Meta Platforms launched Facebook in 2004 under what original name?

Meta Platforms launched Facebook in 2004 under the original name TheFacebook.

Mark Zuckerberg and fellow Harvard students Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes created the service as a social directory for Harvard students. It went online on February 4, 2004, and the name was shortened to Facebook in August 2005 after the company acquired the facebook.com domain.

The original service was limited to Harvard before expanding to other American universities and then to high schools and the general public. Facebook later became the central product of Facebook, Inc., which rebranded as Meta Platforms in 2021 to emphasize its broader focus on social technology and the metaverse.

A common mix-up is confusing TheFacebook with Facemash, an earlier Harvard project Zuckerberg created in 2003. Meta's other major platforms include Instagram and WhatsApp.