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Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg in 2004
# Next Big Thing
VIDEO: Watch a very young Mark Zuckerberg trying to explain 'The Facebook'
“When we first launched we were hoping for, you know, maybe 400, 500 people.”
JUST OVER 11 years ago, a young guy named Mark Zuckerberg appeared on US television to talk about the potential “next big thing” on the internet – college networking websites.
Appearing on CNBC from Massachusetts, the then 19-year-old was asked how big “TheFacebook.com” would be – to which the social network’s founder replied:
“Well, it’s impossible to tell. When we first launched we were hoping for, you know, maybe 400, 500 people … now we’re at 100,000 people so who knows where we’re going next.
We’re hoping to have many more universities by fall … and from there we’re going to launch a bunch of site applications which should keep people coming back to the site and maybe we can make something cool.”
CNBC reposted the video on, you guessed it, Facebook this week for the anniversary of its broadcast about a week after the company reported revenues of $3.5 billion for the first three months of 2015.
‘An online directory’
The network that Zuckerberg in 2004 described somewhat quaintly as ”an online directory that connects people through universities and colleges” now has 936 million active users around the world each day.
It has also made its founder, now aged 30, one of the 20 richest people in the world with a fortune estimated at $35 billion.
READ: The Irish version of Facebook could end up worse than the US version >
READ: How does Facebook decide what to show on your newsfeed? >
