The original name of Facebook when Mark Zuckerberg launched it from Harvard in 2004 was TheFacebook.
Zuckerberg launched the service on February 4, 2004, with fellow Harvard students Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes. It began as a social directory for Harvard students and used the name “TheFacebook.” The site later expanded to other universities, then to high schools and eventually to anyone aged 13 or older with a valid email address.
The company dropped “The” from its name in August 2005 after acquiring the domain Facebook.com. This early naming change is often confused with the company's later rebranding as Meta, which occurred in 2021 and affected the corporate parent rather than replacing the Facebook social network. Facebook's rapid campus expansion became a defining example of Silicon Valley's network-effect business model.