In 2004, a college student, Mark Zuckerberg, wanted to build an online version of the student directory with basic information, commonly known to school as face book. Harvard(a university in America) did not offer such a directory and administration insisted that they were unable to aggregate the information required. Thus,one night, Zuckerberg hacked into Harvard's students record and created a basic site called Facemash which randomly paired photos of graduates and invited visitors to vote who was "hotter". After 4 hours, 450 visitors and 22,000 photo views, Harvard administration disconnected Zuckerberg's internet connection and took down the site. However, Zuckerberg continued with his new project as he believed that information should be available to all students. He added applications and and expanded networks to other schools and to work networks employees. Eventually, in September 2006, Zuckerberg's social network website, Facebook.com,was opened to the public. Now, the site has more than 68 million active users worldwide. Unlike other social networking sites which had been targeting the older demographics or teenagers, Facebook was designed by college students for college students. There were several funding from venture capitalists since the launch of Facebook. Notably US$500,000 from Peter Thiel (co-founder of PayPal), US$13 million from Accel Parterns and also US$25 million from other partners.
Adapted from: http://www.scribd.com/doc/13084222/MT5007-The-Facebook-Case-Study
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