Facebook beat Friendster and MySpace by launching only at Harvard in February 2004, requiring real names and school email addresses, and expanding one campus a…
Friendster, founded by Jonathan Abrams, opened in March 2003 and had about 3 million users by autumn. Then its pages slowed to a crawl.
MySpace let anyone join and customise their page with music and HTML. By June 2006 it was the most visited website in the US.
Only Harvard students with a school email could join. Within a month, more than half of undergraduates had signed up.
One university at a time. By December 2004 Facebook had about 1 million users, still all students.
The Wall (2004) and Photos with tagging (2005). Every tag notified a friend and brought them back.
No. Protest groups drew hundreds of thousands. Facebook added privacy controls but kept the feed, which became the habit.
comScore: 116.4M worldwide visitors vs MySpace's 115.7M in April 2008. In the US it took until May 2009.
Friendster relaunched in April 2026 as an in-person app. MySpace's owners promise a comeback. Meta's apps reach 3.6 billion people a day.
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