Last but not least: From student project to IPO
Facebook is filing for a $5 billion initial public offering. What started out as a small student project has now attracted countless users—though not without its share of problems.
Around eight years ago, in February 2004, Mark Zuckerberg and his fellow students, the Winklevoss brothers, launched Facebook at Harvard. The yearbook for Harvard University students soon extended its service to Stanford, Columbia and Yale Universities. Almost a year later, Facebook had one million users, and another year later it had 5.5 million.
Due to the high demand, Facebook is not only available to schools and universities in 2006 and opens up to everyone: 12 million users. One year later, there were 50 million users. A minor setback: Zuckerberg is sued by the Winklevoss brothers for allegedly stealing their idea and has to pay them a settlement.
Facebook was launched in German in March 2008 and the social media community has since generated 100 million users. The number of Facebook users continues to rise. By December 2012, there were 845 million active users - despite discussions about data protection.
Mark Zuckerberg has made it from simple student to millionaire entrepreneur in a very short space of time. So the fairy tale of rags to riches is not so far-fetched after all. This hope warms our hearts a little in these cold times.
