--- title: Facebook History: TheFacebook.com Launched February 4, 2004 description: It's been 11 years since the site launched. Here's what TIME had to say about it back in 2004 canonical: https://time.com/3686124/happy-birthday-facebook/ author: Lily Rothman article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2015-02-04T12:00:34.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-04-13T08:04:15.799Z article:section: History og:title: Facebook History: TheFacebook.com Launched February 4, 2004 og:description: It's been 11 years since the site launched. Here's what TIME had to say about it back in 2004 og:url: https://time.com/3686124/happy-birthday-facebook/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blted7f873f9e146176/69877c55e20a872764a84c55/fb.jpeg?branch=production&width=2400&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: st/facebook Message posted at an online college community called 'thefacebook.com. og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Facebook History: TheFacebook.com Launched February 4, 2004 twitter:description: It's been 11 years since the site launched. Here's what TIME had to say about it back in 2004 twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blted7f873f9e146176/69877c55e20a872764a84c55/fb.jpeg?branch=production&width=2400&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Happy Birthday, Facebook  by [Lily Rothman](https://time.com/author/lily-rothman/)  ## Lily Rothman Rothman is managing editor at TIME. Feb 4, 2015 12:00 PM UTC  What a group page looked like on thefacebook.com in 2004 What a group page looked like on thefacebook.com in 2004Juana Arias—The Washington Post / Getty Images  by [Lily Rothman](https://time.com/author/lily-rothman/)  ## Lily Rothman Rothman is managing editor at TIME. Feb 4, 2015 12:00 PM UTC Remember TheFacebook.com? When TheFacebook launched on this day, Feb. 4, in 2004, it was for a limited audience and offered limited capabilities — and, the first time the site showed up in TIME, the writer had an appropriately limited amount to say about it. The site’s first mention in TIME was later that year, in [a story about online dating for the college set](http://time.com/vault/issue/2004-09-06/page/143/), in which Facebook’s founders insisted that their site didn’t belong in that group: --- > “” --- Of course, that iteration of Facebook didn’t last long. The “the” went away; the college-only restrictions went away; the user figures expanded — [to a whopping 864 million a day, as of September](http://newsroom.fb.com/company-info/) — and the website appeared nearly 800 times more in the pages of TIME, plus about 2,000 online mentions. And counting. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3686124/happy-birthday-facebook/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3686124/happy-birthday-facebook/"},"headline":"Happy Birthday, Facebook","datePublished":"2015-02-04T12:00:34.000Z","dateModified":"2026-04-13T08:04:15.799Z","description":"It's been 11 years since the site launched. Here's what TIME had to say about it back in 2004","url":"https://time.com/3686124/happy-birthday-facebook/","keywords":["Technology","Tech","Social Media","facebook"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blted7f873f9e146176/69877c55e20a872764a84c55/fb.jpeg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Lily Rothman","jobTitle":"Rothman is managing editor at TIME.","url":"https://time.com/author/lily-rothman/"}],"articleSection":"History","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blted7f873f9e146176/69877c55e20a872764a84c55/fb.jpeg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"st/facebook Message posted at an online college community called 'thefacebook.com.","caption":"st/facebook Message posted at an online college community called 'thefacebook.com.","creditText":"Juana Arias—The Washington Post / Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/history/","name":"History"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/technology/","name":"Technology"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/3686124/happy-birthday-facebook/","name":"Happy Birthday, Facebook"}}]}] ```