Facebook celebrates 9th birthday today

Facebook turns nine-year-old today.

The social networking giant was started on February 4, 2004 in a dorm ofHarvard University by Mark Zuckerburg with the help of his four friends Dustin Moskovitz, Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum and Chris Hughes. The world's biggest social media site called thefacebook.com in its initial days, and was later renamed to just Facebook, the Times of India reported.

Facebook, which began as Zuckerberg's hobby projects, was initially a college network. Facebook's expansion to other colleges and universities started in March 2004. Within months, the social network became a huge success. In October 2007, software giant Microsoft bought a 1.6 percent stake in Facebook for $240 million. Search gaint Google too is said to have offered partnership deal to Facebook. The deal was, however, rejected by Facebook.

Recently, Facebook co-founder and CEO Zuckerburg announced a new feature called Graph Search, a tool that utilises social data to help compile results for users. The company also rolled out features like Facebook Cards and voice calling on iPhone in North America to attract users. Users are steadily becoming more active on the mobileedition of the website than the desktop version.