Non-fiction: Facebook

Clarification
No non-fiction book titled "Facebook" authored by Mark Zuckerberg was published in 2004. That year marks the launch of the website TheFacebook at Harvard, not the release of a book by its founder. If you were thinking of a narrative about Facebook’s creation and rise, widely cited nonfiction accounts include Ben Mezrich’s The Accidental Billionaires (2009), David Kirkpatrick’s The Facebook Effect (2010), and Steven Levy’s Facebook: The Inside Story (2020). If one of those is the intended target, say which and I’ll provide a focused summary around 500 words.

If you meant the platform’s 2004 origins
In early 2004, Mark Zuckerberg, then a Harvard sophomore, built TheFacebook as a campus directory that digitized the analog “face books” distributed by colleges. The impetus came after a rash early project, Facemash, which scraped dorm photos and caused administrative backlash but also revealed pent-up demand for a centralized, social website. TheFacebook launched on February 4, 2004, with a simple proposition: real-name profiles tied to university email, the ability to connect with classmates, and a gated community that borrowed trust from institutional affiliation.

Adopting a minimalist design and prioritizing identity authenticity, TheFacebook differentiated itself from earlier networks like Friendster by imposing .edu email verification, which fostered norms of accurate profiles and reduced spam. Within days, adoption spread virally across Harvard, driven by profile browsing, friend connections, and basic messaging. Expansion to other Ivy League schools and then universities nationwide followed rapidly, as student volunteers at each campus helped seed networks and maintain the aura of exclusivity.

A small founding team coalesced around Zuckerberg: Eduardo Saverin provided early funding and business assistance; Dustin Moskovitz worked on engineering and operations; Chris Hughes focused on outreach and product feedback. By the summer, Zuckerberg and teammates decamped to Palo Alto, renting a house that doubled as office and dorm. Incorporation formalized the effort, and in 2004 the company secured a $500,000 angel investment from Peter Thiel, which provided runway for infrastructure, hiring, and continued campus-by-campus expansion. By year’s end, user numbers reached roughly a million, still a niche compared with later global scale but a striking penetration among U.S. college students.

Controversy arrived alongside growth. Cameron Winklevoss, Tyler Winklevoss, and Divya Narendra accused Zuckerberg of appropriating ideas from a project they had proposed, HarvardConnection/ConnectU. Legal disputes began in 2004 and would later culminate in settlements, shaping public narratives about the origins of the site and the ethics of competitive coding at Harvard. Internally, debates over control and direction surfaced between Zuckerberg and Saverin, foreshadowing corporate realignments as the company professionalized.

Product philosophy centered on clean profiles and controlled visibility within school networks. There was no algorithmic News Feed yet; social interaction happened through direct profile visits and simple updates, a design that made user behavior feel local and legible. The emphasis on real identity and mutual connections established norms that later underpinned Facebook’s trust model, even as future expansions to high schools, workplaces, and eventually the public would test those assumptions at scale.

Technically, the early stack had to evolve quickly as usage surged, forcing the team to refine databases, optimize queries, and keep the site stable under load with limited resources. Culturally, the project embodied a hacker ethos of rapid iteration and live experimentation, balanced against institutional scrutiny and user expectations for reliability.

The 2004 chapter, then, is the crucible: a focused, college-only network that proved the value of authenticated identity, reached product-market fit, secured its first outside capital, and set in motion the governance, legal, and cultural patterns that would define Facebook’s next decade.

Next steps
If you want a summary of a specific nonfiction book about Facebook, The Facebook Effect, The Accidental Billionaires, or Facebook: The Inside Story, name the title and I’ll deliver a concise 500-word synopsis.