History

"The Facebook", originally located at thefacebook.com, in February 2004 while attending Harvard University as a sophomore.^[1] The company dropped The from its name after purchasing the domain name facebook.com in 2005 for $200,000.^[4] Membership was initially restricted to students of Harvard College, and within the first month, more than half the undergraduate population at Harvard were registered on the service.^[5] Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes soon joined Zuckerberg to help promote the website. In March 2004, Facebook expanded to Stanford, Columbia, and Yale.^[6] This expansion continued when it opened to all Ivy League schools and gradually most universities in Canada and the United States.^[7] In June, Facebook moved its base of operations to Palo Alto, California.^[6] Facebook launched a high school version in September 2005; Zuckerberg called it the next logical step.^[8] High school networks required an invitation to join.^[9] Facebook later expanded membership eligibility to employees of several companies including Apple Inc. and Microsoft.^[10] Facebook was then opened to everyone with a valid e-mail address, aside from people under the age of 13, on September 26, 2006.