Facebook is 10 years Old .... Happy Birthday

There are ten candles on the Facebook birthday cake. A phenomenal decade. Ten years ago it did not exist now, it has 1.23 billion users; to put that in perspective it’s something like the population of India.

In the last decade, it has attracted millions of people who use it to communicate with friends, post updates on their life, share photographs, change their relationship status, or to simply click 'like'.

Last week, the social network heavyweight reported record revenues of 2.5 billion dollars (£1.5 billion) from 750 million daily users - a revenue rise of one billion dollars (£0.6bn) on the same period last year.

But the road that led the US company to its position as a multibillion-dollar global powerhouse has been far from smooth, and many question whether or not it will survive another 10 years.

Its story began in February 2004 when Harvard psychology student Mark Zuckerberg launched the social networking site from his room.

The keen computer programmer had already developed a number of networking websites for fellow students, including Coursematch, which allowed users to view people taking their degree, and Facemash, a website that asked users to judge students by how attractive they were.

But it was Thefacebook.com - as it was originally called - that proved the instant hit, allowing Harvard undergraduates to create basic online profiles and display personal information and photos.

Within a month, more than half of the student population had an account and soon after the social network started its expansion to other colleges and universities across America.

By the end of 2004 young technology mogul Mr Zuckerberg and the early Facebook founders decided to move their headquarters to the sunny climes of California and began developing the site after catching the eye of a number of wealthy investors.

Facebook.com was purchased in August 2005 and the following month US high schools were allowed to sign up.

The buzz around the revolutionary website started to reverberate across the globe and its registration limits were scrapped in September 2006, but the lengthy legal battles which have marred its relatively short lifespan were already well under way.

Harvard student Cameron Winklevoss, his twin brother Tyler and friend Divya Narenya, claimed Mr Zuckerberg had taken the idea for Facebook when he was working for them as a programmer for their university social-networking site ConnectU.

The trio filed a lawsuit in September 2004 and following nearly four years of legal wrangling Facebook finally settled for a purported 65 million dollars (£41 million) in 2008.

By this time the company's estimated value had soared into the billions following investment from Microsoft and other high-profile capitalists and it had set up an international base in Dublin.

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