launched, it was a desperate attempt to solve a very specific, local problem: Harvard didn't have a universal "face book" for its students. Zuckerberg basically said he could build one in a week, and he actually did it.
The Dorm Room Reality of February 4
The site went live from Kirkland House, Room H-33. It’s funny to imagine now, but the first version of the site was incredibly sparse. You had a profile, you could list your "house" and your "year," and that was basically it. There was no News Feed. No "Like" button. Definitely no "Reels."
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Instead of a global audience, the launch was strictly limited to anyone with a @harvard.edu email address. Within 24 hours, somewhere between 1,200 and 1,500 students had signed up. Zuckerberg and his roommates weren't celebrating with champagne; they were mostly glued to their monitors, watching the server logs to make sure the whole thing didn't crash under the weight of a thousand Ivy Leaguers looking for their classmates.
Before the Launch: The Facemash Scandal
You can't talk about the February launch without mentioning what happened a few months earlier in October 2003. Zuckerberg created Facemash, a site that let students rank the "hotness" of their peers by comparing two photos side-by-side. It was a disaster.
Harvard shut it down in four days. Zuckerberg nearly got expelled. But that failure taught him something crucial. People really liked looking at pictures of their peers. Facemash got 22,000 "votes" in just a few hours. That raw engagement proved that a digital identity tied to real people—not avatars—was the secret sauce.
Why When Was Facebook Launched Matters for History
By the time March 2004 rolled around, the site was already expanding to Stanford, Columbia, and Yale. It wasn't just a Harvard thing anymore. This rapid-fire expansion is what eventually killed off competitors like MySpace and Friendster.
The timeline of the early days is actually pretty chaotic:
- February 4, 2004: The initial launch of "TheFacebook.com."
- March 2004: Expansion to other Ivy League schools.
- June 2004: The company moves to Palo Alto, California.
- September 2004: The "Wall" is introduced, allowing people to actually talk to each other.
- September 2005: They finally drop the "The" and become just "Facebook" after buying the domain for $200,000.
The Winklevoss Controversy
Only six days after the site went live, three Harvard seniors—Cameron Winklevoss, Tyler Winklevoss, and Divya Narendra—accused Zuckerberg of stealing their idea. They had hired him to build a site called HarvardConnection. They claimed he intentionally stalled their project while building his own. This legal battle would haunt the company for years, eventually resulting in a massive settlement, but it also cemented the "cutthroat" reputation of early Facebook.
From .edu to Everyone
For a long time, the exclusivity was the point. You had to be a college student to get in. Then, in September 2005, they opened it up to high schoolers.
The real turning point, though, was September 26, 2006. That's when Facebook opened to anyone over the age of 13 with a valid email address. This was the moment the "college directory" died and the "social utility" was born. People hated it at first. Users felt the "exclusivity" was gone, and when the News Feed launched around the same time, people actually staged digital protests. Zuckerberg didn't budge. He knew that a static profile was boring, but a "feed" was addictive.
Actionable Takeaways from the Facebook Launch
Looking back at 2004 provides more than just a history lesson; it shows how tech succeeds.
- Solve a local problem first: Zuckerberg didn't try to "connect the world" on day one. He tried to connect Harvard.
- Iterate on failure: Without the "Hot or Not" failure of Facemash, the identity-based system of Facebook might never have happened.
- Speed is a feature: Moving from one school to dozens in just a few months prevented anyone else from catching up.
- Don't fear the pivot: Dropping the "The" and opening to the public were risky moves that felt like "betraying" the original user base, but they were necessary for survival.
If you’re looking to verify these dates for research or a project, the most reliable sources remain the original Harvard Crimson articles from 2004 or David Kirkpatrick’s book The Facebook Effect, which is widely considered the definitive account of these early months.
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To fully understand the impact of that 2004 launch, you should look into the specific history of the "News Feed" rollout in 2006. It explains why the platform shifted from a directory to the engagement machine we know now. You can also trace the evolution of the "Wall" into the modern "Timeline" to see how the user interface has changed since those dorm room days.