<P> On October 25, 2010, entrepreneur and banker Rahul Jain auctioned off FaceMash.com to an unknown buyer for $30,201 . </P> <P> A "face book" is a student directory featuring photos and basic information . In 2003, there were no universal online facebooks at Harvard, with only paper sheets distributed and private online directories . Zuckerberg told the Crimson that "Everyone's been talking a lot about a universal face book within Harvard . (...) I think it's kind of silly that it would take the University a couple of years to get around to it . I can do it better than they can, and I can do it in a week ." In January 2004, Zuckerberg began writing code for a new website, known as "TheFacebook", with the inspiration coming from an editorial in the Crimson about Facemash, stating that "It is clear that the technology needed to create a centralized Website is readily available...the benefits are many ." On February 4, 2004, Zuckerberg launched "TheFacebook", originally located at thefacebook.com . </P> <P> Zuckerberg also stated his intention to create a universal website that can connect people around the university . According to his roommate, Dustin Moskovitz, "When Mark finished the site, he told a couple of friends...then one of them suggested putting it on the Kirkland House online mailing list, which was...three hundred people ." Moskovitz continued to say that, "By the end of the night, we were...actively watching the registration process . Within twenty - four hours, we had somewhere between twelve hundred and fifteen hundred registrants ." </P> <P> Just six days after the launch of the site, three Harvard University seniors, Cameron Winklevoss, Tyler Winklevoss, and Divya Narendra, accused Zuckerberg of intentionally misleading them into believing that he would help them build a social network called HarvardConnection.com, but instead using their idea to build a competing product . The three complained to the Crimson, and the newspaper began an investigation . Zuckerberg knew about the investigation so he used TheFacebook.com to find members in the site who identified themselves as members of the Crimson . He examined a history of failed logins to see if any of the Crimson members have ever entered an incorrect password into TheFacebook.com . In the cases in which they had failed to log in, Mark tried to use them to access the Crimson members' Harvard email accounts, and he was successful in accessing two of them . In the end, three Crimson members filed a lawsuit against Zuckerberg which was later settled . U Membership was initially restricted to students of Harvard University . Within the first month, more than half the undergraduate population at Harvard was registered on the service . Zuckerberg was soon joined in the promotion of the site by Eduardo Saverin (business aspects), Dustin Moskovitz (programmer), Andrew McCollum (graphic artist), and Chris Hughes . In March 2004, Facebook expanded to Stanford, Columbia, and Yale . This expansion continued when it opened to all Ivy League and Boston - area schools . It gradually reached most universities in the United States and Canada . Facebook was incorporated in the summer of 2004, and the entrepreneur Sean Parker, who had been informally advising Zuckerberg, became the company's president . In June 2004, Facebook moved its base of operations to Palo Alto, California . The company dropped' The' from its name after purchasing the domain name facebook.com in 2005 for $200,000 . </P>

The full story of how facebook was founded