Facebook Hits 20: How Mark Zuckerberg’s Dorm Room Dream Became a Metaverse Giant

Mark Zuckerberg, in his Kirkland dorm room at Harvard in 2004 after the launch of TheFacebook.com.

The college startup grew to one of the world’s largest companies

Mark Zuckerberg, in his Kirkland dorm room at Harvard in 2004 after the launch of TheFacebook.com. Lowell K. Chow/The Harvard Crimson

Mark Zuckerberg Celebrates 20 Years of Facebook

Mark Zuckerberg. Photo: Mark Zuckerberg/Instagram

Mark Zuckerberg took a trip down memory lane as Facebook turned 20.

To mark the company’s 20th anniversary on Sunday, the 39-year-old Meta CEO shared a pair of throwback social media posts.

One video, set to Aerosmith’s “Dream On,” featured numerous clips from different stages in Facebook’s growth, starting with an image of a young Zuckerberg working from his dorm room at Harvard University.

“When we first launched we were hoping for, you know, maybe 400 [or] 500 people. Now we’re at 100,000 people,” a young Zuckerberg said in one throwback interview. “Who knows where we’re going next.”

“20 years ago I launched a thing,” he captioned the post. “Along the way, lots of amazing people joined and we built some more awesome things. We’re still at it and the best is yet to come.”

He went on to share another post on social media, which featured a photograph of him working on Facebook in a messy dorm room, while a second image showed him striking a similar pose at his desk circa now.

“20 years in,” he wrote. “Still at it.”

“I remember that dorm room like it was yesterday,” his wife, Dr. Priscilla Chan, 38, wrote in the comment section.

The parents of three, who met while they were students at Harvard University in 2003, recently celebrated a milestone of their own: the 20th anniversary of their first date.

“We met at a going away party my friends threw for me in college when they thought I was about to get kicked out of school,” the billionaire wrote back in November. “I asked her out but told her we’d need to go out soon since I might only have a few days left. Later on I started Facebook, we got married, and now have three wonderful girls. What a wild ride.”

Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan attend the 7th Annual Breakthrough Prize Ceremony at NASA Ames Research Center on November 4, 2018 in Mountain View, California

Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan. Taylor Hill/Getty

In 2021, Facebook, Inc. changed its company name to Meta.

The big change reflected their focus on building the metaverse, which the company has said will be a “hybrid of today’s online social experiences, sometimes expanded into three dimensions or projected into the physical world.”

“We are at the beginning of the next chapter for the internet, and it’s the next chapter for our company too,” CEO Zuckerberg wrote in his founder’s letter at the time.

Facebook’s 20th anniversary took place just days after Zuckerberg and Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel apologized to parents attending a Senate hearing addressing online child safety on Capitol Hill.

“I’m sorry for everything you’ve all gone through,” said Zuckerberg. “This is why we have invested so much and we are going to continue doing industry-wide efforts to make sure no one has to go through the things your families have had to suffer.”

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